On compassion
All the world's great faiths speak about compassion as the most germane facet of their religions. Without compassion, all their words are as chaff in the wind.
And what's struck me is how we have to reaffirm compassion in this fetid Age of Trump. How we have to reaffirm that compassion is something to be valued, not to be denigrated.
We have a political party in this country which devalues compassion and empathy. Which sees them as weakness. How did we get here?
I will speak more at length about this, about how the cult of individualism, as opposed to individuality, cuts down the bonds which bind us together as communities. But it's remarkable how person after person speaks about Biden's compassion as his guiding star, as the thing which motivates him. And how not one of our adversaries can match that. They have no compassion. They are bereft of empathy. The are hard people, and their hearts are closed.
The thing my parents taught me, and which my religious upbringing taught me, was to see God in the poorest, most destitute person. Lord, when did I feed and clothe you? So many of our opponents have forgotten the motive force of the religion they claim—and pervert—as their own. They see Jesus as a strongman, when he was nothing of the sort. He was the Suffering Servant, taking on the sins of the world in the most immaculate act of empathy. That they have erased this from the pulpit is the most telling thing of how they view the world. They really are of the Church of Satan.
In November, we're not just voting to restore America. We're voting to restore a sense of what it means to be human. We're voting to restore the idea that we're all responsible for one another. We all rise and fall together. Your house in the Hollywood Hills means nothing if the homeless roam the flats, hopeless and derelict. Your East Side penthouse will collapse in a sea of penury. To paraphrase Abraham Lincoln, a house cannot stand half caring and half uncaring. We have to reconnect with each other not just as Americans, but as mere human beings.
People on this site have taught me to get past my own prejudices. To not immediately scoff at and take glee in the misfortunes of those opposed to me. It's this expansion of the heart which has to happen if we have any hope as a country. Or, indeed, as a human race. Those who insist on hatred can be as the goats on the left hand. But all the rest I will welcome as the father welcomed the prodigal son. For once he was lost, but now he is found.
Remember all this as we work to heal a nation, and a world.