I believe our lives are a journey. A healthy life is characterized by growth and change. Each day holds the prospect of adventure and discovery. Life is not defined by seeking a safe place and hunkering down insulated and protected from the world around us.
Change continues to be important in my life. As I grow older, change is less attractive and more difficult. I struggle daily to resist the inclination to hunker down. In that regard, one small change I have decided to make relates to “So Much To Think About” posts. You may have noticed I deviated from Friday posting. This and future posts will come randomly. reflecting the rhythm of my reading and daily life. Content will be less, but, hopefully interesting and worthy of your attention. I would appreciate your feedback.
The Church as a moral witness
Generally, we expect the church to be a moral witness. That is, we expect Christians should be “better” than non-Christians. And when Christians are not any better than most people, we despair and chuck the whole business. Our metric of success is wholly moral.
But let me simply observe, as a regular church goer, that the people gathered on a typical Sunday morning are just normal people. Church people have the same sorts of problems as everyone else. And they are sinners just like everyone else.
We know this about ourselves, that we are sinners, yet we keep getting disappointed. What should be expected–our moral failures–keeps surprising us. Over and over. Why? I think it’s our stubborn moral framing of the church, that church people should be “better.”
But if we’re not any better than other folks what then is church all about?
The church, to borrow that line from the Catholics, is “a sacrament of salvation.” Yet I mean this differently than extra Ecclesiam nulla salus. What I mean by “a sacrament of salvation” is that the gathered church makes salvation visible.
The gathered church isn’t a moral witness–How could it be?–but a sacramental witness. We gather to make visible the salvation of God in our midst. This is how a depraved, broken, and lost people can gather together on a Sunday and be called “the church.” These gathered sinners simply point to the reality of grace. Our moral portfolio is abysmal, but in our worship, prayers, liturgies, and testimonies we make visible the love of God, in our lives and in the midst of the world. “Grace exists,” our presence declares. And we make this declaration not only for ourselves, but for the world as well.
If this is so, “the church” simply is this sacramental witness. Which means “the church” doesn’t point to the moral performance of human beings. Rather, the “the church” is a gathered group of sinners who come together to point toward the grace of God. We sinners gather to bear witness to grace, and it’s toward grace where we must direct our gaze.
Richard Beck
http://experimentaltheology.blogspot.com/2022/10/despairing-for-church-part-5-sacrament.html
Sympathy vs Compassion
I believe the problem today can be summed up simply: people mistake sympathy for compassion.
Sympathy is feeling bad for someone and wishing they didn’t feel so bad.
Sympathy is noble on the surface (“people should suffer less!”) but can often end up being subtly self-serving (“people should suffer less because I don’t want to feel bad for them anymore.”)
Compassion is similar to sympathy but different in an important way.
Like sympathy, compassion begins with feeling bad for someone. But instead of simply wanting the person’s suffering to go away, compassion involves someone who is willing to suffer alongside that person so that they may overcome their challenges.
Sympathy is sending flowers and a card to a friend when a parent dies. Compassion is driving to their house and holding them as they cry.
Sympathy is letting a screaming child have that toy they want so they’ll stop screaming. Compassion is letting them cry because you know they will be better off once they understand that they can’t always get what they want.
Sympathy is changing your profile picture on social media for whatever the new cause du jour is. Compassion is actually giving time or money to victims, listening to their stories, helping them rebuild their lives.
Sympathy is a good thing. We need it in the world. But it’s also easy. It’s short-term and short-sighted. It’s an, “Aw, I feel bad for him.” Sympathy is focused on the feeling rather than the person. “I hope they feel better.”
Compassion is about the person. “I don’t just hope they feel better, I hope they become better.” Therefore, compassion is more involved. It takes more effort—both mental and emotional.
Sympathy is trying to remove as much strain and struggle as possible. Compassion is trying to help a person move through a manageable amount of struggle so they can grow into a better person.
I believe that as a culture we’re over-optimized for sympathy and under-optimized for compassion. This is probably largely social media’s fault, but not entirely.
Sympathy is easy to communicate online. It’s also easy to see sympathy communicated between others. Compassion is like sarcasm, it is not communicated well online. It’s also harder to recognize between others.
We’re probably also over-optimized for sympathy because it’s easier to measure and study. It’s relatively easy to measure how good/bad a person feels. It’s incredibly difficult to measure whether someone has grown or not.
Mark Manson
Wendy Wasserstein wrote in her book “Sloth,” “When you achieve true slothdom, you have no desire for the world to change. … Better to fall into line than to question the going ethos.”
STILL ON THE JOURNEY