THE DEATH OF COMPASSION – the birth of barbarism
Hannah Arendt once said that the death of human compassion is one of the earliest and most telling signs of a culture about to fall into barbarism. These are sobering words in a season where the war in Gaza has exposed one major weakness within Western Christianity—the obsession of being right at the expense of being compassionate and kind.
COMPASSION
- Definition: Empathetic consciousness with others’ distress together with a desire to alleviate it.
- Enemies: Self-centeredness, ignorance, animosity, unforgiveness
With Christ comes compassion. This is the one virtue, the one character trait and the one attitude that embodies a transformed Christ-consciousness more than anything else. INDISCRIMINATE COMPASSION. Richard Rohr describes it as follows: Prophets and mystics recognize what most of us do not—that all things have tears and all things deserve tears.
And yet…
The relentless pursuit of assigning blame amidst the slaughter of thousands, the debates over who initiated the conflict, and the accusations of responsibility have drowned out the countless cries of anguish from the ruins of Gaza’s destroyed homes.
Yes, we have lost the ability to weep. We have abandoned our most precious confession – acknowledging that we serve a redeeming Saviour and a compassionate God, the Father of all comfort. All for the sake of choosing sides and justifying our theological biases.
For more than 1,9 million Palestinians Gaza is home no more. The laughter of children, the calls to prayer, and the buzzing of market square shoppers are gone forever. While the world watched in silence, the horror of a modern-day holocaust unfolded on our screens like a badly scripted Hollywood movie.
And yet…
GAZA
The Gaza Strip is one of the most densely populated regions in the world, with an estimated 2.2 million people in an area measuring just 41 kilometres long from its northern border with Israel to Egypt down south, a distance just shy of a marathon run. To put that into context, Gaza is about a quarter the size of London, and one-10th the size of Cape Town. There are on average around 40,424 people living per square kilometre.
Now consider that in this small densely populated nation, Israel’s military has dropped over 85,000 tonnes of bombs since October 2023, exceeding the total amount of explosives used in World War II. In comparison, the Little Boy nuclear bomb dropped by the US on Hiroshima during World War II yielded 15,000 tons of high explosives and destroyed everything within a 1.6 km radius. The Gaza destruction therefore equals nearly 6 Hiroshima bombs on an area 1-10th the size of Cape Town.
And yet, through silence, the world gives its approval.
Today, after 400 days of relentless bombing:
- 44,757 people have been killed
- More than 104,008 people injured
- More than 11,000 are still missing
- It will take 122 years to attend the funerals of every Palestinian killed in Gaza if you attend a funeral every day
- 16,750 children have been killed
- 1 child is killed every 15 minutes.
- 1 out of every 75 children in the Gaza Strip is now dead.
More than half of Gaza’s homes (damaged or destroyed)
- 80 percent of commercial facilities
- 87 percent of school buildings
- Healthcare facilities – 17 of 36 hospitals are partially functional
- 68 percent of road networks
- 68 percent of cropland
It would take 995 years to rebuild every home in Gaza if you could rebuild one home every day.
- 1.9 MILLION PEOPLE DISPLACED
- 70% of the people of Gaza are descendants of The Nakba refugees even before the war started
- In Rafah, now home to half of the population, there is
- 1 SHOWER for 2,000 PEOPLE
- and 1 TOILET for 500 PEOPLE.
And yet…
I can imagine that most readers glanced over these numbers with sadness, even a sincere sense of sympathy, but without feeling a deep sense of anguish. And that’s OK. Statistics simply don’t bleed and it’s nearly impossible to use academic or numeric arguments to mobilise people into a sense of compassion.
And this brings us to the root of compassion.
The Latin root for the word compassion is pati, which means to suffer, and the prefix com- means with. Compassion, originating from compati, literally means to suffer together with. The connection of suffering with another person takes compassion beyond sympathy into the realm of anguish.
This also explains the difference between pity and compassion and how we can be confronted with the numbers of people suffering without feeling the anguish of those who suffer. Sympathy and pity are feelings for someone. Compassion is feeling with someone. Pity results in feelings. Compassion results in action. And this is why the statistics at the beginning of this article were ineffective to a large extent. At the most, it created a sense of pity for millions of people suffering as you read over it. But it is impossible to feel anguish with millions of people.
And this is why 2 Corinthians 1:3 is so profound.
2 Corinthians 1:3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort.
God has the ability to have compassion with the multitudes, not just for the multitudes. When God saw the lostness of His creation and the brokenness of those in it, He didn’t just feel a sense of pity or sympathy – He had compassion. God is able to identify with statistics and numbers to the extent that He feels the sorrow, hardship and pain of every individual. And from His character of compassion, heaven was moved into action. … for God so loved the world that He sent His Son…
Yes, INDISCRIMINATE COMPASSION is one of the key character traits of God. The ability to look at the multitudes and recognise every soul for what it is worth. Not only do we know our God is compassionate because 2 Corinthians 1:3 tells us so, but we know He is compassionate because He displayed it when He stood at the grave of Lazarus and wept (John 11:35[1]). Or in Luke 19:41[2] when He saw the city and He wept. We read about the compassion of Jesus in Luke 7:13[3] when He saw the dead son of a widow and He had compassion with her, in Matthew 9:36[4] when He saw the crowds and He was moved with anguish and also in Matthew 14:14[5] when He saw the multitudes and He was moved with empathy. His words reflect someone who deeply notices the needs of others even before He recognizes His own. In Matthew 15:32[6], when He saw the hungry, He said to His disciples, “I have compassion with them.” In Matthew 20:34[7], He saw the blind man and He had compassion, as He did with the leper in Mark 1:41[8] and those who were like sheep without a shepherd in Mark 6:34[9]. Most of all, in His biggest time of need, isolation and pain, he had compassion for those who crucified Him and with those who were crucified with Him.
But what makes this compassion so divine is that it is indiscriminately available to all – to Palestinian and Israeli, to Muslim and Jew. When we are confronted with people suffering, we tend to assist those with whom we can identify. We help someone who is of the same culture, or of the same country or the same faith. We tend to tend to those we belong to.
Not so with God. Not only do we know our God does not discriminate because Romans 2:11[10] and Acts 15:9[11] tell us so, but we also know that God does not discriminate because He displayed it when He sat with the tax collector, when He defended the prostitute, when He touched the leper, when he listened to the Roman centurion, and when He answered the rich young man. He never served with a self-righteous attitude. He became a servant to all – man, woman, rich, poor, marginalized, wealthy, sick, healthy, Jew, and Gentile – no one excluded.
And here is the application. St. Bernard, in the 12th century, said that Christ is our primary teacher of compassion because He willed His passion (suffering) so that we could learn compassion (to suffer with others). If I have to define compassion it would be ‘Choosing to feel the pain of others’.
One of the most profound lessons I have learnt, and subsequently shared in all my books, was during a visit to Egypt where I questioned one of my dear brothers in Christ about the passage in Exodus 7:3-4 where the Lord proclaims to Moses that He will “harden the heart of Pharaoh and then lay His hand on Egypt with mighty acts of judgment”.
I’ve always wondered about this. Can I use this as an excuse when the pain of a Palestinian child doesn’t penetrate my heart or when I look at the poor in my neighbourhood and find excuses not to help them. Maybe the Lord just hardened my heart to protect me?
So, I asked the question.
“Why would the Lord harden someone’s heart and then punish that person for his hardened heart? This does not sound like a just God to me. Maybe, as an Egyptian, you have a cultural explanation for this Scripture.”
My friend smiled. “You want to understand everything academically, Mike. In Egypt, we understand the natural implications of how a substance is hardened or softened by the heat of the Egyptian desert sun. If you take a bowl of clay and a bowl of wax and you put it in the sun, it will be the same ray of sun that hardens the clay and melts the wax. It was not the Lord that hardened the heart of Pharaoh, but the content of his heart hardened when God spoke to him. Our response to events will reveal the content of our hearts. When God speaks to us, it will either melt our hearts like wax or harden our hearts like clay.”
This truth was a liberating revelation. It explains why some people are deeply touched by the needs of other and others angered; why some are filled with anguish when confronted with injustice and others moved to fear and ignorance. It all depends on the content of the heart. It explains the cries of David in Psalm 22:14: “I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint. My heart has turned to wax; it has melted within me.” It underlines the instruction in Hebrews 3:8, to not “harden [our] hearts in rebellion”.
More than ever the world needs a generation that will have the perceptual ability to view people, events, and circumstances with hearts of wax. More than ever the world needs to see a generation that reflects a God with a heart of wax.
Not only does our Saviour have a heart of wax but we have a mandate to imitate our Master by clothing ourselves with hearts of wax. Colossians 3:12 states: “Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.”
It is vital that we, as insalted Christ conscious followers, display the same urgency that Jesus displayed. This is not about being sad all the time or walking around with a long face. This is about truly experiencing the fullness of life with joy and vision BUT having hearts of wax that will melt in the presence of a broken world. It is vital that we express the same compassion that was evident in the life of a loving Saviour.
May our response to Gaza and Lebanon reflect hearts of compassion and move us into action.
If you would like to know how you can make a difference please visit: https://dialogos.co.za/project-hope-lebanon/
Indiscriminate compassion is the true virtue of a Christ consciousness.
[1] John 11:35 Jesus wept.
[2] Luke 19:41 As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it
[3] Luke 7:13 When the Lord saw her, his heart went out to her and he said, “Don’t cry.”
[4] Matthew 9:36 When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them
[5] Matthew 14:14 When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them
[6] Matthew 15:32 Jesus called his disciples to him and said, “I have compassion for these people
[7] Matthew 20:34 Jesus had compassion on them and touched their eyes
[8] Mark 1:41 Jesus was filled with pity, and reached out and touched him
[9] Mark 6:34 When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them
[10] Romans 2:11 For God does not show favouritism.
[11] Acts 15:9 He did not discriminate between us (Jews) and them (Gentiles), for he purified their hearts by faith.
Picture from The Guardian