The Great Rising Compassion
July 9, 2006 Crestwood UCC
By Pastor Marcia Moret Sietstra
Last week, on a mountaintop in Taiwan, in an ancient Buddhist monastery, incredible women from around the world gathered. They represented a great variety of religions —nuns who rarely left their cloister were there; women theologians and academics were there; women from Hindu temples in the south of India, Benedictine sisters from New York, and executives from religious organizations. Now this vast, quiet Buddhist monastery sitting silently atop a mountain looks a little like Shangri-la, hidden from real life.1
But this meeting last week was no escape from real life! It was part of a new kind of global religious conversation, that I am seeing spring up all over the world. The theme of the gathering was “the rising great compassion.” Those who participated do not care about converting the rest of the world to their religions. They do not care about controlling anyone. They care about people treating each other with respect and compassion, because they believe that is the only way there can be peace. To be truly compassionate is to put oneself in the place of another, so that you can sympathize with them. Only then do they become your neighbor.
Just a week or two earlier I was in California taking 3 classes on the history of religions, one taught by British scholar Karen Armstrong, arguably one of the world’s best and most published religious historians. She lectures all over the world and is in high demand these days because she serves on a number of international task forces and committees related to the study of religious violence. Most recently she has served as one of only 3 religious representatives on the 20-member United Nations Allliance for Civilizations, a group studying how to prevent the clash of religiously divided cultures around the world. Armstrong’s latest book is, The Great Transformation. It’s out on the table with my sabbatical things if you’d like to take a look at it.
Karen Armstrong traces the development of the world’s major, enduring religions. Her theory is that these religions that developed worlds apart in cultures so different from one another, among groups of people who rarely interacted, all developed a central truth, a central core. The core was their response to centuries of violence in each region. There was a time when Confucianism and Daoism in China, Hinduism and Buddhism in India, and the Jewish faith of ancient Israel—which later birthed Christianity and Islam—all of these religions found compassion to be the most important principle of life during their most critical stage of development (900-200 BCE). Each one developed their own version of the Golden Rule—do unto others as you would have them do unto you, or stated conversely, do not do to others that which you would not want done to you. At the core of all these religions was the conviction that it didn’t matter so much what you believed about God; what mattered was how you treated each other.
These women who gathered on the mountaintop asked “what has gone wrong?” Karen Armstrong’s answer is that these great religions have, in many places, transformed and lost their emphasis on living compassionately as the most important thing in life. Much like the youth demonstrated in their street drama this morning, people are turning these religions into something totally different from what their founders intended!
Compassion is no longer the central principle. When Christians, Jews or Muslims too easily condone war in the name of religion, something has gone very wrong. When Christians, Jews or Muslims seek to impose their beliefs on others, they demonstrate a lack of compassion, which implies respect for others’ beliefs.
Jesus recognized this tendency for people to neglect the hard parts of religion and rely on what’s easy. It’s hard to think about other people’s needs as much as your own. It’s easier to go through the rituals and follow some rules, and not think too hard about an ethical life. So he was continually challenging people to do better, and it got under their skin. His hometown folk, who at first had been so proud of their hometown boy’s speaking ability, grew more and more uncomfortable! Can’t you hear them say: “Is he nuts? I’ve got enough problems and he expects me to care about Samaritans who don’t care about me?”
But look at how Jesus responded. He was somehow able to recognize the limits of his hometown folks. He didn’t let their criticism dampen his spirit. And he moved on, recognizing the holy, inbreathing of God’s spirit even when the others were unable to recognize it in him. And he made a difference everywhere he went.
What about you and I? The women gathered on that mountaintop last week decided that what this world needs is a return to the best of all the great, enduring religions—a return to the practice of compassion first. Can we be part of this rising great compassion that the world needs so desperately right now? Are we bold enough to say that for religion to be good, it must not harm, it must show respect for all God’s creatures, it must not make us coercive or self-centered or destructive? Are we willing to do the hard thing?
Sociologist Robert Bellah said recently in Psychology Today magazine, “We should not underestimate the significance of the small group of people who have a new vision of a just and gentle world. The quality of a culture may be changed when two percent of its people have a new vision.”2 2%...just 2% of the people can start a movement that changes a culture.
Let’s pretend for a moment that we’ve decided to really try to daily, intentionally practice compassion. It’s not simple. We had some marvelous discussions with Karen Armstrong about this. For example, let’s say I hire a cleaning lady to clean my house. Do I pay her the lowest possible wage that the market will bear, i.e. the going rate? Or do I, knowing she has no bargaining power, put myself in her place and see her need to support a family, and think about what is fair for her? Should she receive a living wage, an amount which, if all her employers matched it, would allow her to feed and care for her family?
Now if you really get intentional about thinking compassionately, your life may change. Let’s say you get a fabulous new job, but that means that the other applicants did not get the job. How do you, in such circumstances, think with compassion about them? This requires serious thought and a constant endeavor, forcing yourself to face the pain of others’ experience—to see the underbelly of life. One thing about focusing so much on others is that you don’t have nearly as much time to think of yourself, which is probably good for most of us.
We talked about how considering what is good for others also requires us to be more culturally sensitive. Armstrong used the example of US efforts to bring democracy to Iraq. Armstrong said that, no matter how well-meaning our intentions, the Iraqis simply are not culturally prepared for democracy; it took the United Kingdom 300 years to develop democratic institutions and it’s unrealistic to think Iraq can be forced to develop them overnight. Like Mark Twain said, “Do not always do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.” Being compassionate means thinking about what the other person’s needs and wants really are, not assuming that what is good for us is good for them.
Karen Armstrong suggested that we start by really intently practicing compassion in our own families. For example, when you’re trying to sleep and your husband is snoring like a train, your instinct is not to say, “Oh if only I had some quiet so I could think about the Golden Rule.” You’d just as soon throttle him as to think about his feelings at that moment, but you must think about a compassionate way to solve this dilemma. Living in a family is where we practice this ethic.
Living out this ethic of sensitivity to others’ needs is no simple task, but the greatest thinkers of all time saw it as the heart of good religion. And remember—just 2 % of us can change society.
The vision of a world in which people of many different faiths all practice compassion is a vision that can produce a lot more fairness, and a lot more peace. That’s the great hope of the rising compassion I see in the religious discussions happening around the world today. It’s my hope that you and I can be part of that 2% who make it happen. Amen.