Dave Andrews

We need to begin with the realisation that our world is in trouble; and that religion, which was meant to make things better, has often made things worse. We do not suffer from the lack of religion, but from the lack of love. So if we are to have any hope of survival, we need to find a way to be able to care for ourselves, and for our world, once again. It is my view that a radical spirituality of compassion is not merely our best hope; it is our only hope.

But we may well ask ourselves: how can this generation, which is more troubled than ever before—more disillusioned, more lonely,and more depressed; more anxious, more angry, and more aggressive—how can this generation rediscover the capacity to care enough to save us from destruction? Especially when so often so many of us experience so little care ourselves in the increasingly dysfunctional families, disintegrating communities, and destructive political-economies which shape our lives? And when at every turn we are encouraged to opt, not for care, but for the slick quick-fix kill, which doesn’t bother about trying to solve problems, but simply blows them away?

The psychologist, Dan Goleman, says that the question about the survival of humanity is a question that all of us will have to answer in our own hearts. He says that at the heart of the matter is ‘empathy’. Empathy is the capacity for us to feel how others feel. It is, he says, in empathising with potential victims—people in danger or distress—and feeling how they might feel, that we can be motivated to refrain from harming them, and, hopefully, even perhaps consider helping them. Empathy is the basis of compassion.

The philosopher John Macmurray says that while most of us might be willing to give intellectual assent, in our heads, to the priority for us to rediscover our capacity for empathy, it simply will not happen unless we give some emotional affirmation to that intellectual assent, in our hearts, and make it happen! The issue is not so much a conflict between our heads and our hearts, but a conflict that we have in our hearts. In our hearts we know that we cannot live without love. And that love involves an enhanced sensibility: an enhanced appreciation of, and affection for, one another’s lives. But in our hearts, we also know that if we develop an enhanced sensibility towards the beautiful yet painful reality of one another’s lives, it will inevitably entail great agony as well as great joy. So we vacillate, wanting at the same time to become more loving, and to become anything but more loving.

As we prevaricate, we are tempted to withdraw from sensibility, which involves a greater sensitivity toward the total reality of one another’s lives, into sentimentality. This involves more sensitivity to those parts of one another’s lives which are less painful (like rumour, innuendo, scandal and trivia), and less sensitivity to those parts of one another’s lives that are more painful (like disadvantage, disability, disease and death). Thus we tend to retreat into an unreal world of infotainment, sit-coms, chat-shows, and hot-dogs magazines, which give us the illusion of relating to the real world, without actually relating to it at all.

But the only way we can live, is to live in the real world. The only way we can live in the real world, is to love the real world. And the only way we can love the real world, is to overcome our fear of the suffering that love in the real world involves. We must not allow our fear of the suffering to so take over our lives that we put all our efforts into building up our defences against the world, and so alienate ourselves from the very reality to which we need to relate. We need to find a faith that can help us overcome our fear of suffering, so that we can embrace the world as it is, love it, warts and all, and live our lives, with friend and foe alike, to the full.

And the best way I know of we can do that, is by following the way of Christ.

Excerpt from Not Religion But Love http://www.daveandrews.com.au/nrbl.html