The Bible often mentions compassion, many times in reference to Christ Jesus. It’s clear that the Master radiated this quality as he went about his daily work of teaching and healing. But what is compassion, and what role does it play, should it play, in our lives as followers of Jesus?
One definition of compassion is “the humane quality of understanding the suffering of others and wanting to do something about it.” Compassion is often confused with a human sense of pity—a feeling of sorrow caused by the suffering of others. But compassion goes a step further, instilling a deep desire to help relieve another’s pain or suffering.
Mary Baker Eddy writes: “God’s ways are not ours. His pity is expressed in modes above the human. . . . The sympathy of His eternal Mind is fully expressed in divine Science, which blots out all our iniquities and heals all our diseases. Human pity often brings pain” (Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896, p. 102).
To illustrate, an unhelpful sense of pity toward someone overcome with fear might be, “Oh, you poor thing, I understand how frightened you must be.” A divinely inspired compassion would lift thought above the fear, as Jesus did when he said to a man confronted with the apparent death of his daughter, “Fear not: believe only, and she shall be made whole” (Luke 8:50).
False pity accepts the evidence of suffering as real and attaches the problem to the person. It stems from a belief in something apart from infinite God, good. Christly compassion, on the other hand, rejects the testimony of the material senses and yields to the spiritual truth that God is all and governs everything harmoniously. This view corrects the false claims of evil with spiritual truth, bringing a healing change to human thought and experience.
In the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mrs. Eddy sums up the transforming power of Christly compassion this way: “Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man, who appeared to him where sinning mortal man appears to mortals. In this perfect man the Saviour saw God’s own likeness, and this correct view of man healed the sick” (pp. 476–477).
Christian Science places great emphasis on the fact that God is Love, and that divine Love is a healing force that uplifts, comforts, and blesses mankind. I had the opportunity to demonstrate this power several years ago when I was a teacher of students with significant emotional and behavioral problems. One of my students was a girl with severe self-abusive behaviors. After more than a year of working with her, I had formed a close bond with her, and we had established routines to use whenever she became upset. One of those routines was walking in the hall together, with me holding her hands to prevent her from injuring herself.
Compassion yields to the spiritual truth that God is all and governs everything harmoniously.
One day when we were finishing a walk, something startled her and she flared up. As I was trying to keep her steady, she lost her balance and started to fall, with me still holding on. I was aware of the importance of continuing to hold on to her, as well as not falling directly on her. I did avoid landing on her, but my head hit the floor with such force that the sound brought others to my aid. The student was unharmed and another teacher helped her return to the classroom.
I wasn’t immediately able to stand up on my own but gratefully accepted help and was taken to the nurse’s office. I was offered painkillers, but I declined them and sat quietly for a few minutes, filled with gratitude for the loving support the student and I had been given. Then I decided that the best thing for me would be to go home.
Once home, I began to pray in earnest, holding fast to the fact of my unbroken relation to God. Despite the evidence of the physical senses, I affirmed the spiritual fact that I had never fallen out of God’s loving care. I knew that my true identity as the image and likeness of God was forever untouched and perfect.
The pain was decreasing and my sense of calm was increasing, but the lump on my head was still throbbing and unsightly. I had the strong feeling that there was something important I was missing, and I humbly asked God what I needed to know.
The words “moved with compassion” kept coming to me. This phrase is used several times in the New Testament to describe Jesus’ response to people who came to him for healing. At first I thought this couldn’t possibly be the right message for me, since I genuinely loved the girl and always treated her with patience and gentleness. But then it hit me—I was moved with human pity for her, not with Christly compassion. Rather than seeing her the way Jesus would have, as God’s beloved child untouched by evil, I was attaching a traumatic past to her and feeling bad on her behalf. What I needed to do was to see her as free and always cared for by God, and to cherish all the good qualities she expressed.
Opening my Bible, I read the accounts of Jesus’ compassionate care for those in need of healing. When two blind men asked him to heal them, he did not look on them with false pity, or sympathetically discuss their condition. The Bible says he “had compassion on them”—a compassion that saw through the outward appearance to the true character of man as God’s perfect, spiritual expression. And they were healed immediately (see Matthew 20:30–34).
This study filled me with inspiration and brought immediate physical relief. The pain and the lump quickly disappeared, and I was able to attend an evening event as planned. But the blessing didn’t stop there. What I learned profoundly changed my thought and experience. My students typically had horrible histories, and reading their case files had always filled me with human pity and outrage at the injustices done to them. While it can be helpful to have some background knowledge, it is more important not to limit or define people according to their human past.
Lifting thought from the human sense of pity to Christly compassion enabled me to see beyond the students’ supposed limitations and help steer them toward progress. And they and I witnessed wonderful changes as a result. When student behavior issues came up, they were resolved more quickly, bringing greater harmony to the classroom. And the girl I mentioned earlier became less volatile and self-abusive.
I also realized that this element of compassion should be expressed toward everyone I come in contact with. Striving to see the world through compassionate eyes, rather than being in sympathy with the errors of material sense that need to be destroyed, directs our thought toward the healing ideas found in the study of Christian Science. Turning away from the mortal picture to the truth of God’s flawless creation, we’re able to regard one another with genuine love, free of human opinions or agendas, no matter how well-meaning those views seem to be.
Each of us can do this because true compassion has its source in God. It’s a quality that is given, not to a chosen few, but to all who genuinely want to follow Jesus’ example. This compassion uplifts us and brings hope, the recognition of harmony, and the expectation—and realization—of healing.
