Tea and Sympathy

...or, Coffee and Sympathy, maybe...

Thinking about agendas.  Everyone has one.  Everyone has an MO that they will push, one way or another, on you, your own needs be damned.  I suppose I am also one of these people, just as guilty of it as the next person.

The one thing you can't expect from anyone, is sympathy.

Which is sad.  Sympathy, empathy... those are core principles of the faith I attest to, the faith I call my own.  But its something I, admittedly, lack, and it's definitely not something I see or encounter from those around me.  It's tragic, because I think sympathy is something desperately needed in society, especially if we're going to grow as people.

I am amazed at people looking at the peaceful revolution in Egypt, showing the power of people working together, the good that can be accomplished through peaceful means, and a major step in human history, and see so many people condemn even the most peaceful actions based on their read of a Bible passage.  To think that the Egyptian people, working together through modern technology to stage a peaceful protest, could be so dismissed by people who claim to be followers of a God who is, if you actually READ the Bible, the God of the little guy, the God of the oppressed and downtrodden.  The God who promises that, if you persevere and have faith, good will overcome evil, no matter how strong evil is and how weak good looks.

This God sent a man who promised that the poor would be kings and that the hungry would be filled and that those who are quick learners would inherit the earth, because there was nothing they couldn't accomplish.  But it's easier to quote something that leave the oppressed in just that state and ignore the plight of those who are helpless.  And I guess it shouldn't surprise me that that lends itself to being "arrogant, overfed and unconcerned, and not helping the poor and needy." (Ezekiel 16:49)

We have this phrase that we bandy about with some authority, that "(g)od helps those who help themselves."  And that's not true.  Not at all.  A more accurate statement would be: "God helps those who CAN'T help themselves."  THAT message is all over the Bible, whether we realize it or not.  It's in Genesis 3, throughout the Exodus,  in Joshua and the Psalms and Proverbs and Isaiah 53.  It's in each and every gospel and the epistles of Paul.  And it wraps up in Revelation, where John of Patmos promises that those oppressed by the Roman Empire will overcome, if they just hold on.

But where does that help come from?  The short answer is God, but the long answer is us.  In Matthew 25, Christ pleaded with us to take that burden on ourselves, to not turn a blind eye to the oppressed and the hungry and the needy.  If we let ourselves be transformed, we will realize that all the oppression in our world is our responsibility, our burden to bear, our problem to take care of.  And if we don't, there will be dire consequences.  Jesus saw it.  His younger half-brother James echoed it.  John of Patmos saw it as well.

And that's why sympathy is so important.  Not just pity, but real sympathy, real love for others.  It's the kind of sympathy that allows us to rejoice when the people of Egypt manage to overthrow a president with nothing more than a gathering, that makes us thrill when the Muslim community forms a human shield in front of the Coptic Egyptian Church to prevent them from being vandalized or harmed during their Christmas service.  That calls us to action when we know others are being oppressed or hurt or kept down anywhere, because we are not islands, we are all part of the continent.  And if someone is washed away, then we are the less...

We're here to call and to care, to till the land, to take care of what was left here for us, both the people and the planet we live on.  And any level of sympathy would recognize that, but sympathy is a choice we have to make.  We have to recognize our responsibility as workers here, the humble, those who believe they've been planted here as the rulers over all the planet, but who realize that the true ruler must humble himself below all else, must take up a position with the low, the ignored, the downtrodden, the helpless, the discarded, the rejected, the put-off, the weak.

Must have the willingness, I suppose, to put aside one's agenda, one's MO, one's personal desire, to help those around them, to accept that there is something more important than you and what you want.

I need to be more sympathetic.  Because I am one who, like everyone else, needs a little sympathy.