How do religious people enhance their capacity for feeling compassion?
They would engage in a deepening of their relationship with God, because all that is good in us is a reflection of the divine. As we grow in intimacy with God and so become more God-like ourselves, we will begin to reflect those attributes. It is why we say, “Be compassionate as your heavenly father is compassionate.”
As you grow closer to God, you become more aware of God’s concern for the other. You realise that this spirituality is not a lonely journey. It is about growing in a relationship with a community. You then realise that your own humanity depends on that of the other. In Genesis God makes it clear to Adam that it is not good for him to be alone.
You have spoken of the African concept of “ubuntu”, that “a person is a person through other persons”. Is this key to compassion?
You are human because of your relationships. I am because you are”
This is the idea that you cannot be human in isolation. A solitary human being is a contradiction in terms. You are human precisely because of relationships; you are a relational being or you are nothing. I am because you are. As you grow in your relationship with God, you find this has repercussions on your relationships with others. Hence the two fundamental laws in Christianity: love God and love your neighbour.
In your work on reconciliation in South Africa and Northern Ireland, you encourage victims and perpetrators to talk about their own suffering in order to encourage feelings of compassion. Why is this important?
The word compassion means “suffering with”. You want to enter into the other’s pain, their anguish, passion and suffering. In my reconciliation meetings, when the perpetrator talked about his own upbringing in a deprived and poor home, the victim who was listening to them was almost always affected. We had one case in Northern Ireland where the victim said that if he had been brought up in the circumstances in which the perpetrator had been, he was certain he too would have done what this guy did. It is about trying to get someone to understand how the other turned out to be who they are.
From issue 2549 of New Scientist magazine, 29 April 2006, page 48
Mah Rabu and (RRRR39 (down now))