Compassion is an Act of Resistance
- Rev. Matt Braddock
- Feb 8, 2017
- 3 min read
“Resist!” The imperative is plastered all over my Facebook feed, echoed in the voices of my friends, congregants, and denominational leaders. At this moment in our national life when the political landscape appears to be crumbling into authoritarianism, we are called to resist more than ever. When hard-fought civil rights are on the line — rights we hoped were set in cement, which are corroded with each new executive order from the White House —we get angry. We march, we protest, we demonstrate, we call our representatives, and we raise our voices in solidarity with those whose power is diminished. This is what democracy looks like!
I am all for acts of public resistance against those who seek to solidify their authority by obstructing the rights of others. We must speak truth to power. I also heed the warnings of both our historical political commentators and our spiritual ancestors: revolt and resistance that serve the motive of the individual ego can lead to violence and set up the resistors to become tyrants themselves. Today’s revolutionaries may become tomorrow’s dictators. As Albert Camus reminds us in The Rebel, “… we understand that rebellion cannot exist without a strange form of love. Those who find no rest in God or in history are condemned to live for those who, like themselves, cannot live: in fact, for the humiliated. The most pure form of the movement of rebellion is thus crowned with the heart-rending cry of Karamazov: if all are not saved, what good is the salvation of one only?”
Only when resistance springs from a commitment to the salvation of the other are the most courageous acts of solidarity born.
In The Compassionate Life, His Holiness the Dalai Lama helps us understand the nature of other-centered resistance instead of ego-centered resistance. “Genuine compassion is based not on our own projections and expectations, but rather on the needs of the other: irrespective of whether another person is a close friend or an enemy, as long as that person wishes for peace and happiness and wishes to overcome suffering, then on that basis we develop genuine concern for their problem. This is genuine compassion.”
Ego-driven resistance feeds polarization. Other-driven resistance disarms it.
I’ve learned something very important in my years of ministry. There is a difference between pity and compassion. Showing pity is about me. Pity is when I do something to someone that makes me feel better. Pity saves me. Compassion is about the other. It’s what happens when we share our power to forge a more loving and more just world. Compassion saves us all.
Can I show compassion without condition or restraint? Even if it means being taken advantage of? Even if it means giving of that which I value? I confess, those are difficult questions for me to answer. I have deep anger and fear right now. I must resist the enemies I make in my own heart if I want to resist the hate in the world. I must resist violence without becoming violent. I must resist the ceaseless din of division by re-connecting and listening deeply, on the most local level, to the voices of struggle and pain in my community.
I must show compassion courageously.
Courageous Compassion means loving everyone, touching the pain without first mapping out the consequences; embodying love in action to those who offend us, to those who have hurt us, and to those who don't deserve a second chance (or a third or fourth); turning the status quo upside down with a commitment to love; confronting unjust family systems, religious systems, and economic or political systems that offer great gifts to insiders while pushing others to the side. In Christ's Reign, there are no insiders. No outsiders. We are all one nature, one flesh, one grief, and one hope. If we fail to love, we fail in everything else.
Over the next weeks, I will train my heart to listen to people at the grocery store, at the gas station, at the gym, at the office, in the neighborhood, and the people I see as I’m stuck in D.C. traffic. I will give myself permission to be inconvenienced by their pains. I will let myself be moved by compassion that is free from any strings. Who knows, these small acts of other-centered love might just feed an uprising of peace when each of us becomes engaged compassionately in our community and our world.
Matt Braddock is the Senior Minister of Christ Congregational Church (UCC) in Silver Spring, MD and current president of The Academy of Parish Clergy. He can be contacted at matt@cccsilverspring.org
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