Michelle DeRusha

Every Day Faith. Faith Every Day.

Compassion

Let’s All Practice Indiscriminate Compassion

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Photo by Biel Morro on Unsplash

“Indiscriminate compassion.” I came across these two words recently in Brennan Manning’s memoir All Is Grace, and they stopped me short.

You would think the word compassion wouldn’t need an adjective. Compassion – “sympathy, empathy, care, concern, sensitivity, warmth, love, mercy, kindness, humanity, charity” – should be able to stand on its own, right? Indiscriminate compassion seems redundant.

Turns out, I need the adjective.

The truth is, more often than not, my brand of compassion is not indiscriminate. It’s selective, directed, carefully considered. I pick and choose those whom I think deserve or are worthy of my compassion. I often second-guess myself or reason my way out of loving others.

Is that man on the street corner with the cardboard sign really homeless? What if he’s part of a scam? I heard homeless people work together to get more money. I heard they actually make a pretty good living panhandling. What if he uses my donation for alcohol or drugs? What if he’s not actually that poor? What if he’s taking advantage of me?

I can reason myself out of compassion in less than ten seconds flat while idling at a stoplight.

That’s why Manning’s phrase caught me off guard. Reason, rationale, worthiness, deservedness – the elaborate rubric we’ve crafted to determine who’s in and who’s out, who deserves our love and who doesn’t – doesn’t stand a chance in the face of indiscriminate compassion.

Compassion offered without considering the pros and cons? Compassion offered across the board, to anyone and everyone, no qualifications necessary? Compassion offered without guarantee of outcomes? Compassion when you can’t be sure the person really deserves it?

Now that’s a radical concept.

And that’s exactly the kind of compassion Jesus practiced and preached.

Think about how Jesus approached the social pariah, the prostitute, the leper, the sinner, the demonized, the outcast.

He didn’t demand repentance, an explanation or an apology.

He didn’t consider whether the person was worthy or deserving of his love.

He didn’t require certain conditions or criteria be met.

He didn’t draw a line between who was in and who was out, who qualified and who didn’t.

Jesus invited and embraced any and all. Jesus ministered to any and all. Jesus’ compassion came with no strings attached. Jesus loved — indiscriminately.

And he expects us to do the same.

“Give a cool cup of water to someone who is thirsty,” Jesus instructed his followers. “The smallest act of giving or receiving makes you a true apprentice. You won’t lose out on a thing.” (Matthew 10:42, Msg.)

Notice what Jesus doesn’t say.

He doesn’t say Give a cool cup of water to someone who you’re sure is worthy of it.

He does say Give a cool cup of water to someone who will make good use of that water.

He doesn’t say Give a cool cup of water to someone who will be grateful for it.

He doesn’t say Give a cool cup of water to someone who meets these particular conditions or criteria.

Jesus simply says Give a cool cup of water to someone who is thirsty. End of story.

And notice that last bit, too: You won’t lose out on a thing.

I think that’s the clincher for a lot of us: we are afraid of what we’ll lose – our money, our possessions, our pride, our self-respect. But Jesus reminds us that it’s not about what we lose. It’s all about what we gain, which is the freedom that comes from loving unabashedly, no holds barred, no strings attached.

Let us love, then, as Jesus did. Let us release our reasoning, our rationale, our second-guessing, our conditions and our expectations. Let us lavish wildly abundant compassion and grace on everyone we meet.

And let us take Jesus at his word. Rest assured, we won’t lose out on a thing when we practice Jesus’ kind of indiscriminate compassion. But the rewards? Those will be rich indeed.

God Calls Us to Be in the Minority

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I listened to a podcast while I was running recently about acoustic biologist Katy Payne and her work with whales and elephants. This is what I love about the show On Being. I go into it thinking, “What in the world do I care about whales and elephants?” and I come out of it thinking, “Wow, that was about SO much more than whales and elephants.”

During the interview Payne recalled an incident in which she and her crew filmed the death of a baby elephant. About 100 elephants unrelated to the baby walked by the withered corpse as it lay in the forest clearing. As she observed this scene, Payne noticed something extraordinary:

“Every single one of them did something that showed alarm, concern, or somehow showed they were aware of something novel that they were approaching. Some of them took a detour around. About a quarter of them tried to lift the body up with their tusks and their trunks, sometimes trying over and over again. One adolescent male attempted to lift up this little corpse 57 times, and walked away from it and came back five different times.”

Payne compared this clearing in the forest where the baby lay to Grand Central Station, and she wondered aloud how many people would stop for a youngster, or any human being, who seemed to be alone and in distress during rush hour in Grand Central Station. “Would you be perturbed because it’s a member of your species?” she asked. “If there was no one caring for it, would you care for it?”

I thought about those questions for a long time. Of course I want my answer to be yes. Of course I’d like to think that I would stop if I witnessed a person in distress in the middle of Grand Central Station, or on the corner of O Street in downtown Lincoln, Nebraska, for that matter. Of course I’d like to think I’d care for the person no one else noticed.

But the truth is, I don’t know for sure. The truth is, I might keep walking. I might assume “someone else” would help, someone more qualified, someone with more time or resources than I.

In fact, the hard truth is, I have walked by.

I’ve walked past the man standing in front of SuperSaver with the tattered cardboard sign.

I’ve walked past the man lying motionless in a filthy sleeping bag on 12th Street.

I’ve averted my eyes when the mentally ill woman lurched past me on the subway, yelling incoherently and asking for help.

I’ve neglected to make the phone call to the friend who is suffering or the relative who just received the dire diagnosis.

I’ve pretended I didn’t notice. I’ve passed by without stopping. I’ve taken the detour to avoid contact. I’ve looked the other way. I’ve registered the distress and suffering of a member of my species, another human being, and I’ve done nothing.

I keep thinking about the dead baby elephant in the middle of the forest clearing. I keep thinking about the elephants that noticed something was wrong but kept moving and walked on by. I keep thinking about the minority, the one-quarter of the elephants who stopped and tried to help. I keep thinking especially about that one young male who returned to the dead calf five times, who tried to lift the baby to its feet 57 times.

That’s who I want to be: the one who stops to offer assistance. The one who doesn’t give up. The one who comes back, again and again and again. The one who tries my best to carry my fellow human beings, to help them to their feet when they are in need of help.

That’s who God calls us to be: the person in the minority, the person who stops to help when everyone else keeps walking on by.

How to Remember As If

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A friend of mine is going through a hard time. Suffice to say, without getting into the details, she’s hit rock-bottom, physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. And I have let her down. I haven’t been the kind of friend she has so desperately needed.

I can list a whole bunch of excuses to explain my lack of presence; reasons that make sense and are, in many ways, the truth: I’m busy; my kids have me running in circles; I have deadlines to meet; we’ve been traveling; I meant to call her.

But the truth is uglier than that. The truth is, a big part of me wanted to avoid my friend because her situation is messy. I wanted to protect myself from the pain I knew would go hand-in-hand with compassion.

“Keep on loving each other as brothers and sisters,” writes Paul to the Hebrews. “…Remember those in prison, as if you were there yourself. Remember also those being mistreated, as if you felt their pain in your own bodies.” (Hebrews 13:1, 3)

As if.

You might breeze over them, but these two simple words are the key to these verses. These two words force us to bridge the gap, that comfortable space, between ourselves and those who are suffering.

Paul doesn’t intend for us to “love” and “remember” at arm’s length, at a distance. Instead, he expects us to love and remember as if those suffering are our own brothers and sisters, our own flesh and blood; as if, in fact, this suffering is our very own pain.

Honestly, there’s only one way to remember and love as if, and it’s not easy or comfortable:

As if requires that we get close to the ugly, the uncomfortable, the messy, the awkward, the unfixable.

As if requires that we move toward someone else’s pain, and even to carry some of that pain ourselves.

As human beings, our instincts compel us toward self-preservation. We are naturally inclined to distance ourselves from anything that might be physically or even psychologically harmful. We are conditioned, both by society and by our own genetic make-up, to protect ourselves.

But Jesus calls us to do the opposite. He calls us to move toward pain and discomfort, to immerse ourselves in it for the good of others. Some people, the rare few, do this naturally. They are the ones with the God-given gift of empathy. But as Paul implies in these verses, just because we don’t naturally have the gift of empathy doesn’t mean we are off the hook.

Recently my friend and I talked for a long time on the phone. She cried — a lot – and told me some things that were difficult to hear, things I couldn’t solve, problems for which I had no answers, no ready-made solutions.

It was uncomfortable. I fought the urge to come up with an excuse to end the conversation the whole time we were on the phone, not because I don’t care about my friend, but because I was in way over my head and way out of my comfort zone. I felt overwhelmed by my obvious inadequacies. I couldn’t fix her problems; I couldn’t put a positive spin on her situation or even offer much affirmation. I was mostly silent while she talked. “I’m so sorry,” I said, again and again between her sobs. My words felt small and pathetic.

Those kinds of phone calls, that kind of walking alongside in the awkward and the painful, that’s what Paul means when he urges us to Remember as if.

As if demands that we step out of our comfortable place. As if means we enter into someone else’s suffering, offer our inadequate words and our compassionate quiet, and carry, if only for a moment, a bit of their pain.

Questions for You: 
Can you think of someone in your life right now who might need you to walk alongside them through a difficult time? What’s one small way you might do that?

We are Called to Serve, Not Solve

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I heard the crying as soon as the engine died. It was hard to ignore, our respective vehicles only feet apart, our windows rolled down to let in the hot wind. Her SUV was pulled to the curb across the street outside the school, my mini-van on the opposite side. As soon as she turned the key, the quiet of the neighborhood settled around us. Glancing up from the book in my lap, I lowered my glasses. She was crying all right, sobs muffled as she held her head in her hands.

I read the same paragraph four times straight, all the while praying the woman would get control of herself.

I didn’t want to approach her. I didn’t want to ask if she was okay. I didn’t want to deal with the awkwardness, the discomfort. I didn’t want to walk straight into a stranger’s pain. I wanted to sit in my car with my book in my lap and ignore the sounds of distress. I wanted to push the button on the side of my door and roll up the automatic window so I didn’t have to hear or see or acknowledge.

She didn’t stop crying.

I put my book face-down on the passenger seat, clicked open the lock, swung open the door. I walked five steps across the street, my eyes on the pavement as I approached her window. “I don’t want to intrude on your privacy,” I said to the woman in the car, lifting my eyes to meet hers. “But you seem upset, and, well, can I do anything to help?”

Mascara was smudged like charcoal on both of her cheeks. Her eyes were red-rimmed, bloodshot and raw. “No, no, I’m okay, I’m okay,” she gulped, staring down at her lap. “I’m okay,” she said again, glancing up at me standing outside her window.

“Okay,” I said. I lifted my hand to touch her arm, but I stopped just short, resting it on the door frame of her car instead. “Okay,” I repeated. “I just wanted to make sure. Let me know if I can do anything though.” I stood there for a half-second, my hand on her car, grappling for something, anything else to say. But there was nothing.

I walked back to my car and slid into the front seat. I picked up my book again, but I didn’t read another word.

I didn’t do anything to help the woman in the car. I didn’t ease or pain or assuage her suffering. I didn’t solve her problems. The only thing I’d done was heed the nudge I’d felt deep inside me, the nudge I’d wanted to ignore.

I think sometimes we forget that poverty – whether poverty of spirit or poverty of circumstances — isn’t our problem to solve. Jesus didn’t command us to go out and solve the world’s problems. He didn’t instruct us to go out and singlehandedly obliterate suffering. He simply commanded we go out.

Go out and show compassion.

Go out and offer help to one person in need.

Go out and love our neighbor.

It’s easy to succumb to apathy in the face of the world’s problems. Pain is everywhere. Poverty is rampant. Everyone is suffering, everyone is carrying a burden. It’s easy to conclude, Why bother? What’s the point? What can I do, one person amid millions of suffering and burdened, millions of hopeless and sick. 

But the point isn’t really what one person can or can’t do. It’s whether one person will or won’t serve.  Jesus asks us, commands us, to serve. Not to solve, but simply to serve. We won’t always make a noticeable difference. The story won’t always have a happy ending. But he asks us to hear the call and to heed it nonetheless.

“Poverty is not necessarily an issue to solve; it is an opportunity to serve. As we go through each day, our heart’s cry should be, Lord, where would you have me give, serve, and invest myself to bring hope to the poor?” — Orphan Justice author, Johnny Carr

 

If you’re hesitating to answer the call to sponsor a child in need because you’re discouraged by the enormity of global poverty, remember this: sponsoring a child isn’t an opportunity to solve a problem necessarily, it’s an opportunity to serve. If you are hearing the call to do something today, even just one little tiny something, listen and heed.

 

She Bought Him Shoes

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I knew it wouldn’t be an extravagant gift. After all, I’d only sent $20. And even in Bolivia, $20 doesn’t go very far. But still, I had envisioned something  fun.

A soccer ball to kick around in the dusty lot — the lot where he stands serious, arms by his side in the photograph that hangs on our fridge.

A box of 64 Crayolas, vibrant points row upon row, and a stack of crisp, unblemished coloring books.

A set of shiny Matchbox cars, primary colors popping bright against the dirt.

A brand-new, hard-cover book, Thomas the Tank Engine or Elmo in Spanish.

I’d pictured something that would light a smile on that somber face. A gift that would spark joy in those piercing brown eyes.

“Thank you very much for the birthday money,” his mother wrote in Spanish on Compassion letterhead a few weeks later. “I used it to buy Pedro a new pair of shoes.”

She bought him shoes for his fifth birthday.

I held her letter in my hand, reading her short note once, then twice, swallowing shame as I imagined my own children’s reaction to a single birthday gift, a gift of shoes. It would be unthinkable, of course. My children ask for iPods and scooters, Minecraft and Mario Bros. Shoes aren’t given as birthday gifts in our house. Shoes are a given.

I looked again at Pedro’s photograph on our refrigerator. Orange tee-shirt tucked into rumpled beige pants. Plastic pink crocks on his feet.

Plastic pink crocks on his feet.

Pedro’s mother’s bought him shoes for his fifth birthday. A soccer ball would have been fun. Sixty-four crayons and a stack of new coloring books would have been nice. But Pedro needed shoes.

 

September is Blog Month at Compassion International, and this week we were asked to write a response to this picture. I knew right away I would write about Pedro’s birthday shoes. For millions of kids around the world, shoes and other basic necessities like food, shelter, clothing and education are not a given, but a gift. Please consider giving that gift to a needy child. Sponsor a Compassion child or send a donation today.