“Toward a Kinder World”

Yesterday I had the honor of being the guest teacher for a class on world religions at Texas A&M University. Before starting my presentation on Christianity, I wanted to gauge the pulse of the room. So, I asked the 20-plus students, “Why are you taking this class?”

A young man raised his hand and responded, “To defend my faith.”

“What faith do you practice?” I asked him.

“Christianity. I’m a Christian Protestant.”

Later I thought, “Defend your faith against what exactly?”

It is important and noble to be ready at any point to speak or act in witness to our discipleship with Christ. “Love one another,” Jesus taught his followers in his Farewell Address in John’s Gospel. “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples.” But the faith we practice that bears witness to a God of love—a God made flesh in Christ Jesus, who loved the whole world so deeply as to cry out from the the cross of his crucifixion, “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do”—that Christian faith, rooted in a love meant for transformation, not domination, does not need our defense against one another; rather, it requires our compassion for one another. By this the world will know that we are Christians, and respect the faith we practice.

On the River Walk in Providence, Rhode Island, there is a Holocaust Memorial honoring the six million Jews who perished at the hands of the nazis. It is also a forward-looking tribute to the survivors who made their way to Rhode Island and built new lives there. As you enter the space, a pathway with train tracks on it, evoking the trains that transported Jews to their death in the concentration camps, carries you toward the center of memorial. There, surrounded by six columns of varying heights signifying the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust, you find a large, smooth stone of white granite. The Life Stone, as it is called, represents the future. Visitors are invited to take a glass pebble that they received when they entered the memorial and place it on the Life Stone, as one would do on a grave. The curators at the Sandra Bornstein Holocaust Education center say that “by sharing a place for meaningful reflection, we hope that the Memorial will help create a kinder world.”

From my Christian perspective, a kinder world like that sounds like the kingdom of God—the kin-dom that Jesus lived for, and died for, and rose again in witness to so that all who confess him as Lord of their life would strive for it to be realized on earth as it is in heaven. The realization of that kinder world does not need our defensiveness. As surely as we need one another to survive in divisive and suspicious times such as these, that kinder world needs our compassion.

The word “compassion” means “to suffer with.” Thinking about this in Christian terms, if ‘com,’ means “with” or “together,” and ‘passion,’ means “suffer” as in Christ’s Passion, where Jesus suffered and died for all, we who follow him are called to suffer with, to feel alongside our neighbors, rather than to lead with defending ourselves against those who differ from us. In this respect, I believe that what we are called to utilize more than anything in this powerful faith we practice is empathy. To the extent that our human limitations can allow, feeling in our gut the joy and pain of others—regardless of who they are or where they come from—honors and strengthens the faith we practice. And I believe that only a disarmed faith like that can lead us toward a kinder world.

I read something that a Roman Catholic posted on Threads recently. They wrote, “My priest said at daily Mass tonight, ‘The world needs less Christians who are ‘correct,’ and more Christians who are compassionate.’ Yes. And by such compassionate living the world will know that we are Christians.