FROM COMPULSION TO COMPASSION

Part of the nostalgia that is sweeping our country generally is evident also in the way some of the denominational leaders are looking back into their history for better days. This is probably a good thing, for the past is always prologue. This journal has sought to encourage this in regard to our present mission. Prof. Albert C. Outler, professor of church history at Southern Methodist University, has been doing some of this in reference to John Wesley. In doing so he says some things that are worth repeating.

He tells of how Wesley’s ministry was at first barren and that it might have fallen into swift oblivion had it not been for a dramatic change that came in his life. For 36 years Wesley preached with almost no visible results. He was orthodox, zealous, self-righteous and overweening, Outler observes, and of course evangelical, but still fruitless. But a decade later the little man emerged at the head of the most effective mass movement in the 18th century. He inspired social reform and shook the Establishment to its foundations, leading a revival that unleashed immense spiritual forces. He is an example of a weak man becoming strong.

Outler sees the transformation as something of a mystery to explain, but he comes up with ideas that serve as at least part of the answer, and he sees these qualities in Wesley’s life as relevant to the needs of the church in our time. The one that impresses me most is his description of Wesley’s “conversion from compulsion to compassion as his dominant emotion.” This was a change from a harsh zealot of God’s judgment to a winsome witness to God’s grace, from a censorious critic to an effective pastor, from arrogance to humility.

Does this point not speak to us? Many of us have long had a religion that is more compulsive than compassionate. We compulsively go to church, read our Bibles, rear our families, and go to work. Even our contacts with others, whether in the sharing of our faith or in acts of charity, are often motivated more by a sense of duty than from compassion. Our children sometimes respond to our urgings with a “Do I have to?,” while we are left wishing they could be motivated by love and concern rather than by mandate. God’s children are often like that, for we seem to do things because it is expected of us or because we are commanded to do so. How often are we propelled by compassion? And yet it ranks first in Paul’s list of the garments that befit the saint: “Put on the garments that suit God’s chosen people, his own, his beloved: compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience” (Co!. 3:12). And it is here that we are most like Jesus, for this is the word used to describe so much of what he did. Again and again the scriptures tell us that “When the Lord saw ... he had compassion.”

Outler describes a zealous and diligent Wesley, but still a vapid one. He did not have power until God’s grace really touched his heart. Zeal, passion rhetorical overkill are not enough for effective evangelism, Outler says. Rather than flinging the gospel at them like a soteriological brickbat, Wesley learned the grace of compassion, the pity of Christ’s self-giving love.

The Greek and Hebrew meanings behind compassion in our English Bibles are most revealing. It means to have yearning bowels, pity, mercy, to show mildness, kindness, suffering with, and in one instance display moderation. Compulsion is so different, for it suggests coercion and constraint. Let us be impelled by compassion rather than by compulsion. It is a matter of whether religion has reached beyond the head to the heart and from there to the guts. The idea of “bowels of mercy” really described compassion in a day when it was believed that man’s basic drives and feelings are centered in his guts. And that has been our problem, as it was Wesley’s for a time, we have acted more from mind and will than from heart and guts.

From compulsion to compassion ... I can buy that even to the point of suggesting it become our hallmark in these days of transformation. We have been right long enough, and God knows we have been all too scriptural, faithful, and loyal all these years. Let’s be compassionate for awhile! From a religion of compulsion to a religion of compassion. I like that.

Compulsive religion is a religion of fear and uncertainty. It lends itself to regimentation, systems, and authority. It is uncomfortable in the presence of grace, forbearance, forgiveness and love, unless these can somehow be tied to law, which the compulsive mind finds more tangible. One can remain rigid in the face of law, but hardly in the presence of mercy. This was at the heart of our Lord’s conflict with the Pharisees. They sought merit through compulsive law-keeping, while he taught mercy through God’s grace. Their religion reached only the lips, his the heart. Their compulsion led them to withdraw from the world, forming themselves into a little sect that would not even speak to others. His compassion led him to involvement with those around him, the untouchables and the outcasts as well as proper folks.

“Sometimes it is those who can see the darkest shadows that recognize more clearly the most brilliant virtues. Arthur Schopenhauer, the great philosopher of pessimism, has described the evils of this world as few men have, which always makes him a favorite on the college campus. Life is evil because life is strife, he asserted, and this is evident in all of nature, from the insects and animals that prey upon each other to the homo sapiens that behave toward each other like wolves. He saw the bulldog-ant of Australia as typical of life’s evil conflict, for when it is cut in two a battle begins between head and tail. The head bites the tail and the tail stings the head until they are dead or are carried away by other ants. He saw every biography as a history of suffering, and noticed that Dante got all his materials for a description of hell from life on earth. If one were serious in his claim to optimism, Schhopenhauer would invite him to tour prisons, hospitals, torture-chambers, slave-kennels, and battle fields.

And yet the famous pessimist saw compassion in the human heart as gloriously beautiful. This is because it is unexpected and unpredictable in a world of cruel competition. One’s life is a string of misfortunes both great and small, he observed, which he keeps to himself since he realizes that others are too concerned with their own troubles to have any sympathy for him. If anything, others will take satisfaction in his misery, pleased that they are for the moment spared his lot. So when compassion is shown it is the nearest to the divine that man can attain.

Being an atheist, Schopenhauer never found an answer to the problem of suffering, but it is to his credit that he exalted compassion as the noblest of all human impulses. It is an indictment on the modern church when an atheist, lost in a sea of pessimism, sees more grace in compassion than believers do. The truth is that an austere orthodoxy often means more in the modern church than a heart of compassion. We must become known more for our mercy than for our censure.

A man who sees compassion amidst the human predicament, atheist though he be, may well speak of brotherhood even better than the rest of us. It is egoism, Schopenhauer avowed, that causes one to make a distinction between his own interests and those of others. When the high vision of brotherhood comes to one “he recognizes in all beings his own inmost and true self, and regards the infinite suffering of all suffering beings as his own, and takes on himself the pain of the whole world.”

This is what made Wesley a great preacher. He moved from compulsion to compassion when Jesus touched his life deeply. This happens to us all when we really catch the vision of God’s grace. This is my heart’s desire for all our people. From compulsion to compassion - the great transformation.—The Editor