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Michelle DeRusha

Every Day Faith. Faith Every Day.

compassion

Let’s All Practice Indiscriminate Compassion

March 13, 2018 By Michelle

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.

Filed Under: Compassion Tagged With: compassion

God Calls Us to Be in the Minority

August 18, 2015 By Michelle

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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.

Filed Under: Compassion Tagged With: compassion, Katy Payne, On Being

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For as long as I can remember, I’ve been a Triple Type A, “make it happen” (my dad’s favorite mantra) striver and achiever (I’m a 3 on the Enneagram, which tells you everything you need to know), but these days my striving looks more like sitting in silence on a park bench, my dog at my feet, as I slowly learn to let go of the false selves that have formed my identity for decades and lean toward uncovering who God created me to be.

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