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Where's the Compassion?

January 31, 2018

Where's the Compassion?
He looked them in the eye, one after another, angry now, furious at their hard-nosed religion. He said to the man, “Hold out your hand.” He held it out—it was as good as new! The Pharisees got out as fast as they could, sputtering about how they would join forces with Herod’s followers and ruin him. (Mark 3:5-6 MSG)

The Angry Jesus:

If anyone would try to paint Jesus as passive, serene, and unemotional then they need to take another look at Him in this scripture. In another translation Jesus is described as angry and grieved by their hardness of heart. Jesus was ticked, and He was hurt at the same time. Why the mixed emotions? I think it is because those religious leaders were more concerned about Jesus breaking their Sabbath rules than to look with compassion at the man who just had his hand healed. They witnessed a miracle, but the hardness of their heart couldn’t celebrate it. I think it grieved Jesus because these religious leaders were supposed to be representatives of a Loving God to the people. Oh, how poorly they represented Him, and this is enough to make Jesus angry.

Misrepresentation of God:

I think there are a lot of people in this world who say they are representing God, but they are cruel, calculating, vengeful, deceitful, uncompassionate, and misrepresent His character and personality. This alone shows that they do not know God, or truly represent Him. It is easy to see how Islamic terrorists would be an example of misrepresenting God. Their horrendous actions are evident. While they think their terrorist activities of beheading and persecuting Christians pleases God, and their sacrificial death to blow themselves up along with innocent people assures them of a place in heaven, they get it wrong from the get-go. It is clear that they represent the Evil Man, not the compassionate Holy God that has revealed Himself to us. How do you think Jesus sees what they are doing? Of course, He hates it. He’s got to hate what is being done against His family. But hard heartedness is not just with terrorists. It can be within us all.

Lesson to learn:

If there are a people who should represent God well, it should be Christians. We have with Jesus the perfect example of how to represent God. Jesus showed compassion, courage and uncompromising loyalty to the character of God. He showed anger at the evil He was seeing, which represents God’s view of evil. But He also showed His own compassion by being grieved with the religious culture that misrepresented God. I repeat, He was grieved by the “religious culture.” Just like radical Islamists are recruited and born in a culture of hate and violence and brainwashed to believe that what they do pleases God, Americans, Whites, Blacks, Asians, Hispanics, all groups, and even Christians can also be raised in a culture of hate and anger, and it will corrupt us like a terrorist is brainwashed and corrupted. Evil can invade all of our lives, if we give it a chance to culture in our life like a virus does in a Petri dish. That is why as Christians we must always check our heart and make sure it represents the character of Jesus. We too can misrepresent Him, if our heart is hardened, and we have no compassion for other people.

Final thought on a culture of anger:

I am not political, and I have no interest in being so. I do watch from the sidelines things that greatly discourage me. As an example, was the State of the Union address by the President last night. If you look at the economy, the tax relief, the reduction of unemployment, and many more positive indicators of recovery, I think there is much to celebrate and be encouraged over for our country, whatever your political choice might be. And yet, the partisan angry scowl that I saw on several faces that would not yield a bit of a smile or affirmation of the good news, makes me angry and grieve over the culture being formed by these political leaders. They reminded me of those Pharisees that wouldn’t celebrate the man’s hand being healed by Jesus, because they hated Jesus so much. I could not help but wish that those people in Washington that represent this would either step aside or get on board with changing the angry culture being formed in our nation. Based on what I saw, I think in many ways they are the cause of it, and the change needs to start there.

Prayer is where the battle is won:

Never before have I been so motivated to pray for our president and political leaders, and our nation. Would you join me?

Where's the Compassion?