Compassion

How far does your Christian compassion go? If it is anything like mine, it is  pretty good most of the time, because we naturally feel some sympathy with people who need help, or are suffering badly through no fault of their own.

Apparently, the USA has a prison body of 1% of the adult population, and half of those are for drug related crime. This is astonishing, but shows a deep underlying problem, which all ‘free’ western cultures share, including the UK. We have an epidemic of unhappiness on our hands, and we don’t know how to deal with it. We try to break habits of the offenders, and put prisoners into rehab and programs to break addiction. All well and good, but these don’t address the root of the problem, do they? What can you do to make the problem better, and make people happier?

This week there are two young women from Scotland and Ireland, who are spending prison time in Peru, waiting for a trial, perhaps a year away, for being drugs couriers. They were carrying about 25lbs of cocaine worth millions of Dollars. A drug which promises happiness, but delivers heartache, sadness, broken homes, and death. They claim they didn’t know the drugs were in their luggage, and then changed their story to say they were forced at gunpoint. I don’t know about you, but when I travel, I have to know down to the last ounce, what the weight of my case is, and have to go through a barrage of security questions before travelling to determine that I know what is in my case, and that I am solely responsible for the contents. There is a big difference between making a mistake about what foodstuff is allowed, and hard drugs. So do I feel sympathetic to the plight of these girls? In a way, I do, but I am not sure I am happy with myself for that feeling.

Compassion is a different and much misunderstood word, and we mistake it for blind sympathy. I looked up the definition of compassion, and it is: “Deep awareness of the suffering of another, coupled with the wish to relieve it.” When I read about the times that Jesus was compassionate, it was always to people who had no control over the position they were in. They might have been poor, blind, or hungry, but never because of their own actions. So, am I wrong not to feel compassion for the victims of drug dealers and pushers, or for the dealers and pushers themselves? This is a tough question, and one that must be answered honestly. I have no doubt that God can, and does, forgive drug users and their dealers completely and fully, but can I? Can you? Our actions have consequences, and Jesus never changed the natural consequences of any human actions, even when He was on the cross, did He? I feel sorry (but not too sorry) for these two young drug carriers, but I can’t bring myself to feel compassion. Am I wrong as a Christian? Should I feel both sympathy and compassion?