Thoughtful About…The Compassion Conundrum

In last weekend’s sermon, my dad preached from Luke 14, and as he went through the Scriptures, something interesting jumped out at me.

First is something that has struck me many times before, in many different passages. Jesus, often about some other task, comes across someone in need. Sometimes He’s at dinner. Sometimes He’s traveling. Sometimes He’s on his way to heal someone else. And what does He always, inevitably do when He sees this other hurting soul? He stops. He heals them. Why?

Because He loves them. Because He feels compassion for them. Because He’s moved.

I tend to think of these things as human emotions–and they are. But I wonder if maybe they’re also the reflection of the Divine in us. Because Jesus, operating solely as man, might have instead resented the distraction or the complication or the delay. If He weren’t perfect, He might have rolled his eyes or grumbled or even muttered under his breath, “Seriously? Another one?” But He doesn’t–ever. Because these things–love, compassion, empathy–are considered virtues, are in fact the Fruit we’re supposed to bear as believers, for good reason.

They’re a reflection of God himself, who is Love.

But we see another side to this too, in that same chapter as well as other places in the Gospels. The places where Jesus warns us that the cost of following Him is high. When He tells us that choosing this Way means abandoning others–that embracing God as Father may mean a break with our earthly one. Where He says that He will come between mother and child. And here, He even says that following Him means hating your family (or “loving them less” as the word means in Greek).

I’ve long since reasoned out that what He’s saying here is that He has to come first. Loving God before anything else is crucial. And if we love other things more–our spouses, our kids, our extended families, our house, our things, our life–then He may well ask us to give those up. Because nothing–NOTHING–should come between us and Him.

Here’s the interesting twist though. How do we show our love for Him, how do we reflect His love for us?

By loving, serving each other.

You see the conundrum? LOL. We have to love what is OURS less than Him…so that we can love what is HIS without reservation. Now, there are surely overlaps–because our spouses and kids and parents and cousins are His too.

But am I willing to serve only them in certain ways? Will I take the food from another child’s mouth to give it to mine? Do I consider these people in my life more mine than His? To do so is natural. Human.

To not do so is, I think, divine.

Don’t get me wrong–God created families, and they’re a crucial part of His plan. He calls us to protect them and preserve them and keep them in good order, as building blocks of His Church. But He also calls us to define “family” through His eyes. To see mothers and fathers, sisters, and brothers everywhere there is faith in Him. To love the stranger, the neighbor, as much as we love ourselves, our own. To prove our love for Him by loving them.

I tend to hold my emotions close, my thoughts and fears, tight. I am, as the English of eras gone by would have said, “reserved.” But I’m praying that God will work on my heart in this way. That I will learn to make myself vulnerable so that I can see friends–brothers, sisters–everywhere I turn.

And so that when I see them hurting, I can’t help but stop. And do everything in HIS power to make them whole, with no thought to myself.

Maybe it’s not a conundrum after all. Just a challenge. One He put forth oh so succinctly. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind. And love your neighbor as yourself.