I contend that compassion is an automatic byproduct of having shut out the outside world for a time to experience transcendence in its religious sense (i.e., reaching beyond the limits of human conception, perception, and emotion). Such experience as prayer, for example, or meditation can result in a heightened sensitivity in perceiving the world, including things and other people who are in proximity. Such sensitivity where other people are being perceived can illicit compassion to them. It is the bracketing experience itself, away from our daily life, rather than what is being prayed about or meditated on that triggers the generalized sensitivity and thus the enhanced readiness or inclination to feel compassion where it applies. I submit furthermore that with some beliefs regarding how God in the Abrahamic religions views us creatures in Creation, we mere mortals can assume to some degree the perspective that, given how God is depicted in scriptures, God would or does have in watching us in our own little worlds.
Roughly speaking, God may look down at us from heaven similar to how a parent perceives one’s child, as a small creature doing the best that a small yet selfish creature can. But, as Augustine warns, applying the relation between a human father and son should not be thought to apply to the relation between the Father and the Son in the Christian Trinity. Specifically, Augustine wrote that human weakness “can only think of what it has been accustomed to do or hear.”[1] And that “no carnal thought creep up” in thinking of Jesus’ line, “As the Father has taught me,” as a human father teaches his son.[2] Thinking of the relationship in the Trinity as being akin to a human relationship would be to “fashion idols.”[3] Human weakness might prompt us to reduce God’s perception of us as seeing our weaknesses, or weakness, whereas God’s perspective on Creation, including the creatures within it, would more likely be to see us as functioning as well as we can in our little worlds that make up our daily environments. Not even parent looks at one’s young child, or toddler, as being weak in trying to walk for the first time, or even the second or third. Rather, from this analogy, it would be that God sees even adults as small beings for whom their actions and world are only viewed by God as circumscribed (within Creation). Such a divine perspective is subtle and wholistic and yet penetrating and specific. The good news is that we can assume that perspective to an extent sufficient to change our negative attitudes and emotions regarding another person to genuine compassion as if a friendly demeanor were an end in itself.
One morning while on a local transit system’s bus, I watched with a visceral feeling of distaste as a very ugly person aged about 60 years boarded, sat down, and proceeded to touch her tongue with one of her fingers longer than would be necessary merely to lick off something edible off of the tip of the finger. The sight of the person was itself revolting to me and yet I couldn’t help myself in staring in disgust (though not showing my reaction). It was not that she gave the impression of being a bad person. So, I thought about how God manifested as the Father in Christianity might look on human beings specifically as finite, imperfect creatures in Creation doing the best that we can.
In allowing myself to assume such a stance, though without presuming myself to be divine, of course, my attitude toward the woman instantly changed to one in which I saw her as so much less than God, as, by the way, we all are. I saw her vulnerability by perceiving her as a creature whose basic weakness, which we all have although perhaps not all of us in such a visibly obvious way, lies in our limitation as creatures on a basic or fundamental level. It is not that I saw her as being like another species; instead, I saw her as a human animal, which we all are, that can be pitied precisely in us being creatures that, from God’s perspective, look like children rather than self-sufficient adults. By intentionally assuming that perspective to some degree, thus without presuming that I am like God in that respect, my anger suddenly dissipated. I did not yet feel compassion for her, but I did notice that my attitude toward the woman was then much different that that of a well-dressed Caucasian man who was eyeing the poor Black man who had just dropped his bag and was standing in the aisle close in front of the other man, who was seated. I could understand and even identify with the distaste that comes when someone enters my personal space too closely, but I was more taken with how much my attitude toward the ugly woman had changed from that of the seated man looking up at the Black man who was hiding his face in a hood.
The woman and I disembarked at the same bus stop; she used the front door while I used the back door. So I couldn’t miss seeing her walking in front of me in a way that intimated that she was suffering from a mental illness. I would have felt ashamed for myself had I not used my free will to try to adopt God’s perspective on us. I walked faster, and thus I walked by her. She looked at me, and, when I was in front of her, I looked back and saw that she was wearing a sweat shirt that had cartoon characters from the “Peanuts” comic and television shows that feature Charlie Brown and his dog, Snoopy. “I like your shirt,” I said in a friendly tone that was genuine. It was not that I thought I might get some heavenly reward; rather, the compassion seemed to arise quite naturally from me having assumed a perspective that has been attributed to God.
Thinking about how God looks down at us and then trying to adopt such a posture as much as we can as finite, hardly omniscient entities, and then staying in that posture for some time while watching another person (or persons) is not only done by grace. Our free-will in deciding to do this is necessary too, as it is for then deciding to approach rather than avoid the other person even if one is noxious, mentally ill, or just plain creepy. It is astonishing how quickly and dramatically anger, disgust, and the will to avoid such a person can change to kindness and compassion. If we are indeed made in God’s image, perhaps the esoteric meaning in it is that we are the only species that can self-consciously that can adopt a perspective and attitude as if we were looking in on creatures who are in Creation. That we can do so even while knowing that we too are creatures within Creation is itself astonishing, and this point is perhaps why we can assume such a posture only to some extent, yet even that is sufficient for the Kingdom of God to manifest within us, if only episode by episode, and then perhaps enough that habit kicks in and the Kingdom can gain some traction.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.