On "Pati"

I was driving home for lunch yesterday and quickly realized it was an "early release" day at the school up the street. There were lots of kids walking home on every street, so I slowed down a little more and started watching more carefully.

I looked ahead on my right and could see a lone boy walking into my lane from a side street. He looked sad and had his head down in deep concentration.

I slowed down and eased over to the left side of the street in case he didn't stop and, sure enough, he walked right out into the street as I slowly passed on the opposite side of the street. He never looked up and, frankly, I don't think he ever saw me.

I was a little startled. He'd walked right out into the street without looking! Then I looked back at him through my rearview mirror and I saw what he had in his other hand...

I burst out into roaring laughter!

He was doing the eternal walk of the damned. He had his report card in his hand! "Oh, you poor little rascal", I thought. As a friend of mine says, "There was slow walking and sad singing a'goin' on!"

I went from being a little concerned and kind of annoyed to feeling a world of sympathy. I took that same walk many times when I was in school! My heart went out to that little guy!

Isn't it funny how we feel like we're doing something nice when we feel sympathy for someone? The Bible, however, doesn't call believers to be "sympathetic". We are called to be "compassionate".

Today sympathy is defined as "the fact or power of sharing the feelings of another, esp. in sorrow or trouble; fellow feeling, compassion, or commiseration."*

Likewise, compassion is now defined as "a feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow for another who is stricken by misfortune, accompanied by a strong desire to alleviate the suffering."*

Today common usage is turning the word compassion into a synonym for sympathy, and both words describe feelings. This was not always so. The original meaning of compassion is very different.

Compassion is from the Latin root word

compassionem
"to feel [pity] together"

(com = "together")
plus
(pati = "to suffer").

"Com" is a root in the modern words "Community" and "common", (as in "in common".)

"Pati" is the root from which we get the word "passion" which means "suffering", (as in "the Passion of Christ".) It is also the root of the words "pity" and "piety".

"Compassion" means "common suffering." To be compassionate is to experience a problem with someone.

Sympathy is from the Latin root word

sympathia
"community of feeling, sympathy"

(syn = "together")
plus
(pathos = "feeling")

Interestingly, "Pathos" is also derived from "Pati" but only to refer to the feelings of "Pati". Sympathy has always been about feelings.

"Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience."

Col 3:12 NIV

A command toward action and how to act.

"This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. This then is how we know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence whenever our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything."

1 Jn 3:16–20

Having "pity" here means "doing something for them".

Some would have us to sit in front of a mirror and focus on how we feel. Christ calls us to love through action.

Going back to my story, I felt sympathy for that boy with his report card. I am not so foolish as to get between a boy and his mama when grades are at play. I had no compassion. He's just gonna have to learn like the rest of us.

I guess I could have stopped and told him that there is hope, told him that he'll make it through, and that, if he fixes things and gets those grades up, it will be worth it. There is something "compassionate" I could have done.

But the truth is I was too busy laughing as I drove away.



_{* definitions courtesy of Dictionary.com found at http://dictionary.reference.com}

(Aside: It is interesting to note how changes in common usage are morphing the meanings of many Bible commands for action, such as "compassion", "pity", and "piety", into new definitions describing feelings. Time for a good study on the effects of injecting psychology into the Body of Believers, maybe? We'll save that for another day... May God bless you!)