Motivation Behind Compassion
Hardware is necessary for us to effectively use our computers, but without software we could not make the hardware work. Soft-keeping qualities are the power behind the hard-keeping of giving, presence, service, and prayer. Soft-keeping refers to the motivation behind the behavior that brings goodness to others.
The Samaritan had pity on the injured and bleeding man. In other words, he was merciful. “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?” The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.” Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise” (Luke 10: 36–37). Mercy is the first soft-keeping attribute that we as neighbors need.
Henri Nouwen strongly embodied the mercy of Christ that we can never have in excess. Nouwen was a successful, respected author and a professor at both Harvard and Yale. His books are best sellers among both Catholic and Protestant Christians. In 1986, Nouwen surprisingly left his life as a famous and widely respected professor and submerged himself in a completely new world. From that point on, he lived among mentally handicapped men and women in an organization called L’Arche in Toronto. None of the residents, many of whom could neither read nor write, cared anything about their new colleague’s fame. They didn’t even know what it meant to be famous or influential. They simply treated Nouwen like one of their own. They slapped him on the shoulder, yelled at him, laughed at him, and allowed him to help them where they couldn’t help themselves. And they loved him.
Through his life among the mentally handicapped, Nouwen learned the power of mercy and compassion. Thinking about Jesus, Nouwen was amazed at his “downward movement” and wrote:
We see here what compassion means. It is not a stooping down of the privileged to the level of those without privilege below. Neither is it a reaching down a hand from those above to the unhappy ones far below. Nor a friendly gesture of pity toward those who haven’t made it. Quite the opposite. Compassion goes and lives among people and in places where suffering lives. God’s compassion is total, absolute, unlimited and unbounded. It is the compassion of those who go to the forgotten corners of the earth and stay there until they are sure that not a single eye is still crying. It is the compassion of a God who doesn’t simply act like a servant, but whose behavior of service is the direct expression of his divinity.[1]
It happened many years ago, but I will never forget it. We were a young married couple with two small children and had moved into a rental home in a suburb of Frankfurt. After the move, there were still lots of boxes lying around waiting to be unpacked. My wife went upstairs to do something, and our three-year-old son, Erich, remained in the living room. I came in from a quick trip to the hardware store, and I knew immediately that something was not right. As soon as I came in the door, I smelled something burning. While my wife was upstairs, Erich had found the steam iron, plugged it into the outlet and was happily emblazoning a new “iron” pattern into the relatively new carpet.
As soon as I walked into the living room, Erich knew that he had done wrong and that his mom and I were not going to be happy. I turned to him and asked in a calm voice, “Erich, which would you like to receive from me—justice or mercy?” He didn’t understand the terms, of course, and so he asked, “Papa, what is justice?” I said, “Erich, justice means that you will get a spanking, and that you will have to pay for a new carpet with the money from your piggy bank.” He thought for a minute and then asked, “What is mercy?” I replied, “Mercy means that you won’t get a spanking, and I will pay for the new carpet.” He reflected for just a moment before he said, “I want mercy, Papa.” And mercy is what he received.[2]
God responded to the misdeeds of Adam and Eve with mercy. He didn’t want to give them what they deserved. It’s true that they were punished (distance as a consequence of their guilt). That is just. But God didn’t stop with the punishment of justice. He traveled the path of mercy in Jesus. And Jesus announced his primary purpose: “The Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost” (Luke 19:10). By approaching others who are fraught with great need, we are embodying the compassion of Jesus.
The second soft-keeping quality is our responsiveness to promptings. Promptings are inner urges, unsolicited, to move out of our comfort zone to come to the aid of a person in need. Behind mercy lie promptings. We are well acquainted with them, but do not always follow through on them.
I was once in the midst of busy Heathrow Airport in London, moving from one flight to another. An old woman, small in stature, was pushing a mountain of luggage on a cart before her. So great was the pile that she could not see over it. Then the unexpected happened. With her cart she hit against a barrier in the floor, the cart stopped abruptly, and the mountain of suitcases tumbled down around her. I saw her great plight, sensed a prompting to go and help her restack her luggage—and didn’t respond. I have regretted my inactivity ever since.
When we feel a prompting to help another person, it is God wanting to meet that need through us. In such moments we are transformed into emissaries of goodness and strength. God longs to touch the needy through us, thereby elevating us to angelic status: “Are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve?” (Hebrews 1:14).
The Samaritan was prompted to help the injured man lying by the side of the road and did so out of mercy. But he also persevered in his doing good. He took the wounded man to an inn, paid to have his needs met, and came back to see how he was faring. In other words, the Samaritan exhibited the soft-keeping of perseverance, of which Paul wrote, “Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up” (Galatians 6:9).
Doing good over the long haul, because the need is so pervasive, is persevering. William Wilberforce spent his entire life battling against the evils of slavery in eighteenth century England. Despite great opposition, he never gave up. In 1787, by a majority of three hundred votes in the House of Commons, shortly before his death, slavery was officially abolished in England. Wilberforce penned a small treatise entitled A Practical View of Christianity, in which he printed a prayer for perseverance: “Oh, Lord,” he prayed, “purify my soul from all its stains. Warm my heart with the love of thee, animate my sluggish nature and fix my inconstancy, and volatility, that I may not be weary in well doing.”
In the world presently there is not a refugee crisis; rather, we are faced with a refugee opportunity, an opportunity to do good to those who have lost home, country, means, family, and much more. But the great needs of refugees pouring into our countries won’t be met overnight. The soft-keeping of perseverance is what will ultimately win the day.
Welcoming Christ in My Neighbor
James Hunter hits the nail on the head when he states, “To welcome the stranger—those outside of the community of faith—is to welcome Christ. Believer or nonbeliever, attractive or unattractive, admirable or disreputable, upstanding or vile—the stranger is marked by the image of God. And so St. Paul also exhorted believers in this way, ‘Keep on loving each other as brothers,’ he said. ‘Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it. Remember those in prison as if you were their fellow prisoners, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering’” (Hebrews 13: 1–3).[3]
The fourth and last soft-keeping quality that is needed is amnesia. In all of our giving, we practice the humble art of benign dementia, forgetting how noble we are in giving. Jesus spoke of this great quality in his Sermon on the Mount: “But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you” (Matthew 6:3–4).
Pride is the enemy of goodness unto others. Therefore, to give and to forget that we have given is a hedge against our tendency to puff up our egos.
After his resurrection, Jesus ascended into heaven, meaning he is no longer bodily among us. Yet in a real way he is. Jesus lives incognito among us every day. “When did we ever see you sick or in prison, and visit you?” And I, the King, will tell them, “When you did it to these my brothers, you were doing it to me!” (Matthew 25:39–40 LBT). Seeing those in need is seeing Jesus in need. Meeting their needs is honoring Jesus.
(Taken from my book “PROFOUND: Twelve Questions that Will Grab Your Heart and Not Let Go!”
[1]Nouwen and Morrison, Compassion: A Reflection on the Christian Life (New York: Doubleday, 2006), 27.
[2]Dietrich Schindler, The Jesus Model: Planting Churches the Jesus Way (Carlisle, UK: Piquant, 2013), 75.
[3]James Davison Hunter, To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 245.