BALANCING COMPASSION WITH JUSTICE AND HUMAN CULPABILITY

I just read an article that offers a very sober portrait of psychotherapy and its benefits. However, there is one point that deeply reflects the worldview of our age, but perhaps to the detriment of both relationships and society:

·       The people who caused our primal wound almost invariably didn’t mean to do so; they were themselves hurt and struggling to endure [and not truly morally responsible]. We can develop a sad but more compassionate picture of a world in which sorrows and anxieties are blindly passed down the generations. The insight isn’t only true to experience, holding it in mind will mean there is less to fear. Those who wounded us were not superior, impressive beings who knew our special weaknesses and justly targeted them. They were themselves highly frantic, damaged creatures trying their best to cope with the litany of private sorrows to which every life condemns us. http://www.thebookoflife.org/what-is-therapy-for/

Compassion has to be based upon wisdom. This is an overly compassionate assessment of humanity. How is it that compassion can possibly be overdone? This  extreme form of compassion neglects the necessary place of human responsibility, culpability, and concepts of justice so critical to the sanity and welfare of society.

I don’t want to seem that I am arguing against compassion. However, I think that it needs to be balanced out with these other considerations. Perhaps a sane and healthy society also needs a healthy appreciation of evil.

But if we believe in this concepts of objective evil and justice, won’t these beliefs make us more self-righteous, critical, and intolerant? Possibly! But don’t healthy relations require some degree of intolerance? Shouldn’t we be intolerant of a husband or boyfriend sexually abusing the children or forcing his wife into prostitution? Or simply living an adulterous life? Of course!

Some actively deny that we have freewill and are truly responsible for our behavior in order to counteract their crippling and life-controlling guilt and shame and to have compassion. However, this can only be accomplished at the expense of justice and human responsibility. Besides, conceiving our fellow humans as machines is also very demeaning and will inevitably have serious long-range consequences in terms of how we treat one another. After all, machines are thrown on the dump-heap once we regard them as dysfunctional.

Well, how can these concepts not make us more self-righteous and critical? Will they not serve to undermine compassion? Not necessarily! I think that there is a better reason for compassion. We need to realize that we too are evil and have needlessly hurt others. Therefore, we are in no position to look down on others.

But how can we live with the fact that we are evil? Only if we know that we have been forgiven, completely. Besides, human forgiveness, as important as this is, fails to touch the depths of our need and to re-define us in a more self-accepting way. Instead, we need the forgiveness of the very Truth and Reality that define all else. We require the forgiveness of our Maker. Once we are assured of His acceptance, we can begin to accept others (while not condoning their evil acts), as Jesus had taught:

·       “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?  And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matthew 5:43-48; ESV)