Compassion

So, about a month ago I posted a blog on my myspace profile asking people what their beliefs on god are. I promised I was going to do something with it, but I decided to not. The responses were so varied that I feel it accomplished everything it was supposed to. If you'd like to read it, you can go check it out; it's titled "An Open Invitation." To avoid stalking and what not, I'm not going to link to it, but the link to my profile is to the right.

Instead of posting what my own thoughts are on "god" directly, I'm going to go about in a bassackwards way by talking a little about what's been on my mind as of late. I'm going to start off with a passage from the book Matthew and for sake of typing it all out/not copying and pasting right, I'll give ya the link; Matthew 5:38-48.

This comes from the Sermon on the Mount, or what is also a portion of the Beatitudes. Before I go further, what is beatitude exactly? This is the first definition from the Oxford English Dictionary (much better than Dictionary.com); "Supreme blessedness or happiness." Kind of interesting that the things Jesus talked about on the Sermon on the Mount are called this, isn't it? Read again the passage I posted; notice that in it Jesus is giving people more or less a framework for how we are supposed to live our lives. The entire Sermon on the Mount is in effect on big lesson in how to act in the world not only differently, but correctly (this of course is dependent on whether or not you accept Jesus as God and the Christian scriptures as holy and all that jazz; for those of you reading who don't, are they so bad at being moral guidelines?). Now, what do you see in that passage I posted? You see Jesus calling us to live a life of compassion. It's all over the Sermon on the Mount and all over the gospels. "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you (44)," "but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also (39b)." These two chunks of scripture have at their core the idea that we are to love one another. Let's look at what Jesus says is the greatest commandment; Matthew 20:36-40. Love God with everything you are and "the second is like it;" love others as yourself. God knows that we as humans think we are pretty hot shit. As much as we like to put on a facade and say that we aren't, we definitely think that we are pretty cool. Most of us like ourselves and would not intentionally put ourselves in harm. So the command that we are to love others as ourselves is a huge one. Think about it, if we truly loved our "neighbor" as ourselves, then we'd think pretty highly of them. We would want to treat them the same as we treat ourselves. It is also in doing this that we affirm not only our love for God, but our faith in God. If we love God with our whole selves and we love others as we love ourselves, we are in fact loving God in loving others. We are also serving God when we love others. Let's go back to the beatitudes; in it we find Jesus giving us the way in which we have supreme blessedness and happiness and where is it found? In compassion and love to God and to others.

Hope you all have a safe and happy Christmas/Hanukkah/whatever. So, uh... Happy Holidays!