It is helpful to observe that repentance through compassion is perhaps nowhere more available to us than in our mediated relationships with society. Living in the world, we are surrounded constantly by stories of awful vice and sin, found in the news, on the web, told through friends and the like. Our usual instinct, which is one strongly encouraged in the secular world, is to sit in judgment of the wrongs we hear about on
One of the most difficult problems faced in Christian life, and one that the desert monks experienced acutely, is the problem of our temptation to seek distance from the struggles of others, and to promote a sense of separation from the sins of the world around us. There is a certain passing resemblance to Christianity in doing so. Indeed, we certainly do not actively desire temptation for ourselves, nor do we approve of engaging in
Compassion As we have noted, the idea that charity and good works are important for Christians, and that life in the world offers a lot of opportunities to do them, is probably quite obvious. The work of developing compassion, however, which is the topic of this section, requires a little more discussion. First, we should define the term “compassion” as we mean it here. While the modern English word tends to delineate a certain feeling
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