Called to Compassion
We owe it to one another to maturity; but we mustn’t pretend we know each other very well.
To know a person means more than knowing his sin. You have to know the strength of the temptation as he feels it—not as you feel it. To know a person means more than knowing that she “gave in.” You have to know how hard she tried not to give in. To know a person means more than knowing how often he failed. You have to know how often he succeeded and resisted before he failed. To know a person is knowing more than her accomplishments. You have to know how much effort her accomplishments cost. (How do you weigh a person’s ability and achievement against her effort?) To know a person is to know more than that his life hangs together well. You have to know if that “holding together” is the result of inner strength or external props. (How do you know what you’d be without the “props” of friends, family, health, and the like?)
There are few judgments more shallow than those which take only deeds into account. Some Pharisees thrived on deeds. They prayed, attended church, fasted, tirelessly evangelized, studied the Bible, avoided immorality, and gave money to the poor. Yet Christ judged them heartless!
To make no distinction between a person in Christ who struggles against sin—who laments it, hates it, and seeks its destruction—and the Christ-rejecting degenerate who makes no bones about his rejection of God—to make no distinction between these is criminal!
A man who comes to Christ out of a really horrible moral background brings with him a lot of trash that he has renounced in the name of Christ his Lord. It’s renounced, but it’s entwined in and around him as an intruder and a parasite. It will take time, patience, accountability, help, and prayer to remove it. God doesn’t work “moral miracles, “ even though we often wish he would. People nurtured in evil, they are shaped by it, and it becomes part of their emotional, mental, and social makeup. They aren’t healed in an instant!
To know people is to know more than what they do. It’s to know why they do what they do and what they would do if they had the power to do it.
The God of the Towel by Jim McGuiggan pp.229-230.
