I think it may be a leadership issue. It appears that many people are motivated enough to step out to be helpful, however, well-intentioned, self-interested, or injudicious. Some attempts to be compassionate (e.g., short term mission trips, serving meals under the bridge, or take your pick of redundant efforts) that have limited helpfulness to the served have value as means to spiritual formation for the servers, but not any more so than actually being helpful would. Perhaps with a little less emphasis on spiritual formation and a little more emphasis on alleviating suffering we would produce more help and more spiritual formation.
Jesus threw down the gauntlet for his followers to be compassionate. Compassion, by definition, is an emotional reaction in response to someone’s suffering accompanied by a strong motivation to alleviate the suffering. It is something else to have an emotional reaction in response to someone’s suffering accompanied by a strong desire to grow spiritually because of hanging out among the suffering doing something that does not sufficiently target the suffering. For it to be compassion a primary component should involve trying to actually alleviate the suffering. Seems some intentional thoughtfulness about what’s causing the suffering, what would be helpful to alleviate it, and questioning our own efforts would be needed to move into compassion.
When we are off the compassion mark, a leader would be helpful to bring us to compassion. I don’t necessarily mean a trained or institutionally appointed leader, just someone who knows (through experience) something about the people and what would be helpful. It would also be helpful for those that are off the mark to seek out such a leader and learn from him or her before joining some misguided effort. And maybe it would be helpful to have some scary, wild looking dude screaming some prophetic reprimands at the rest.
The compassionate leader helps those that desire to be compassionate by guiding and directing them in their efforts to alleviate suffering. Seems like a win-win. Previously well-intention, self-interested people learn to lose the self-interest part and gain something better – compassion – and the person suffering is provided with the type of help that is actually needed. In this scenario, the leaders need to step up in the midst of misguided efforts and do some transformation. I think they would find some willing to go along. The others can continue to stroke their egos and build their kingdom. Leave them alone, if they are not against us, they are for us.
1 comment:
I think that this is the most important takeaway. We have to teach others to be compassionate, not expect it. In this culture we have failed at doing anything that is purely unconditional. So we have to teach what that looks like and how to do it. Jesus offered a new way of living, but the Disciples had to pick it up. We must teach people how to pick it up.
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