Counterfeit Compassion

By: Mr. Curmudgeon
mrcurmudgeon@inthepublicsquare.com

“It's very important for our party not to narrow its focus, not to become so inward-looking that we drive people away from a philosophy that is compassionate and decent.”
--George W. Bush in an interview on Fox News Sunday

“The abiding values of the Democratic Party are liberty, social justice, compassion and respect for the dignity and worth of the individual. These principles and our quality of life must always be protected. As the party of the people, we Democrats commit ourselves to these values.”
--Preamble to Hawaii’s Democratic Party Platform, home state of President Barack Obama

In essence, a civil society is based on people minding their own business. Good fences, as the saying goes, make for good neighbors. The formula for daytime soap operas – the engine that fuels its conflicts and therefore its drama – is the interference by one character into the lives of other characters. Players that mind their manners tend to be a storyline’s ancillary background characters.

But human beings are also moral creatures inspired by their Creator to perform acts of compassion and charity. These acts of love manifest themselves in the family, the good works of churches and synagogues around the world, and through the volunteerism and financial contributions of individuals to charitable organizations.

Since the arrival of Marxist dialectical materialism, the attempt has been to replace the compassion of institutions such as the family and the congregation with the social welfare of the state – democratic and totalitarian.

At the Compassion Forum, hosted by Messiah College, then candidate Barack Obama said:

…The biggest danger, I think, for those of us of religious faith when we're in the public sphere is a certain self-righteousness, where we start thinking that ...I've got a direct line to God. You know, that is incompatible with democracy.

You may have a direct line to God. But...the public square is not the place for us to empower ourselves in that way.

I don't know what that master plan is. And I don't presume to know. And I think that none of us know. But what we do -- what I think we can do is to act in ways that are consummate with the values that we cherish.

And sometimes that's harder to do in politics than it should be. But I think that's what's demanded of us.

This clearly illustrates the absurdity and conceit of counterfeit compassion; state compassionist’s condemn people of faith for believing in the certainty of God’s moral order, while insisting on the infallibility of their secular state religion – as sanctified by a majority of the polity’s fallen angels.

The utopian materialist, therefore, sees compassion as license to compel people – against their will – to comply with any programs believed to spring from the deep well of compassion; and there is no “opting out,” in the words of Hillary Clinton.

If intentions, the compassionate believe, are the measure by which we are judged, how can we be condemned? If intentions alone legitimize our actions, no guilty verdicts would have been rendered at Nuremberg. After all, in the minds of Hitler and the monsters who surrounded him, the road to hell they paved was built with the best of intentions – provided you fell within the fold of their utopian Arian race.

The gospel of Matthew records compassion’s conflicting visions:

There came unto him a woman having an alabaster box of very precious ointment, and poured it on his head, as he sat at meat.

 But when his disciples saw it, they had indignation, saying, To what purpose is this waste?

 For this ointment might have been sold for much, and given to the poor.

 When Jesus understood it, he said unto them, Why trouble ye the woman? for she hath wrought a good work upon me. For ye have the poor always with you; but me ye have not always.

This unchristian dismissal of the poor by the King of Kings must have appeared to his Apostles – as it no doubt appears to present-day utopian materialists – Republican and Democrat – as a selfish lack of compassion. Jesus enjoined us to charity, but was troubled by the misdirected focus of his apostle’s compassion. He also said, “Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” In the final analysis, compassion was primarily an act of service to him and not the poor.

In the 1980s, a perverted form of compassion found expression in the slums and humid jungles of Central America. Gustavo Gutiérrez, a priest from Peru and father of Liberation Theology, heretically fused Marxist materialism with Christ’s Gospel of transformative salvation:

…to offer food and drink in our day is a political action; it means the transformation of a society structured to benefit a few who appropriate to themselves the value of the work of others. This transformation ought to be directed toward a radical change in the foundation of society, that is, the private ownership of the means of production…

There has been “an eruption of the poor” challenging the unjust structures of society and the church when either becomes a defender of the status quo rather than the champion of its victims. God is the God of the poor, Jesus Christ is "God become poor…

Totalitarianism, in Gutiérrez’s view, would serve as midwife to God’s kingdom on Earth. Never mind the tens of millions of dead that resulted from this twisted doctrine in the 20th Century…God will sort them out.

Love, the underlying reality that motivates true acts of compassion, cannot be and never will be a function of the state. Despite former President Bill Clinton’s assurances, no President or bureaucratic agency can ever “feel your pain.” It is the family and the church and the bonds of kinship and fellowship as they occur properly in communities that are most able to feel, understand and alleviate human suffering; but these institutions, by their nature, are limited in scope.

The counterfeit compassion of the state robs from Peter in Detroit to pay Paul in Des Moines. This empty and mechanical form of fellowship breeds contempt in the donor and a sense of entitlement from its recipient, which destroys the very character of community that utopian materialist’s claim to champion.

As the Soviet Union proved, false state religion destroys love in the name of love and, in the end, destroys itself.

--Mr. Curmudgeon