False Compassion

Originally posted on January 16, 2011

In our daily struggle to maintain a strong faith and love for our neighbor, it is very easy to accidentally slip into a state of false compassion.  It seems that we often find ourselves more bothered and preoccupied by the suffering of someone that we know and love rather than by our own suffering.  Why is that?  Why do we risk losing our peace of mind and heart over the problems of someone else?  Is it because we are truly saddened by the other person’s suffering or is it because that person’s suffering is inflicting us with the fear of suffering ourselves?

Compassion for our fellow human beings is a necessary virtue in order to advance toward our salvation.  As Christians, we are all called to prayer and works of charity; we’re all called to love one another as ourselves.  But when this true compassion is mistaken for false compassion and fear and anxiety replace the trust we are supposed to have in the Lord, we can be sure that something has gone quite wrong.  We risk losing our interior peace when we worry about a loved one’s woes to the extent that we forget to place our confidence in God and abandon ourselves into His care.  After all, doesn’t He love our loved ones infinitely more and better than we do or ever will?

False Compassion Causes Fear and Anxiety

Excessive anxiety can occur when false compassion replaces trust in God.  For instance, a family struggling with issues concerning poor health, unemployment, depression, etc. or a parent’s despair over problems concerning his/her child will often result in total loss of interior peace within the family.  And when peace is lost, fear and anxiety swiftly step in to take its place.  Though the distress we feel concerning our loved ones is legitimate and understandable, it is often disturbed and anxious; partly because of this lack of trust in God, and partly because it is of a selfish nature.  Though certainly not intentional, much of our worry and stress over another person is really just a reflection of our own lives and the fear of what could happen if, God forbid, the same misery that has inflicted our loved one ends up inflicting us, as well.

A few years ago I was going through a very difficult time.  I remember reaching out to various family members and friends because I was hurting and I needed verbal consolation or even just a listening ear – someone to tell me that it will all work itself out in time.  But what I discovered through that miserable era was that some of my loved ones and friends were reacting to my adverse situation out of sheer relief that it wasn’t happening to them.  It wasn’t as if they didn’t care that I was hurting, but I could sense an undertone of Thank God I’m not going through that ordeal which, unfortunately, caused me to withdraw from wanting to continue confiding in them.  I was uncomfortable knowing that their real concern stemmed from fear for themselves and their own lives rather than for sincere compassion for me and what I was going through.  But, on the flip side, the people who sincerely cared and hurt because I was hurting could’ve pierced the clouds and reached all the way to Heaven with their many words of comfort and hours of time spent on making sure that I knew that they were there for me.

False Compassion Is Transparent

When I was in my distressed state, I knew when a person reaching out to me was being sincere vs. insincere; it was just a “gut” feeling that I had.  False compassion can be one of the most transparent flaws in a person’s nature.  No one wants to go around being that obvious – having his/her family and friends able to see through the phony facade.  But to be fair, in many cases it isn’t a facade because the person doesn’t realize how obvious he/she is being.

I have a friend who, along with her husband, went on a biking trip this past summer/fall along the East Coast Greenway.  They had been planning this trip for at least a year and were absolutely thrilled when it came down to the day of departure.  As it turns out, their trip was filled with wonderful adventures, happy reunions with old friends, good food, lots of laughter and tons of fun.  The weather was perfect most of those many weeks and in fact, as I recall my friend telling me, it only rained once.  They even had a blog detailing each and every adventure from Maine to Florida!

The only negative part about the whole trip was that one night my friend ate something that didn’t agree with her and she spent the night feeling ill and not getting much sleep.  However, she still managed to get up on her bike the following morning and continue on with the journey, in spite of her stomach ailments from eating the bad food.  When she told one of her friends about the trip, rather than comment on the happy, positive aspects of it, her friend instead decided to dwell on the one negative part – the food intolerance night.  Over and over again this friend kept saying something like I can’t believe you were sick!  That’s so terrible!  You must’ve felt awful! And the false compassion this friend exhibited was so blatantly obvious that my friend felt the need to tell me about it!  Granted, this could be a bit of a separate issue from what I’ve been talking about so far.  In fact, it actually sounds to me more like a classic case of envy/jealousy than anything else.  But still, the point is well made that the compassion for my friend’s food illness was anything but sincere, and instead, was motivated by negative feelings rather than positive ones.  And look at the adverse ripple effect it had: I’m actually now writing about it in my blog!

False Compassion Is Useless

We all need to remember that our words and body language have lasting effects on our friends and loved ones.  We need to learn to discern and think twice before we react out of love of self instead of true love for others.  None of us are perfect, but we at least have to admit that there is much room for growth and positive change.  Instead of overdoing the OOHS and OH NOS!  and HOW TERRIBLES! that are the prime verbal culprits in false compassion,  maybe instead we need to take a step back and think about how we truly feel about our loved one’s misery.  Are we sincerely sorry for that person’s pain or are we reacting out of some self-oriented motive?  There is no room for false compassion in our journey of faith.  It is absolutely useless.