Love as God Loves Us: Embodying Inconvenient Compassion

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, but here as a small creature doing the best that a small yet selfish created being can.  Augustine warns that 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] Augustine urges that “no carnal thought creep up” in thinking of Jesus’ phrase, “As the Father has taught me,” like how 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 to seeing our weaknesses, but God’s perspective on Creation, including the created beings within it, would more likely be to see us as functioning as well as we can in our little corners of this created realm. Not even a parent looks at one’s very young child, or toddler, as being weak in trying to walk for the first time, or even the second or third time. Rather, from this analogy, I submit that God sees even human adults as small, circumscibed  beings fiddling with ourselves without situating ourselves in the wider context of Creation, and beyond. 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, whether we deem that person to be ugly, pathetic, strange, or crazy, to genuine compassion as though a friendly demeanor were a natural end in itself.

One morning while on a local transit system’s bus, I watched with a visceral feeling of distaste as a particularly ugly woman aged about 60 years boarded, sat down, and proceeded to keep her miuth open while touching her tongue with one and then another of her fingers longer than to lick off something edible. 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). Writing in retrospect, I feel ashamed of myself. It was not that she gave the impression of being a bad person, and not yet of being mentally ill. At the time, I thought about how God manifested as the Father in Christianity might look on human beings specifically as finite, imperfect creatures (meaning in Creation), doing the best that we can. Looking at a living person from outside the created realm would change how we observe other people. This shift in perspective is difficult to describe.

In allowing myself to assume such a stance, though without presuming myself to be divine and thus superior to the woman, my attitude toward her instantly changed to one in which I saw her not as weak or pathetic. Instead, I saw her creatureliness as she tended to herself as best she could.

We all can be pitied in spite of our nasty selfish pettyiness because from God’s perspective, we look like little children rather than self-sufficient adults. Our existence is radically of fundamentally contingent rather than solid and complete. By intentionally assuming that perspective to some degree, and thus without presuming ourselves  to be like God in that respect, my anger and disgust 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.

 

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1. Augustine, Tractates on John: Books 28-54, 40.4, trans. John W. Rettig, Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 88 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1993), 126.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.

I Wasn't Supposed To Be A Writer

Ideally, a person is able to earn money doing something that matches one's authentic self. In other words, working in a field that is also passion and involves an innate talent or ability can add a lot to the happiness of a life. Many people get sidetracked, whether by greed or limited opportunities. Still other people do not know what their passions are, or have not realized what natural talents, or "gifts," could be tapped. Some people get trapped in dysfunctional organizations in which the organizational culture discourages self-discovery or is otherwise negative and even vindictive. I never thought I would be a writer, and I would not say that I have an innate talent for it, for it has taken much direction and practice for me to excel in the craft. My innate "gift" lies in seeing through societal blind-spots and wanting to present ideas that would otherwise remain hidden from general view. Even so, looking back at what I used to pretend to be vocationally as a boy, I have a glimpse of what I naturally am oriented to doing, before the contours of upbringing and school had a chance to mold me. Rousseau wrote that we are born free and yet live out our lives in chains. If so, it is worth looking at our early years to grasp what we have may have subsequently forgotten. Societal channels can cause a person to lose touch with the innate inner-being that naturally expresses its desired vocational proclivities through play, for such pretending is not dictated from outside but comes out naturally from within. In such a "pre-societal" stage, a person's passions and innate talents are those which become actualized in play, and as adults we can learn from this in a process of self-discovery that bypasses the imprint of upbringing and the wider culture, including education. In hindsight, my decision to switch from the liberal arts and sciences to business in my first college degree was reckless because this choice was discontinuous with what I had pretended to "be" as a boy. Of course, what a person does is not what one is. This lapse wherein the functional is erroneously taken to be existential is significant in that it attests to how important a career is to a person's happiness. 

Growing up, I used to pretend the large colonial house, which my parents had built on the edge of a small forest, was a school and I was either a teacher or the principal. Usually I pretended to direct a fire drill, when no one was home of course. My mother would have had a fit had she seen me opening all the doors so the imaginary students could leave the building, which was actually a house. My active imagination was by no means limited to education; sometimes I would pick up a short stick to serve as a microphone, walk out in front of the large house and pretend I was a singer looking out on the large front yard, which in my imagination supported risers filled with concert-goers. In reality, I was tasked with mowing the expansive lawn using a tractor. I used to sing Tom Jones, if you can believe it. It's not unusual, for boys to play-act. You have to be a certain age to spot the play on words just made for your edification. 

Teaching, coordinating fire-drills, and singing, and it should be mentioned through play-acting. Admittedly, being a teacher played second fiddle to being the principal, a role in which coordinating people was most salient in my playing. Additionally, I used to direct and act in impromptu short plays at my maternal grandparents' house with my brothers and cousins. It seems in retrospect that I was more interested in and even proficient at the use of power than in desceminating knowledge. I had been held back a grade in elementary school because, as found out only after a bachelors and a masters degree, the neurological mechanism that automatically fuses the two eyes together at the same point did not develop in my case. Eventually, I came to use one eye more for distance and the other for close work such as reading. Truth be told, however, I am not "hard-wired" biologically for a vocation of heavy reading and writing.  Hence I wasn't supposed to be a writer. Had I paid attention to what I had instinctively pretended when I had been a boy, I would not have continued with more study after getting the MBA. To be sure, I love ideas and theories, but other than my innate curiosity I had lost touch with what my boyhood imagination, unfettered by institutions like schools, was been telling me about my authentic passions and perhaps even what I would naturally do well vocationally. 

Besides looking back at childhood playing, a person can discover an otherwise hidden talent and or passion by looking at what tends to talk about in one's free time. Often times even off-the-cuff casual statements can be just as informative as the habits we develop in adulthood in what we tend to talk about in casual, unplanned conversation especially with strangers. 

Preaching and making political speeches could be added to my bag of tricks even though they I did not pretend to preach sermons or give campaign speeches in front of the my boyhood house. Actually, now that I think of it, I can vaguely remember speaking in front of the house; I would think out the speech (or sermon) rather than say anything out load (whereas I would actually sing). Although I was in student government and did not shy away from religious conversations with other students in college, I didn't notice the extent to which had conversations in politics and religion. To be sure, I worked on Reagan's campaign locally and was a Eucharistic Minister back then. Even so, I mentally severed all that from my studies in first majoring in botany and then switching to business. 

I did eventually get to studying theology and philosophy even though by then I knew I was paddling up stream in the mechanics of studying (namely, reading). But I was brought to those academic areas not by looking back to my boyhood pretending or even by realizing what I tended to talk about, but, rather, by noticing the trajectory of my academic studies. In particular, a seminar on comparative religions, political systems, and economic systems at Indiana lead me, still within the business fold, to fortify my knowledge of religion. Had I noticed what I had pretended as a boy and what I tended to talk about as a young adult, I would have dropped the pretense of business been free of my own constraints that were artificial rather than innate. 

Since graduating from a divinity school, I have discovered the extent to which I engage person to person in preaching the ideal of kindness and compassion, especially to one's enemy, as the main point of Jesus' message. Without love, Paul wrote, faith is naught. I suspect that many church-going "Christians" forget that, as the monopoly of attention is overwhelmingly on salvation after death predicated on true belief in Jesus' identity.  I have come to realize that Jesus' preaching is in need of being applied (rather than contradicted) in Christian congregations, and thus to Christianity itself. I recently heard an evangelical preacher distinguish being a disciple (i.e., discipleship) from being a Christian. He had the idea, though unfortunately his message did not go far enough, for he preached forgiveness, kindness, and compassion generally but left out that those virtues are especially noteworthy when done least conveniently, as to people who have been insulting and otherwise rude. "Love thy enemy" is the traditional expression, but it is of limited applicability as it does not  include people who are not quite a person's enemies. Someone steps in front of you in line for tickets and drops his umbrella. You pick it up in a spirit of helpfulness. 

Well, I have lapsed again into preaching. Although I know the value of utilizing writing to reach people, I never thought as a boy that I would become a writer. I used to be a terrible writer (and speller), so I have had to put a lot of effort into the craft to be tolerably good. Had I paid attention to what I had pretended as a boy and how much I engaged in conversations in political (economy) and religious matters, I would have utilized a means that is much better suited to me, even biologically. 

Regarding "the craft," I assiduously made appointments weekly at a university's writing center for over a year,  but only after I had graduated from Indiana University with a MBA and Yale with a M.Div. degree. I had previously gone to college at another, albeit marginal, distended, and ethically problematic university in the Midwest. Fortunately, I was able to go on to better universities to make up for the deficiencies in the courses. I qualified for a doctorate at another academically marginal and ethically problematic university, but I refused the offer. My three years at Yale in the first degree in theology (in which I studied philosophy of religion, history, and philosophy too) and an additional year of non-degree courses outdid even the previous doctoral seminars at the low-class university that had offered me a doctorate. Thanks but no thanks. It was worth it to keep my self-respect from being tinged even by association with such an institution. When I was finishing up at Yale, professor there offered me the chance to study for a doctorate in history, but I was already 40 and did not want to be a student for six or seven more years. In hindsight, I wish I had accepted that offer, though the the huge amount of additional reading would not have been good for my eyes as I was by then using one eye for distance and the other for reading. That I even considered the offer demonstrates yet again that I had lost touch with my limitations as well as what my childhood games and topics of later conversations could have told me about my innate strengths. 

Even after Yale, I was still climbing the academic tower even though it should have been obvious to me that it was not where I belonged or was wanted. I should have taken that as a hint that my natural place lies elsewhere. 

Between audited courses and 1 credit-hours of independent study, I was able to study for three years with a Harvard scholar who for twenty years had been flying weekly during the fall and spring semesters from Boston to Madison, Wisconsin to teach (and qualify for a pension) at UW. When he retired from Wisconsin (as soon as he could), he wrote me a letter in which he stated that I am qualified to teach political theory at the graduate level. I asked him to use Harvard stationary, as he still graded doctoral comprehensive exams written in other languages there and Wisconsin's flagship public university was ethically problematic; a staffer of the chairman of the state's legislative Assembly told me, "It is an open secret at the statehouse that UW is run like the mob." I had seen the sordid mentality up close, and had heard first-hand accounts by the rejected professor, who was by my time teaching at Edgewood College locally, and the chancellor (himself!) about a tenure-vote having been illegally rigged. 

Alas, I had to settle for UW stationary, but even so, that letter meant more to me than all of my transcripts put together because I finally had the close-up judgment of an excellent scholar educated and still working at Harvard that I had become an excellent scholar in my own right. "None of the faculty (in liberal arts) here are doing research on your level," he once told me when we were walking on campus to one of his discussion sections. That a full professor would lead one of his own discussion sections (graduate students almost always do that) was itself a testimonial to the scholar. I could have replied to him, "And no other professor here is leading a discussion section of a lecture class." Antithetically, an employee in the non-degree student office told me while we were walking on campus that I should feel privileged to be on that campus. "This is a taxpayer-supported public university," I wish I had replied. I could have added that I had indeed felt privileged to be on Yale's campus and felt privileged to be a Yale alumnus. Instead of thinking up such an appropriate reply, I was stunned at the staffer's arrogance. Educationally, his university was not in the same league. Both Professor Patrick Riley and I knew this; as soon as he could, he retired, taking (as his departmental chairman told a journalist) "his carriage back to Cambridge." Ouch! I too decamped from that chilly university, heading home to Illinois, where I had several decades earlier pretended to be an elementary-school teacher and a singer, and, I might add, a rather unsuccessful major-league baseball pitcher.