Compassion & Individual Freedom

[Jeremy D. Scott]

A genuine compassionate society, one that has succeeded in achieving the ideal of actually putting itself in the shoes of the unfortunate, will soon find itself marching in the direction of collective solutions inimical to individual freedom. ... There is a real and awful danger of people actually beginning to identify with the world of suffering.... No healthy society should allow itself to see the world through the eyes of the unfortunate, since the unfortunate have no great interest in perceiving, let alone exploiting" the highest value of civilization: individual freedom. Indeed, being for the most part those who have failed to make use of freedom, either because of fate or circumstances...they are likely to be the part of society·least enamored of that supremely challenging ideal an most susceptible to all the temptations to undermine it.

- Quoted of Peregrine Worsthorne in Compassion by McNeill, Morrison, & Nouwen, page 5
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It's taken me long enough to finally read this book, and it's as good as I have been told multiple times. It's only in the last couple of years that I've moved my understanding of "compassion" from the things of charity to the things of kenosis, incarnation, and "suffering with." While my understanding has moved...my hands and feet have been slow to follow. Anyway, this isn't even what the above is about.

I didn't know who Worsthorne was prior to reading the quote. I've nothing against him. In fact, I find his honesty refreshing - at least he admits that he prefers personal freedom over compassion. Most of us are more or less just ignorant of the fact.

I just can't figure out why we don't see that the person of Christ did exactly this: gave up personal rights/freedoms to identify with those less fortunate than he. That is compassion, and it is the essence of the incarnation, from the animal trough we call a manger to the execution with criminals we polish up real nice and adorn with gold and polyurethane.

Sometimes I think we should change a lot of what we do and say to be more honest, or at least to be more correct: compassionate ministry, compassion international, etc. more often than not should really be charitable ministry, charity international. (I am not saying that charity is bad...or that it's not even related to compassion. But it's not compassion.)

And the more I've been thinking prayerfully about these things, the more I don't even really care about society. I find myself caring less and less about current events, politics, who the President is, etc.

It'd just be great if the Church would be the Church.

(...and count me in as one who's failing that call.)

[Paul DeBaufer]

A genuine compassionate society, one that has succeeded in achieving the ideal of actually putting itself in the shoes of the unfortunate, will soon find itself marching in the direction of collective solutions inimical to individual freedom. ... There is a real and awful danger of people actually beginning to identify with the world of suffering.... No healthy society should allow itself to see the world through the eyes of the unfortunate, since the unfortunate have no great interest in perceiving, let alone exploiting" the highest value of civilization: individual freedom. Indeed, being for the most part those who have failed to make use of freedom, either because of fate or circumstances...they are likely to be the part of society·least enamored of that supremely challenging ideal an most susceptible to all the temptations to undermine it.

- Quoted of Peregrine Worsthorne in Compassion by McNeill, Morrison, & Nouwen, page 5
___________________________________________

It's taken me long enough to finally read this book, and it's as good as I have been told multiple times. It's only in the last couple of years that I've moved my understanding of "compassion" from the things of charity to the things of kenosis, incarnation, and "suffering with." While my understanding has moved...my hands and feet have been slow to follow. Anyway, this isn't even what the above is about.

I didn't know who Worsthorne was prior to reading the quote. I've nothing against him. In fact, I find his honesty refreshing - at least he admits that he prefers personal freedom over compassion. Most of us are more or less just ignorant of the fact.

I just can't figure out why we don't see that the person of Christ did exactly this: gave up personal rights/freedoms to identify with those less fortunate than he. That is compassion, and it is the essence of the incarnation, from the animal trough we call a manger to the execution with criminals we polish up real nice and adorn with gold and polyurethane.

Sometimes I think we should change a lot of what we do and say to be more honest, or at least to be more correct: compassionate ministry, compassion international, etc. more often than not should really be charitable ministry, charity international. (I am not saying that charity is bad...or that it's not even related to compassion. But it's not compassion.)

And the more I've been thinking prayerfully about these things, the more I don't even really care about society. I find myself caring less and less about current events, politics, who the President is, etc.

It'd just be great if the Church would be the Church.

(...and count me in as one who's failing that call.)

I don't know who Worthshorne is either, but he sounds an awful lot like Ayn Rand and her lifeboat philosophy, completely contrary to the life and teachings of Jesus, IMHO

[Mark Metcalfe]

Sometimes I think we should change a lot of what we do and say to be more honest, or at least to be more correct: compassionate ministry, compassion international, etc. more often than not should really be charitable ministry, charity international. (I am not saying that charity is bad...or that it's not even related to compassion. But it's not compassion.)


Finding meaning is a life-long endeavor.

Regarding the words compassion and charity, it is similar to the words empathy and sympathy. The words are kinfolk and almost like seeing the distinction in a set of twins. I would caution against favoring one of the twins but accepting each on its own merit.

Compassion often leads to charity; empathy to giving (from sympathy) to charity.

When I was in my 30s, I sought a deeper life through the discipline of fasting. As several Lenten seasons came and went, I wanted to prove my greater devotion and fasted more until one year I gave up breakfast and lunch; nothing but water until dinnertime. I found that I gorged myself that year, and wanted dinner earlier so that I could assuage my hunger. I had turned something that was good for me into something that was not good for me, and in the name and intent of getting closer to God.

When Jesus said that the Sabbath was made for man, and not the other way around, it also spoke to me about my spiritual disciplines, and the pursuit of a deeper relationship. It isn't about how many lashes I can whip on my own back, or about how pious I can become through religious observances, but it is about learning to lean on Jesus. Dad says, "to enter His rest." (It does not mean to slack off in compassion, charity, empathy, and sympathy. But it does mean that our relationship is what we make of it. "What He says we will do. Where He sends we will go.*")


Just as I am,
Thy love unknown has broken every barrier down.
Now to be Thine and Thine alone!
O Lamb of God I come! I come!

Mark

* from Trust and Obey

[Russell Metcalfe]

Finding meaning is a life-long endeavor.

So it seems, as I approach my next birthday and the prospect of entering my ninth decade. "Meaning" was easier, or so I thought, when I had an assignment and deadlines and feedback. Compassion-- I can still "feel with" those people I do meet today. Compassion-- feeling in my guts the pain of others.. and asking God for their relief ... charity-- love --I can also feel God's love rising in me for others I meet today.. the kid with her tongue pierc ed . . the young mother overwhelmed and tired . . . the people at church too busy to speak to an old man they don't know . .and I can ask God to love them through me . . . yes, they seem to be linked..
At 80 years of age Moses began a new chapter, Caleb asked for a mountain (wish I has his knees!), and I don't have such high aspirations but on my 80th birthday I will pray the Lord's Prayer all the way through, slowly and a phrase at a time, and remember again the pronouns are all plural.

[Dave Mann]

No healthy society should allow itself to see the world through the eyes of the unfortunate, since the unfortunate have no great interest in perceiving, let alone exploiting" the highest value of civilization: individual freedom.

This is utter crap.

This is exactly the sort of thing you get when you have a society and church that operates on the basis of Greek philosophy taken to extremes. Laurie Braaten reminds me that in the ancient Hebrew mind (and scriptures) it is impossible to talk about a personal "self" out relation to 3 external realities: God, the land (including our physical bodies), and "the people". Nothing exists outside of God who speaks things into being and outside of Christ in whom all things have their being. There is nothing in scripture that allows us to speak of disembodied souls as did the greeks and later Descartes and with this, no real way to talk about an autonomous self within the created order. Always in the OT it is understood that God is in relation with a people and that individuals are a part of (and formed by) that larger collective.

Today we can point to social theorists/philosophers in the tradition of Durkhiem and Garfinkel who assert that the idea of the individual self is a social achievement but that's just saying the same thing that was understood by the Hebrews.

Another large part of this, in fact it's the same thing, is that the greek heresy that the church suffers from also is rooted in an a broken understanding of creation as lowly, unruly and disposable. I recently heard (devout Methodist) Bill McKibben talk and he reminds us that the book of Job is in stark contrast to our cultural narrative which puts humans at the center. McKibben notes that God defends himself at the end of the book with longest speech attributed to God anywhere in scripture. In it, God asks Job if he sets the courses of the rivers, feeds the wild animals or establishes the shores of the waters. The point of this is that God is The Creator and his interest is in His Creation. The earth is the Lord's and ALL that is in it. For God so loved the entire cosmos that he gave is only son. ALL of creation groans in expectation for the return of Christ. Our own stories of personal suffering or personal freedom are minute details in a much larger story. Yes, God cares for us and our stories, even more than he cares for the fall of the sparrow, but this doesn't make us the point of the God story. The God story is about his creation and his plan to redeem it.

I would assert that the highest value of civilization is to cooperate with God's redemptive work.

This said, God does redeem by allowing freedom and a part of the larger redemptive work is to permit others to have and operate freely. But freedom is always constrained by shalom.