I wasn’t always steeped in Buddhist thought. It took me taking mysticism courses in college and being part of a contemplative Christian prayer group there to point me in that direction. Being a card-carrying member of the Thomas Merton Fan Club didn’t hurt any in influencing me, either. Compassion is just a great word, and the Buddhists seem to use it lots. I like that.

Christians talk about “being saved” way too much. Now, I’m not saying Buddhists are right and Christians are wrong. But there seems to be something that we over look in our faith, and compassion is as important to Jesus – maybe even more important – than salvation (after all, it does seem that every time anyone asked him “What must I do to be saved?” he tended to answer in absurdities – go and sell all you have, leave home behind, even the familiar “You must be born again,” – which we do not hear the way the first people heard it, since we have heard it far too often, but just try to imagine what the first hearers must have imagined!).

There aren’t a lot of litmus tests to prove someone is a Christian. Some people get caught up in how wet we get. There seems to be nothing in the Bible that actually tells how the act of baptism works, and you find  plenty of paintings of all kinds: Jesus in the Jordan River, soaking wet with a dove or pigeon flying over him (the Greek word for those birds is the same, according to my Southern Baptist Bible Professor); John pouring water from his palm onto Jesus head; and even Jesus looking pretty dry from the waste up. That same Southern Baptist Bible Professor said that the Greek word “baptidzo” (sorry for the bad transliteration) meant, “To put under water.” But then he laughed and  said, “Remember, that’s a Southern Baptist translation!”

No, there’s more to faith than humidity.

For me, one litmus test is found near the end of the Gospel of Matthew, when Jesus tells the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats (and I can go on and on about the tongue-in-cheek insult Jesus gave to his listeners by calling them “sheep,” but you’d have to have spent some time around both sheep and goats to understand, so forgive me, it’s just not important here). We always want to think of ourselves as the ones on the right hand, the sheep. We want to think that we have fed the hungry, clothed the naked, visited the sick and imprisoned, and by extension, treated all people fairly and kindly, and looked after all those who society either ignores or goes out of its way to marginalize. For me, “I  want to be in that number….”

Sometimes, we get too literal here – doing only those things. Jesus only hints at what he means, although it would be great to only do those things listed: what he is talking about is compassion. According to the dictionary, compassion is a sympathetic reaction to someone’s distress AND THE DESIRE TO ALLEVIATE THEIR SUFFERING (my emphasis). It’s not enough to feel sympathy and sorrow; part of compassion is action taken to ease suffering.

Christians supposedly believe that all of us, and everything around us, were created by God. Which means we are part and parcel of each other.Maya Angelou said it more eloquently, “While I know myself as a creation of God, I am also obligated to realize and remember that everyone else and everything else are also God’s creation.” “It ain’t just about me,” one of my campers once said, when asked what they understood about mission and service to others.

Compassion: it’s not just for Buddhists anymore. Christians have been remiss about using the word enough, but Buddhists actually refer to the Buddha as “the Compassionate One.”

Let’s recognize the  Compassionate Jesus more often. I think it matters in how we see ourselves. The Talmud teaches, “We do not see things as they are; we see things as we are.” “Compassionate” would not be a bad way for a Christian to be known.