Thursday, October 18, 2007

Resistance and Compassion

I'm still thinking it over, but when you feel an urge to help someone, or to react to something, you can either react with resistance or compassion. Resistance means to betray your better self, compassion means to feel the love of Christ and to let charity have place in you.

The one is self-betrayal, the other life.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I appreciate your thoughts. I am not sure if my thinking is what you had in mind with your statement, but I have noticed how when someone is need it is so easy to excuse not helping by saying things such as...if they wanted to go to bingo they can get there so we don't need to worry about getting them to Church so much.(yes, I have heard that opinion or something thereabouts more than once and am so glad for all who have given me rides). On the other hand, I knew a single man whose calling(not sure if it was a formal calling) involved calling ward members to see if they could take someone to Church if they needed a ride. I heard him express that it is sad if not having a ride would be what is keeping someone from Church.

When someone needs money, you can say things like how they spent their money foolishly or how they could just get a job. Of the former, there may be truth, but if we all had to account for all our money it would be a telling reckoning. The latter may also have truth, but there are real employment challenges for some people from interpersonal skills to poor job skills to not getting a job fast enough with an ever chaning technology to transportation or unknown health issues. I don't know all the answers as it is a very sensitive area when it comes to charity. I do believe that if we are quick to look for reasons not to help that we are more likely to error than if we are quick to help. This is not speaking of codependent behavior although it may be hard to always draw the line.

plaidspolitics said...

Perhaps one is to know *of* Christ. The other is to *know* Christ.

It takes effort to really build a relationship. It only takes thought to say you have one.