Compassion boundaries
When I was in my impressionable early teens I regularly saw a book my dad was reading lying around the living room. It had a very dramatic cover with the title The Population Bomb. Above the title was the descriptive phrase “Population control or race to oblivion” and below was the ominous assertion “While you are reading these words four people will have died of starvation. Most of them children.”
The author was Paul Ehrlich, an American biology professor at Stanford University, who was known for his cataclysmic predictions and warnings about world over-population inevitably leading to mass famines and food wars.
The book scared me. I had grown up hearing stories of my parents’ families living through deadly famines in Russia, including my dad’s mother, weakened by malnutrition, dying after the birth of her last child. It was also an era of numerous famines – China, Biafra, African Sahel, Ethiopia, Bangladesh – which TV news was now able to show in gory detail on their nightly broadcasts, and which were often talked about in our church. And my parents, with good intentions, regularly reminded us to not be picky and eat everything on our plates because there were hungry children on the other side of the world who would be all-too thankful to eat what we wanted to throw away.
The problems were huge, the suffering immense; I/we were supposed to care and help because God doesn’t want people to suffer, but there was nothing of significance I could do to help. I felt scared and helpless.
Around that time my father, who had said several years earlier that if the farm became less indebted we could buy the family motorboat I had been so hoping for, remarked that while we could now afford it, he didn’t think it was right to spend money on such an unnecessary luxury when there were so many needy, suffering people in the world.
How could I take issue with such a Christian position? And I learned the lesson that a faithful Christian ought to spend as little money on themselves, and feel guilty for what they did spend. And from many in the church I heard the adage “Live simply so that others may simply live.”
I learned and became committed to the importance of compassion, empathy and responsibility. What I wasn’t taught was that maybe it was okay for there to be some limits and boundaries around how much and what I ought to feel compassion, empathy and responsibility for.
Last week 70 Christian women, children and men in Congo were kidnapped by an Islamic terrorist group, taken to a partially destroyed church building and beheaded, according to reports. Cruelty and killing in Israel-Palestine; Russia is still killing Ukrainians; Sudan is still wracked by civil war and famine; we’re told over and over again that we are heading for a climate change Armageddon; etc.
In this day and age the problems are huge, the suffering immense, all shown in powerful colour images and videos on the screens before us. Unless we bury our heads in the sand we tend to feel scared and helpless, frustrated that there seems to be nothing of significance we can do to help.
And yet many voices and organizations are constantly telling us that we ought to care and respond, especially to give money to help, some even suggesting that our nation and economic system is responsible for much of the suffering. How do we discern if there are some helpful limits and boundaries around how much and about what we need to feel compassion, empathy, and responsibility for?
Shortly before his death a woman crashed a dinner party Jesus was attending and unexpectedly poured very expensive ointment (worth a year’s wage) on His head. Jesus’ disciples were indignant, saying that the ointment could have been sold for a hefty price and the money given to the poor. Jesus instead affirms the woman, acknowledging the kind service she has bestowed on Him. Then He adds the famous line: “For you always have the poor with you; but you do not always have Me … what she has done will be told in memory of her.”
Was Jesus saying it wasn’t important to show charity to the poor?
I think rather that Jesus was trying to suggest there are healthy boundaries and limits to our compassion. Without these we humans are in danger of being overwhelmed and swamped by the needs we see in the world around us. It’s like the husband caring at home for his wife dying of cancer. For a while he manages but the care needs keep increasing until the husband’s own health begins to suffer.
It is imperative for a caregiver to care for themselves so they are able to care for others. And the caregiver needs to recognize when the needs are beyond their ability to respond adequately.
I want to write more about this in a future column. But to summarize: we are called to care and respond to the world’s suffering, but not all of it.
We need to care for and protect ourselves so that we do not get overwhelmed and become unable to respond helpfully.