There is a man who is drowning in a river. We ought to feel a compulsion to throw him a life-raft and pull him to safety. When we see this man and throw him a life-raft we have COMPASSION on him.
Compassion is a necessary part of life. In fact it makes us the true people we wish to be. Caring for one another defines our purpose in what it means to be a person.
What happens when we see another person come floating down the river struggling to swim? Our natural inclination is to repeat our compassionate behavior and throw this person a life-raft. Person after person we reveal our compassionate hearts as we help one another. Other times we can become embittered and even tired in doing good and give up saving people from the river. 'It's probably their fault anyway', we think to ourselves.
In some of us there is a moment when we realize that the fact that people are floating down the river struggling and drowning isn't right. We may even have the courage to walk upstream to investigate why people are getting into this river. Are they falling? Or are they being placed there by someone else? When we seek the answer to why people are in the river in the first place, our compassion changes and is defined in another word; JUSTICE.
As Christians we are called to do both. I fear, however, that most of what we have been taught is that we should be compassionate. There is nothing wrong with this, but when we leave justice out of the picture then people will just keep floating down the river. Justice is always the harder conversation because it gets to the heart of why people are in the river to begin with. To do justice require great courage, especially when the injustice is discovered.
"When I feed the poor they call me a saint. When I ask, "Why are they poor?", they call me Communist." - Romero
Micah 6:8 - What does the Lord require of you? Seek justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God.
No comments:
Post a Comment