Faith And Compassion
Faith is to the human what sand is to the ostrich.
– Lenny Bruce
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He walked up. When he got within about five feet of me, I smelled a horrible smell like I’d never smelled in my life…
I asked him, “What’s your name?” “David.” “How long have you been on the street?” “Six years.” “How old are you?” “Thirty-two.” He looked fifty — hair matted, front teeth missing, wino, eyes slightly glazed. “Where did you sleep last night, David?” “Abandoned truck.”
I keep in my back pocket a money clip… I took the money out. David pushed his finger in front of me. He said, “I don’t want your money. I want this Jesus, the One you were talking about, because I’m not going to make it. I’m going to die on the street.”
I completely forgot about David, and I started to weep for myself. I was going to give a couple of dollars to someone God had sent to me. See how easy it is? I could make the excuse I was tired. There is no excuse. I was not seeing him the way God sees him. I was not feeling what God feels.
Something came over me. Suddenly I started to weep deeper, and David began to weep. He fell against my chest as I was sitting there. He fell against my white shirt and tie, and I put my arms around him, and there we wept on each other. The smell of His person became a beautiful aroma…
— Jim Cymbala
*
Our whole civilization is on the cross. We practice empty faith instead of simple compassion as a way of life because we prefer appearance to reality. The movements of the heart require a kind of engagement we don’t want to make. We resort to reason to guide us in emergencies because that’s what we trust. That’s where we put our faith. We don’t trust the responses of empathy because, after all, we could be tricked. And there’s so much real suffering in this world that we’re exhausted anyway.
The religion founded on one radically compassionate man was twisted into a sham faith that is easy to ridicule because it’s so full of pretense and hypocrisy. But real people are suffering real atrocities in a society rooted in cruelty. When you’re going down for the last time you’ll take any help you can get. It’s easy to laugh at the beliefs of religionists but, if it can offer any relief to a social reject who’s dying, it has a reason to exist.
It was never meant to reassure the philistines, anyway. A religion that assures us we’re right to hate the people who look different or disagree with us can’t really be called a religion. A religion worthy of its name should challenge us to grow more compassionate, not less. American Christianity has lost the thread. Belief is not the point, it’s no proof of virtue; real compassion is the litmus test of a religion.
Belief is actually the enemy of religion. We divide and segregate ourselves based on belief. Compassion doesn’t do that. It sees suffering and cares, and because it cares it acts. Belief has a million reasons why it’s too much trouble to care.
How did we get here? How did we become the humans we have become? How have we managed to become so calculating, so devoid of compassion, so mechanical and automatic in our relationships? I really do think it’s due to a great extent to what we’re led to believe from our cultural examples. Our games, our education, our religious ideals even, lead us away from compassionate relationship, outside a few exceptions.
The “Christians” who put barbed wire in the Rio Grande — that has already killed some desperate person — are a case in point. We are still pretending to look for our hearts, but we have managed to carry our callousness into our churches and mount it on crosses. Our hypocrisy is blatant.
We can do better.
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