We at Wheaton have embraced the concept that Christians should not be judgmental but full of compassion. Yet divisive issues will continue to present difficulties when our dear brothers and sisters embrace a position that we must view as morally wrong. One such issue was highlighted in the past issue of the wheaton Record. As I was reading the article, I came across a rather surprising quote by an alumni group advocating for the minority opinion. “… talk about ‘compassion’ often felt like pity at best and or at worst intolerance cloaked in the language of love.”
When I read this line, I did a double-take. What is wrong with pity? Isn’t pity a virtue, one that best shows our love and compassion? I actually do understand these peoples feelings. Modernism has tried to portray pity as contemptuous; unfortunately it has been successful, at least on the popular level. Listen to some of Merriam-Webster’s definitions: Pitiful – “exciting pitying contempt” Pitiable- “of a kind to evoke mingled pity and contempt especially because of inadequacy” Pathetic- “pitifully inferior or inadequate”. In light of this equating of pitiful with pathetic, I wonder how many of you knew that pity was once viewed wholly good.
Pity comes from the Latin Pietas which is the same root as Pious. Pity originally was a virtue describing a kind of compassionate holiness. So how did modernism convert our thinking on pity from an emulation of God, whose supreme act of pity is the incarnation and death of Christ, into a contemptuous action? Well, part of the fault lies with Christians. We have used a monstrous transformed pity, a holier-than-thou attitude. This demonic attitude, which only resembles pity, is one part despising and another pride. This particular breed of contempt led the David Hume to postulate that there were two kinds of pity, the virtuous and the condescending.
Yet the blame is not solely ours, for even when we portray benevolent pity, it is accepted as contempt. I propose that the disappearance of the benevolent pity in the eyes of the public is a result of modernist views on equality. Inequality is a very misrepresented concept in the West. Today, people think that any form of inequality is evil. This informs our views on morality and pity. If I pity you then I am implying that there is an inequality about our relationship, with you below me. The first two lines of William Blake’s “The Human Abstract” read “Pity would be no more / If we did not make someone Poor” Note the use of “make” here; we are artificially making someone worse than they really are.
But in reality, the world is full of inequalities, and they are never the object of ridicule except in certain realms (i.e. the government and morality). If you are better at technical issues or childcare than I am, then I might enlist your help thus implying and benefiting from an inequality in our relationship. Inequalities are not devils, but the catalyst for kindness, for compassion, for a beneficial pity.
And so I encourage you with the title of this post; let us be pitiable. This is an encouragement on two levels. First, let us recognize our own pitiful natures. “There is no one righteous, not even one.” “For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” Even the die-hard equalitists must agree that Christianity does not impose a sense of inequality but is one of the most equal systems in the world, albeit a terrible sort. Praise be to God who saw fit to pity this world of sinners and send His Son for our salvation. Second, let us be able to be pitied. Let us not reject the compassion of others because we are affronted at the inequality of the situation. Instead let us reap the full benefits of entering into the debt of love knowing that this debt is not enslaving but liberating. We can never repay the good deeds of others, but we can in turn become God’s grace to others, we can pity. To live in the best place of all, we must learn how to pity and be pitiable.
Justified Beliefs 