THE COMPASSIONATE IDENTITY

By Job Ayuba Shagaiya, 21^st December, 2016

Human compassion is simple but rare. Compassion is said to be the co-habiting of identity and suffering in the human soul. It arises from a deep understanding of the sufferings borne by humans and the need for personal connections in addressing these sufferings. To show compassion to another person is to acknowledge the person’s sufferings and to see oneself as having a shared responsibility in easing them. It is to tell the other person that I understand your pains and sufferings and I feel personally responsible because of our shared humanity. The idea behind this is that, though individuals are responsible for their actions, we are collectively responsible in easing the sufferings of any individual human being.

  

The question of blameworthiness has no place in the art of compassion. So we should not be heard asking the causal question “what have you done to have merit this dessert?” Whether the suffering human is responsible for bringing the suffering about or another person unjustly caused them to suffer, compassion is only concern with the fact of the suffering. To the question “who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus replied “neither this man nor his parents sinned, but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him” (John 9.2-3). What can be done in this man instead of what happened appears to be the concern of Jesus in his work of mercy and compassion.

In Galatians 6, Paul uses three phrases in his instruction to the church: “Carry each other’s burden, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ” (v.2); “each one should test their own actions … for each one should carry their own load” (v.5); and “let no one cause me trouble, for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus” (v.17). Paul acknowledges individual responsibility for human actions. But he went further to teach that the follower of Jesus suffers (identifies) with the sufferings of Jesus and that the follower should voluntarily share in the burdens of others. From this, acknowledgement of individual responsibility for human action is not a bar to participating in the sufferings that the action results in and alleviating it. The New Testament’s concepts of mercy and grace are built on this idea of compassion. Mercy is expressing goodness to someone in need irrespective of our relationship to them (whether hostile or friendly). The basis for showing mercy is solely the recognition of human need in the person. Grace is expressing goodness to someone who deserves the opposite of it. It is a free act of a free being – an act of sovereign freedom and a self-determined kindness (J.I. Packer). The motive of grace is the magnificence of a benevolent personality. It is given from a source of a rich soul. A person with a rich soul freely reaches out to enrich another person whom human suffering impoverishes and crushes.

The capacity for compassion is developed by experience and inspiration. The experience of a suffering person develops the capacity to understand and to be sensitive to others who are suffering. Through inspiration, the capacity to give compassionate care is developed by the experience of how God behaved toward us in our conditions and moments of need. Compassion is not how we feel toward those in need. It is our behavior toward them that sensitively seeks their happiness and comfort. Understanding God’s treatment of us in our needs becomes a pattern for how we are to behave toward other human beings and the creation at large.

This interconnection between self-understanding and behavior toward others is at the heart of developing a compassionate self. In becoming compassionate one has to understand one’s needs, and how God behaved(s) toward us in our conditions and moments of need, and the heuristic implication of the God-human relation. A needy person is not the object of my judgment and theorizing, but someone I am in the position to identify with. According to Henri Nouwen, “Compassion is a way of living together. The compassionate life is a life together. It is community life.” From the etymology of the word (Latin, com meaning with and passio meaning suffering) we can infer that compassion is the fellowship of suffering. It involves identifying and listening to a sufferer with the aim of understanding their condition and sharing one’s personal and material resources to alleviate the person’s plight. The art of compassion does not allow for condescending behavior toward others. It is an occasion for genuine human connections and collective self-understanding. The goal of compassionate care for others should be to foster human flourishing in the life of the individual who is suffering. Caring for another human being is focusing love for humanity in the life of one human. Loving humanity may be a vague idea but it becomes concrete when we care for one human being. Mother Teresa said, “I do not love humanity. I do not even love the poor. I love one person at a time.”

The starting point for becoming compassionate is in attaining a self-identity that is defined as the recipient of pure goodness and that is flourishing as a result of that goodness. Identity is self-perception. Perceiving oneself as the recipient of pure goodness which enables flourishing frees one from the crippling self-love that exhibits aggrandizing greed and the pride that demeans. From this self-perception we can extend that goodness to others in need with the objective of relieving them of their sufferings and miseries and enabling them to experience human flourishing.