Rule of compassion

Friday, October 24, 2025

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Rule of compassion

I take delight in the law of God, in my inner self,

but I see in my members another principle

at war with the law of my mind,

taking me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.

What a wretched man I am!

Who will rescue me from this body of death?

Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord!

As I remind myself often, my rule of life is to:

Read

Write

Listen and

Pray … every day

Six simple words. I’ve attempted to add “walk” to this list (and will continue the attempt), but so far that word just sits there, ignoring the “rule,” laughing at me as I sit there beside it.

Yesterday in a confessional conversation with a friend over lunch, I named his compassion for others as a gift I don’t claim for myself. I care, I seek ways to be present with others, I strive to be transparent and emotionally present as a servant or helper, but my compassion feels thin and too temporary.

Paul’s personal confession in Romans 7 rings true for me too, and I’m grateful for his logic, clarity and honesty. There are many ways on many days when I too cry out, “Who will rescue me from this body of death?”

Let your kindness comfort me

according to your promise to your servants.

Let your compassion come to me that I may live,

for your law is my delight.

Never will I forget your precepts,

for through them you give me life.

I am yours; save me, Lord.

Remembering a letter Paul wrote to Timothy much later, perhaps while he was imprisoned in Rome and about to be executed, Steve Garnaas-Holmes invites us to join Paul in his lifelong race.

Kept the Faith

 I have fought the good fight;

 I have finished the race;

 I have kept the faith.

                       —2 Timothy 4.7

 

The writer has finished

two thousand years ago

and the race goes on.

 

Time folds upon itself,

adding ring upon ring,

and the fight continues.

 

We keep the faith

and keep finishing

and the race goes on.

 

Your keeping does not end,

your finishing continues,

you belong in a great stream.

 

We hold each other,

strive for each other

keep one another’s faith,

 

one body, one long race,

always finishing, always going on.

You are not alone. Carry on.

Beyond the personal, there are political implications to this call to active compassion, which Walter Brueggemann pointed out in The Prophetic Imagination.

Jesus in his solidarity with the marginal ones is moved to compassion. Compassion constitutes a radical form of criticism, for it announces that the hurt is to be taken seriously, that the hurt is not to be accepted as normal and natural but is an abnormal and unacceptable condition for humanness.

In the arrangement of “lawfulness” in Jesus’ time, as in the ancient empire of Pharaoh, the one unpermitted quality of relation was compassion. Empires are never built or maintained on the basis of compassion. The norms of law (social control) are never accommodated to persons, but persons are accommodated to the norms. Otherwise the norms will collapse and with them the whole power arrangement.

Thus the compassion of Jesus is to be understood not simply as a personal emotional reaction but as a public criticism in which he dares to act upon his concern against the entire numbness of his social context. 

Empires live by numbness. Empires, in their militarism, expect numbness about the human cost of war. Corporate economies expect blindness to the cost in terms of poverty and exploitation. Governments and societies of domination go to great lengths to keep the numbness intact. Jesus penetrates the numbness by his compassion and with his compassion takes the first step by making visible the odd abnormality that has become business as usual.

Thus compassion that might be seen simply as generous goodwill is in fact criticism of the system, forces, and ideologies that produce the hurt. Jesus enters into the hurt and finally comes to embody it.

While I patrol the outskirts, Jesus is jumping over the fence and wreaking heavenly havoc. Lord, give me confidence to join you inside.

You hypocrites!

You know how to interpret the appearance of the earth and the sky;

why do you not know how to interpret the present time?

“Why do you not judge for yourselves what is right?

 (Romans 7, Psalm 119, Matthew 11, Luke 12)

(posted at www.davesandel.net)

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