Lessons on Compassion Part 1 of 2 Understanding the Past

Everybody has a past.  A person’s past can be full of joy and excitement, generating positive emotions, or it can be a time of constant discontentment and ultimate devastation, producing a wish to forget it entirely.  Everyone’s past is different and a large part of what makes us who we are in the present.  The past shapes and molds us through joy and suffering.  It can be the source of many answers if we are willing to take the time to discover the lessons to be learned.   Ultimately, the past is the gateway for us to gain compassion for ourselves and others in our family, church, work, and community.  Compassion is a concept taught to the majority of religious people as a duty they ought to perform.  It is something that Jesus exemplified throughout his entire ministry and is commanded by the Holy Spirit, through the apostles.  Nevertheless, compassion is a difficult quality for a great number of people to obtain and to practice.Understanding others is a primary way to build compassion and looking at what a person has been through is the first step.  A person’s past can tell us a lot about his or her life.  I act in certain ways because I learned to do so from events in the past.  When an onlooker understands my past, he will be better able to comprehend why I behave the way I do in the present.  Jesus implemented this in Mark 6:34. The passage says that Jesus had compassion for the crowd because they were like sheep without a shepherd.  Then he began to teach them.  These people lacked the guidance and direction to act in a fashion that was in accordance with the will of God.  Jesus saw this and began to teach the people how they ought to behave.  Being God, he also was able to know the physical and emotional pain each person faced exactly, what sins they had committed and what traps the devil had waiting for them, among other things.  Since Jesus understood their past, he knew they were doing the best they could with the knowledge they had.  When I first read this passage, I used the excuse that of course Jesus has the ability to know the past of people, but I don’t.  However, I have come to realize that, although I do not have the level of ability that Jesus did, I am, nevertheless, capable of asking questions and listening.  One participant had a father who cheated on his mother for many years and inflicted significant damage on the family.  It was hard for this participant to even think about trying to have compassion for his dad, much less attempt it.  Since he wanted to learn how to remove his emotional pain, the participant started asking his dad questions about his past. He discovered that around age eight, his father’s siblings gave him marijuana and alcohol and, at age 13, he lost his virginity to a 19 year-old.  This man was sucked in by negative behaviors and corrupt peers at such a young age that he had little chance of acting any other way.  His parents never taught him to effectively deal with painful events and these behaviors became a way for him to cope with the hurts of life. The participant did not learn to excuse his father’s behaviors, but he began to have compassion for him and to rebuild a relationship with him.Anyone can understand another’s past by asking questions and listening.  There is no excuse not to gain compassion for others.  The tools are available; they simply have to be used.Lessons on Compassion Part 2 of 2, Looking to the Future, will be available March 29^th.