Compassion is a virtue that is a foundation for many other virtues. How do we develop compassion? A simple way to look at compassion is that it is the ability to empathize with and care for those who are suffering. Do this mean that we need to experience similar suffering to develop compassion?
There are significant implications for this question. One of the most difficult questions we can ask is why there is suffering. If I need to suffer in order to develop compassion for others who are suffering, then my suffering may be essential to me. The suffering I experience, regardless of the cause may be the key to my developing virtue.
This would mean that even suffering from an evil cause could lead to my developing compassion and other virtues. If this is true, then St. Paul’s statement that God uses all things to work for good is easier to understand.
Let’s step back and look at what compassion is, and then come back to this question.
What is Compassion
Compassion is sharing in the pain of another and working to alleviate that pain. To be compassionate, there are a few basic things that need to happen:
- Recognition: We need to recognize another person is suffering
- Empathy: We need to empathize with the person suffering so that we either feel or understand at least some of the suffering the person is experiencing
- Kindness: We need to want to alleviate the suffering of the other person
Without all three of these, developing compassion and acting compassionately is impossible.
In the first requirement, we need to recognize the suffering. Often, we see people in daily life that are undergoing tremendous suffering in their lives. We may see them, but without knowing them and knowing their situation and struggles, we are oblivious to their suffering. Perhaps the person in line in front of you at the grocery store was diagnosed with cancer that morning. We can’t see the diagnosis, the fear and anxiety they likely feel, their great sorrow and depression, or the anger and frustration at their condition.
There are tons of emotions that could be overwhelming them, but there is likely nothing that we can see that would let us know of the hardship they are bearing. They could be emotionally and psychologically in great pain, as well as potentially in physical pain, and we would be completely oblivious.
Without some knowledge, there is no opportunity for compassion. Compassion shares in the suffering of another, so if we don’t know the suffering of another, it is impossible to share in that.
There is an exception to this. In our society, virtually everyone has experienced some significant suffering or trauma. I don’t know what you are suffering and you don’t know my suffering, but we both have experienced hardships and suffering at some point.
Recognizing that we are all broken and hurt in some way is good. I can’t have compassion for your specific situation, but I can recognize there is something you either are struggling with now or struggled with in the past.
Such recognition can help us become more patient and compassionate with people we don’t know. Someone who is angry, frustrated or insulting might be in the midst of tremendous suffering. This does not excuse them from responsibility for their behavior, but it can help us to treat them with compassion and mercy without knowing the specifics of the situation.
Empathy is the second requirement. Knowing someone is suffering is important, but we need to share in that suffering in some way to develop compassion.
Our empathy is limited by our experience. To empathize with someone, we need to feel something similar to what they feel. There are some things I can’t empathize with. The pain my wife experienced during the birth of our daughter is something I can’t understand. I have knowledge of the pain, but I’ve never experienced anything like that. There is a limit to my ability to empathize with that experience.
This is similar in many other areas of life. How could you what another going through during a divorce if you haven’t been married or in a very serious relationship and had that relationship either threatened or broken? This doesn’t mean you need to experience the same situation to feel empathy in such a situation. If you have experienced a variety of strong relationships that have ended in different ways, then you might be able to piece together what a specific person is experiencing in such a situation.
A friend of mine is a doctor. He doesn’t have any issues with anxiety but treats patients with anxiety. He’s studied it and had thousands of conversations with people afflicted with anxiety. Despite all that knowledge and experience, he never had a panic attack.
Then, several years ago, he took a medication that gave him an anxiety attack as an adverse reaction. For several hours, he dealt with anxiety and a full panic attack. He felt exactly some of the feelings and experiences of anxiety. His knowledge was augmented with the understanding and experience of what many of his patients deal with. His ability to empathize with those with anxiety changed that day. It didn’t change his knowledge of treatments, medications, or the working of the brain, but it made him a better more compassionate doctor.
Finally, we need to be moved to kindness, or at least the desire to alleviate suffering. We can’t be indifferent to the suffering. We must be moved to action, or at least the desire for action. In this way, we don’t need to understand exactly the suffering of the other person. If our understanding is sufficient that we hurt with the other person and want to help reduce their suffering, then we are being compassionate.
Some suffering we can help reduce, but there are times when we are helpless. A parent with a child who has a serious medical condition can take the child to the doctor, administer medications, provide good food and a good home environment, and do other things for the child. Despite that, the parent might be helpless in alleviating the pain and suffering of the child.
The desire to act kindly is essential for compassion and ideally following through with kind acts will be our response.
Is Suffering Required for Compassion
Now back to our initial question. It is an interesting question. If I had never suffered, could I be compassionate? Without experiencing some suffering, it is difficult, if not impossible to feel empathy. How can I share in your suffering if I have never experienced anything remotely close to it?
I find this difficult with people who have physical pain. I know what physical pain is like. I’ve played a lot of sports and sustained a number of injuries. Some were extremely painful, but I struggle to remember how that pain felt. I’ve had the experience of reinjuring something and immediately the memory of the pain is right there with the pain. For example, I have sprained my ankles a number of times. Some have been mild, others more serious. A couple of sprains put me on crutches. I know how much that hurt and how it hurt for weeks, but I really can’t remember the feeling.
When I see someone injured, I struggle to share in their physical pain. I can’t remember my past pain, so all I can do is know that their pain must be bad. I’ve met people that seem to recall and empathize with physical suffering very easily. I don’t understand how they do that, and they likely don’t understand how I struggle with this. We’re just different.
Psychological pain is much easier to remember. I can easily remember times in the past that hurt me, and with the memory, a memory of the pain is brought back. I can remember how much some things hurt that happened several decades ago.
When I hear a person has a psychological trauma that hurts them, there is usually something in my background that I can call upon that gives me at least a little insight into it. If they are experiencing something particularly terrible, my experience is likely to be far less severe. Rarely do the worst things in my life line up with the worst things in another’s life. Despite that, I find it much easier to emphasize and imagine the emotional and psychological suffering they must be feeling.
This requires my recall of specific situations and specific pain I have had. If I didn’t have those experiences, I don’t see how I could empathize with people.
The painful moments in my life make it possible for me to feel compassion for others. That compassion then becomes a force that drives action and builds up a number of other virtues.
For this reason, experiencing suffering appears to be necessary for developing compassion. Even more surprising, if compassion is a foundation for other virtues, then experiencing suffering may be necessary for developing a variety of virtues.
For example, empathy and compassion appear to be essential to develop humility, and humility is necessary for all the virtues. Without humility, we act in our own self-interest. There is no virtue in that no matter what action we take.
How do we develop humility? Humility involves placing the needs of another at least on a par with our own, and more commonly, elevating the needs of another above our own desires. What would make us want to prioritize the needs of another above our own needs?
To do this, we need to see the needs of another and share in their experience. In other words, we need compassion.
Several saints what written that humility is a prerequisite and requirement for all the other virtues. If developing compassion is necessary for developing humility, then compassion is critical to all the virtues.
This brings us back to our original question. Experiencing suffering gives us the ability to empathize with others who are suffering, and gives us the ability to develop compassion. That then provides us with the capacity to develop humility and other virtues.
It would seem that suffering is not just necessary for compassion but for developing humility and potentially all the virtues.
This doesn’t mean suffering is good. Instead, suffering is a mechanism to teach us virtue. Now, we must be careful here. Although we may need suffering to develop empathy, compassion, and humility, that doesn’t mean we should create suffering or allow suffering to persist in another person. Compassion dictates that we should seek to alleviate the suffering of others.
There are a few exceptions to this. A parent has a responsibility to discipline a child, and that discipline often involves some form of suffering. Even milder, I suspect that every parent has experienced a time when a small child wanted to do something harmful, such as eating far too much ice cream, and the parent stopped it. There are times when the best thing we can do for someone hurts them in some way. When my daughter was four, she fell and needed several stitches. Based on her screams, stitching up her forehead caused intense suffering. As much I wanted to alleviate that pain, as her father, I had to choose that immediate short-term pain over the consequences of not treating the injury properly at that time.
While we practice compassion, kindness, charity, and love, we can have hope that whatever suffering is being experienced can lead to good. One potential good is that the suffering could help enflame compassion and love.
Ultimately, if St. Paul is right, and God uses all things to work for good, we need to maintain faith and hope. As we strive to reduce suffering, we can trust that God will bring about far greater good from every situation. This trust is hard. We don’t see the full implications of each situation, but that is why faith and hope are such important virtues. We must trust in God even when can’t see the good He is doing.
Roadblocks to Developing Compassion
We have a simple path to develop compassion. If we experience suffering, we can see others suffer similarly and learn to desire to reduce the suffering of others. Our suffering teaches us compassion.
It’s really simple. All of us suffer, so why isn’t everyone incredibly compassionate?
There are a couple of major roadblocks to developing compassion. Although suffering may be one of the major keys to learning compassion, suffering can also put us on a path away from suffering.
Let’s look at the two major roadblocks to developing compassion. Both are the result of pride.
First, when we suffer, if we develop pride and see ourselves as more important than others, then alleviating our own suffering becomes more important than the suffering of others. This leads to a valuation of our suffering versus someone else’s suffering.
Any time we let pride control our thoughts and behaviors, the consequences are going to be disastrous.
When we see our comfort as more important than the suffering of others, we kill compassion in us. There are a lot of people who consider themselves good, and who would help another person in need, but only if the cost is small. Compassion isn’t just feeling bad for someone suffering, but being willing to sacrifice to help reduce that suffering.
If we are caught up in our own desires and comfort, then we are far less likely to consider sacrificing for another.
If we have suffered greatly, it is easy to focus on our past suffering and avoiding future suffering. This is natural. If I touch a hot stove and get burned, I’m likely to avoid touching hot stoves again. This is basic logic, but it gets more complicated when I have to choose between actions. I can go to a movie I want to see or stay with a sick friend to comfort and care for them.
The key to my choice is humility. Without humility, my pleasure or suffering becomes more important to me than your suffering.
This makes suffering a double-edged sword. Do I suffer and resolve to work to help others so that they don’t suffer as I did, or do I resolve to do whatever I must to avoid suffering again even at the expense of another? The fight is a fight between humility and pride. With humility, I can develop great compassion, but with pride, I can develop an indifference to the suffering of others. Even worse, I can begin to see other people purely for their utility in helping me achieve my comfort and pleasure.
The second roadblock is even more sinister. With pride, I prioritize my suffering over yours. This is a lack of compassion. The second roadblock is resentment and causes the complete opposite of compassion.
Resentment can develop in two ways. First, a person can become envious and resentful of those who don’t suffer as they did. Second, a person can become resentful of a person that caused them suffering.
Regardless of the cause, resentment can lead to malevolence that seeks to inflict pain and suffering.
Resentment can develop in anyone, but it grows faster in those who were hurt by specific individuals. By having a person to focus their blame for the suffering, it is a small step to resent them and desire their suffering.
Even if we don’t have a specific person to blame, for example, a person that gets cancer or another disease may suffer greatly, but not due to the actions of another. In such a case, we can develop a resentment of those who are not afflicted with the same suffering.
Resentment twists the mind to hate others and desire their pain and suffering. It is a terrible spiral into darkness, where anger, hate and jealousy grow. There is no satisfaction in such a spiral. Seeing another suffer does not alleviate suffering and it does heal the person. Instead, it desensitizes the person to the suffering of others and makes them more cruel.
The cure for resentment is forgiveness and mercy. Christ on the Cross forgave the men who were torturing and killing Him. He did not develop resentment, but instead sought what was best for them.
How do we learn to forgive a person who hurt us, especially if that person is unrepentant? This is incredibly hard. It is natural to be angry when someone hurts us. Righteous anger is a virtue. It is a revulsion towards injustice and evil. We don’t want to be indifferent to injustice and to suffering. That is a lack of compassion.
Our anger is ok, but it needs to be directed at the injustice. If we direct our anger toward the person that caused the suffering, we will develop resentment, leading to a malicious desire for retribution. This is the opposite of compassion. We start to want to inflict pain and suffering rather than alleviate it.
Compassion for Sinners
One of the more difficult things to recognize is that when a person sins gravely, they hurt themselves far more than they hurt others. A murderer may take the physical life of another person, but the murderer kills their own spiritual life by their sin.
We don’t see this effect. Instead, we see the physical result. What if we could see the spiritual effect as well? Would we be more compassionate?
Instead, we typically see the person who caused the suffering seem to have either no consequences or consequences that are significantly lighter than the suffering they caused. We see this injustice and it easily leads to resentment.
A number of mystics have described visions they had of hell. They often explain that their description is far less terrible than the reality that they saw. That’s after they explain that hell is far more painful and terrible than the worst suffering on earth.
When a person sins gravely, they are rejecting God and choosing eternal damnation. They might live decades on earth without our seeing any negative consequences, but that’s not the end. We will all face judgment before God.
Unrepentant sinners will be punished, and the punishment of hell is so terrible that we should not wish it on anyone, no matter how terrible their sins. Jesus while on the Cross understood this. He wanted to save those who were torturing Him from the fires of hell.
There are sins and atrocities that truly disgust and anger us. Although we may have similar feelings in this, there will be something that offends you more than anything else. That may be different from what I consider the most egregious and malicious. Try to identify what that is for you. Then, pray for people who have committed that sin. To take this step higher, find a specific person that committed that sin and pray for them.
This is really hard. Praying for God to be merciful to someone that we want to be punished requires significant resolve and effort. Years ago, I started this. I chose a person who had committed horrendous crimes and prayed for their repentance and salvation every day. He disgusted me, and I wanted him to pay for what he had done. I wanted him to suffer as he had caused others to suffer. I didn’t know him or the people he had hurt, but the severity of his crimes angered me tremendously.
I compared his crimes to an eternity separated from God and spent in excruciating hell fire, and realized that if he didn’t repent, his eternal punishment would be far worse than the pain he caused to the people he hurt.
Damnation is hard for us to comprehend. When we consider how terrible it is, it may seem unjust. It isn’t. There are two reasons for this. First, any sin we commit against another person is finite in its effect, but it is also an offense against God. With God who is infinite, the offense is infinite. So, with an infinite offense, the punishment is eternal.
Second, hell is eternal because the person is unrepentant. This means they never lose their resolve to commit the sin. The sinner eternally desires the sin, and essentially continues to commit the sin in their will eternally. As long as they are committed to the sin, they are locked in the punishment.
Let’s imagine a far lesser comparison to this. Someone comes into your house and starts defacing the walls with crayons. You pinch them, causing them pain, and tell them they need to stop. Despite the pain, they continue. No matter how long you pinch or how severe the pinch gets, their resolve to deface your house only grows stronger. Yes, it’s a bizarre analogy, but there are many who will not turn from their sins no matter the consequences.
For the grave sinner who is unrepentant, before they are judged before God, there is a simple choice, repent and be forgiven, or persist in the sin and endure eternal punishment. Scripture tells how one third of the angels chose eternal torment and punishment rather than submission before God. Christ said many people choose the wide road to eternal damnation and few choose the narrow path to heaven. This should scare us. Fear of the Lord is a virtue (as long we do not take it so far that we deny God’s mercy).
This makes it clear that many people are at risk of eternal damnation due to their sins. Can we be compassionate towards them for their spiritual well-being?
Praying for people that have hurt us or people we know that have committed terrible sins can help us develop spiritual compassion. This will strengthen our compassion in all situations.
In conclusion, use your suffering to learn compassion. Fight against pride and resentment. Seek the good of others, even those who have hurt you, and pray for them. All of this requires humility along with faith, hope and love, but as we develop compassion, our humility, faith, hope and love will grow.