The Catalog of Good Deeds: Christian Virtues

Showing posts with label Christian Virtues. Show all posts

Unpracticed faith—that is, faith without works—St. James writes, is dead. It has no transformative or sanctifying power; it is intellectual assent that descends into paralyzing doubt (or worse), which is no faith at all. That’s because faith is revealed, confirmed, and made perfect by our actions not affirmations (for by their fruits you will know them).

Consider a child, standing nervously at the edge of the pool, coaxed by his father to dive into the water. He has a choice: plunge headlong into the pool where the able arms of dad are ready to receive him, or remain at water’s edge frozen in fear, dithering in doubt. He may sincerely believe that his father won’t let harm come to him, but until he jumps, fear holds him captive in functional unbelief, revealing that his faith is in a danger that his father cannot save him from.

When the “rubber” of belief meets the “road” of decision, a choice has to be made. There is no middle road other than doubt, which defaults to unbelief and tosses us to and fro on the agnostic waves of uncertainty. Indeed, we will never walk on the troubled waters of life until faith moves us to get out of the boat!

Functional Atheists

Behavioral studies by various pollsters suggest that the vast majority of Americans who self-identify as Christian are functional non-Christians, if not atheists, with rates of divorce, sexual promiscuity, substance abuse, and other behaviors on par with those of their non-Christian neighbors. (By their fruits you will know them.)

In his 2001 book Growing True Disciples, George Barna reported, “To the naked eye, the thoughts and deeds (and even many of the religious beliefs) of Christians are virtually indistinguishable from those of nonbelievers.” Six years later he similarly reported, “born again Christians are statistically indistinguishable from non-born again adults on most of the behaviors studied.” The studied behaviors included lying, substance abuse, and extra-marital sex. (By their fruits you will know them.)

For example, although the Church teaches that sex is reserved within the marital bond of one man and one woman, 94 percent of adults admit to having had non—marital sex. Considering that roughly 70 percent of the U.S. populace is Christian, it is safe to say that a lot of Christians—very likely, the majority—are guilty of sexual sin. (By their fruits you will know them.)

A Christian I’ll call “Kurt” is a case in point. Over breakfast one morning, as Kurt was telling me about his girlfriend, I was taken aback when he breezily insinuated the sexual nature of their relationship. When I asked how he squared that with Church teaching, his jaw went slack as if I’d asked about the burial rites of the Inuit. After an awkward pregnant pause, he replied, “I’m committed to her!” as if that would resolve any biblical difficulty I might bring up. I brought up a few. He was unmoved. A few months later I heard that he was in another “committed” relationship.

On the issue of abortion, the pro-choice Guttmacher Institute found that in 2014, 54 percent of women who chose abortion were Christian (24 percent Catholic and 30 percent Protestant) compared to 46 percent who were non-Christian. That finding led the Jesuit publication, America, to report that Catholics are just as likely to get an abortion as anyone else. What’s more, although the Catholic Church stands resolutely against abortion, more Catholics favor its legality than oppose it. Every Sunday morning at the Catholic Church I attend, I’ve noticed a car in the parking lot with a bumper sticker stating, “STOP the GOP war on women!”

Many of these people most likely would consider themselves good Christians. They are active in church, perhaps theologically conservative, even espousing conventional Church teaching. Yet, when it comes to the way they actually live they have cultivated, what Mary Eberstadt has called, the “will to disbelieve” what the Church plainly teaches.

By their words, they profess faith in Christ, but by their actions they reveal that their faith is in their instincts, urges, feelings, and the secular sirens of culture: Dear Abby, Oprah, Joel Osteen. (By their fruits you will know them.)

Barna’s research suggests some underlying causes here. From surveys taken between 2005 to 2010, Barna found that less than 20 percent of Christians are committed to spiritual formation. What’s more, says Barna, “less than one out of ten have talked about their faith with a non-Christian, fasted for religious purposes, and had an extended time of spiritual reflection during the past week.”

He goes on to report that among self-identified Christians, less than 3 percent “have surrendered control of their life to God, submitted to His will for their life, and devoted themselves to loving and serving God and other people.”

Just think—70% of Americans profess to be Christians, and yet as few as 3% could be called disciples—that is, believers who have dedicated their lives to become more like Jesus by learning to do the things He commanded us to do. The rest are people of unpracticed faith who, if church members, are in effect “belonging-non-believers.”

In result, we have Christians who are exuding more the stench of death than the aroma of life and a Church that is losing its social and moral capital in an ever-increasingly secularized world. Lord have mercy!

By Regis Nicoll

Excerpts from: Crisis Magazine

Source: https://www.orthodoxytoday.org/blog/2018/06/unpracticed-faith-is-functional-atheism/

“Take up the sword of humility and meekness, hold it always in your hand, and mercilessly cut off the head of our chief foe.” This incredible man of God, St. Theophan the Recluse (+1891), passed on many wonderful writings for us. Here are just a few on Humility and Love. Each section is worth pausing and thinking more fully about.

Where Humility and Love Are Absent, Everything Spiritual Is Absent

You say that you have no humility or love. So long as these are absent, everything spiritual is absent. What is spiritual is born when they are born and grows as they grow. They are the same for the soul as mastery of the flesh is for the body. Humility is acquired by acts of humility, love by acts of love.

The Measure of Humility

Keep both eyes open. This is the measure of humility: if a man is humble he never thinks that he has been treated worse than he deserves. He stands so low in his estimation that no one, however hard they try, can think more poorly of him than he thinks himself. This is the whole secret of the matter.

Defects of Character

The Lord sometimes leaves in us some defects of character in order that we should learn humility. For without them we would immediately soar above the clouds in our own estimation and would place our throne there. And therein lies perdition.

The Path to Humility — Obedience

There is no need for me to repeat to you that the invincible weapon against all our enemies is humility. It is not easily acquired. We can think ourselves humble without having a trace of true humility. And we cannot make ourselves humble merely by thinking about it. The best, or rather, the only sure way to humility is by obedience and the surrender of our own will. Without this it is possible to develop a satanic pride in ourselves, while being humble in words and in bodily postures. I beg you to pay attention to this point and, in all fear, examine the order of your life. Does it include obedience and surrender of your will? Out of all the things you do, how many are done contrary to your own will, your own ideas and reflections? Do you do anything unwillingly, simply because you are ordered, through sheer obedience? Please examine it all thoroughly and tell me. If there is nothing of this type of obedience, the kind of life you lead will not bring you to humility. No matter how much you may humble yourself in thought, without deeds leading to self-abasement humility will not come. So you must think carefully how to arrange for this.

Conceit and Censoriousness

Humbling oneself is not yet humility, but only the desire and search for humility. May the Lord help you acquire this virtue. There is a spirit of illusion which in some unknown way deceives the soul by its guile. It so confuses our thoughts that the soul thinks itself humble, whereas inwardly it conceals an arrogant and conceited opinion of its own worth. So we have to go on looking carefully into our heart. External relationships which lead us to humility are the best means here.

You have been somewhat negligent. The fear of God left you, and soon after that attention left you too, and you fell into the habit of censuring people. You say that you have sinned inwardly, and this is true. Repent quickly and beg God’s forgiveness. Such a fault as that brings its own retribution: the fault is inward, and so is the punishment. We can condemn others not only in words but also with an inner movement of the heart. If the soul, when thinking of someone, criticizes them adversely, then it has already condemned them.

Taking Offence, and Turning the Other Cheek

You say that you are offended. To be offended at lack of attention is to consider oneself worthy of attention, and consequently to set a high value upon oneself in the heart; in other words, to have a heart swollen with pride. Is this good? Is it not our duty to endure wrongful accusation? Certainly it is. How then shall we start practicing this duty? After all, when we are commanded to endure, we have to endure every unpleasantness without exception, and endure gladly, without losing our inward peace. The Lord told us, when smitten on one cheek, to turn the other also, but we are so sensitive that if a fly so much as brushes us with its wing in passing we are immediately up in arms. Tell me, are you prepared to obey this commandment of the Lord about being smitten on the cheek? You will probably say, Yes, you are prepared. Yet the instance you describe in your letter is precisely an occasion where this commandment applies. Being smitten on the cheek should not be taken literally. We should understand by it any action of our neighbor in which, it seems to us, we did not receive due attention and respect — any action by which we feel degraded, and our honor, as people call it, wounded. Every deed of this kind, however trivial — a look, an expression — is a blow on the cheek. Not only should we endure it, but we should also be ready for some greater degradation which would correspond to turning the other cheek. What happened in your case was a very light slap on one cheek. And what did you do? Did you turn the other? No; so far from turning it, you retaliated. For you have already retaliated; you have made the other person feel that you are somebody, as though saying, “Keep your hands off me!” But what are we good for, you and I, if we do this? And how can we be regarded as disciples of Christ if we do not obey His commandments? What you should have done is to consider: do I deserve any attention? If you had had this feeling of unworthiness in your heart you would not have taken offense.

Take up the Sword of Humility

Spiritual unrest and passions harm the blood and effectively damage our health. Fasting and a general abstinence in our daily life are the best way to preserve our health sound and vigorous.

Prayer introduces the human spirit into God’s realm where the rock of life dwells; and the body also, led by the spirit, partakes of that life. A contrite spirit, feelings of repentance, and tears — these do not diminish our physical strength but add to it, for they bring the soul to a state of comfort.

You wish that contrition and tears would never leave you, but you had better wish that the spirit of deep humility should always reign in you. This brings tears and contrition, and it also prevents us from being puffed up with pride at having them. For the enemy manages to introduce poison even through such things as these.

There is also spiritual hypocrisy which may accompany contrition. True contrition does not interfere with pure spiritual joy, but can exist in harmony with it, concealed behind it.

And what of self-appreciation? Take up the sword of humility and meekness, hold it always in your hand, and mercilessly cut off the head of our chief foe.

By Fr. Stephen Powley

Source: https://upwordglance.com/2016/09/28/humility-and-love-by-st-theophan/

In his list of virtues which comprise the fruit of Spirit working in one’s life, St. Paul lists that of “goodness” (Greek agathosune, αγαθοσυνη) about midway in the list (Galatians 5:22f). One scarcely speaks of goodness as one of the virtues anymore. In our culture describing something as “good” is rather tepid praise; it is like saying something is “okay”, and “good” comes first in our ascending ladder of praise—“good, better, best”. Love, joy, and kindness are praised and admired, but goodness is hardly remembered at all. Indeed, though it stood toward the summit of virtues in the ancient world, our culture replaces “goodness” as the summit of virtues with “tolerance”—a tolerance always subject to the whims of fashion and standing within a world which knows no unchanging moral compass. Those whims might dictate almost anything. One season eating meat is declared unethical, and the next the wearing of fur. But apart from these arbitrary declarations of fashion, pretty much everything is tolerated—except, paradoxically, true goodness.

That is because true goodness is divine. When a rich young ruler addressed Christ with an idle and unthinking bit of flattery as “good teacher” (Mark 10:17), Christ rebuked the man with the reminder that “no one is good but God alone”. Christ of course did not mean that He was not divine or that goodness was not to be found in the world, but that true goodness was transcendent, luminous, unworldly, and the word was not to be tossed around so casually.

Goodness, as we see from the words and works of God in the Scriptures, is binary and discriminating. That is, it discriminates virtue from vice, and righteousness from evil. It looks upon evil with loathing, hatred, and disgust, and is filled with anger and wrath against it—or (if one prefers) with moral indignation. The more one is good the greater one’s sense of moral indignation when one encounters instances of sexual slavery, of child abuse, of violence against women and racial oppression, of the greed of the 1% which grinds the faces of the poor and wages exploitive war for the sake of material gain. Anyone who encountered such vice and evil and who remained calm, murmuring, “Oh well, nobody’s perfect” should not be praised for their tolerance, but censured for their lack of moral compass. True goodness rises up in wrath against such evil.

And in evil’s binary opposite, such goodness rejoices in virtue. When it encounters kindness to the poor, gentleness in the face of brutality, a forgiving spirit which refuses to retaliate against wrong, when it meets with honesty, industry, faithfulness, sexual purity, it exults and pours forth praise. We in the Church reaffirm and celebrate such a binary approach to life every time we sing one of psalms as a church antiphon: “The Lord loves the righteous, but the way of the wicked He brings to ruin” (Psalm 146). As the ancient document known as the Didache long ago declared, there are two ways only—the way of life and the way of death, the path of wisdom and that of folly. Goodness discriminates, exulting in the former and abominating the latter. Modern secular society does not have a good grasp on the binary nature of goodness; it gets queasy and nervous whenever evil is denounced. Authentic goodness has been replaced by non-judgmental niceness. (Rather inconsistently, it has no trouble itself denouncing traditional Christianity and anything it considers “non-progressive”.)

Our challenge as parents and teachers is to help our children to discriminate as well, training them to know instinctively what is worthy of praise and what is worthy of blame. The paths of wisdom and folly are not usually clearly marked in our day, and the path of folly which leads to death often looks superficially like the path of wisdom. A solid education therefore will therefore not simply teach children readin’, writin’, and ‘rithmetic, but also the even more valuable skills of discerning between virtue and vice, and of recognizing the excellence of the former. But we must do so with open eyes and courageous hearts, for children thus trained will not be welcomed by the world. Moral compromise, not integrity, is valued by the world, and leads to worldly success. (If you doubt this, look at the inner lives of those at the summits of political power, and ask yourself if they achieved those heights without making moral compromises.) True goodness always gives offence, and the notion that if a person is truly good they will be liked and rewarded by the world is nonsense. A good person will always offend those whose lack of goodness and purity are revealed by the goodness of the good person. But children trained to love goodness will choose virtue all the same, preferring the praise of God to the applause of the crowd.

This goodness, if it is true goodness, is not merely ethical, and has nothing to do with cold moralism with all its self-righteous judgmentalism. It is not the result of keeping abstract rules, but of sowing to the Spirit (Galatians 6:8). It is the fruit of grace, not of self-exertion. Like the good Lord Himself, it is transcendent, divine, luminous. And acquiring such goodness is the only way to find our way home.

By Fr. Lawrence Farley

Source: https://blogs.ancientfaith.com/nootherfoundation/on-the-virtue-of-goodness/

Spiritual life is full of paradoxes. Thus, an individual doesn’t notice his sins before he turns to God. He can’t even imagine that he has to confess anything at all. As soon as the individual turns to God, he immediately finds out that he is a sinner. Before we turn to God, the only thing that we can see is our false righteousness. When we encounter God, we begin to acknowledge our sinfulness and powerlessness. Apparently, our image of self is very distorted until God sheds his light into our souls.

Self-righteousness makes you blind, while repentance makes you see. We move forward only when we finally begin to feel and realize how weak and unstable we are without God. The paradox here lies in the fact that a soul that acknowledges that she is lost, will be saved, whilst the soul that regards herself saved, will perish.

Using visible signs to evaluate your spiritual progress is a mistake. It will lead us to notice our so-called achievements everywhere. We will begin to count how much good we have done: we gave money to a beggar, we helped an old lady to cross the street, we don’t swear for a long time already, we don’t drink too much booze, we don’t smoke, we don’t fight with anybody. Don’t we deserve the Paradise? This kind of statistical thinking makes you arrogant, and arrogance in turn leads to failure.

Take, for example, a young man who decided to quit smoking. He stopped smoking on the first day of the Great Lent — amazing, isn’t it? After that, he glued a cigarette to the door of his toilet, where he had used to smoke, and wrote “I DID IT” in big letters. He intended it to remind him that he had summoned enough willpower to defeat his weakness, and that he wasn’t attached to cigarettes any longer. However, two years later he ran into some trouble and started smoking a lot again. That is what “I did it” means; that’s what your reliance on your own strength means. That is why the path to perfection in the Gospel starts with the commandment “Blessed are the poor in spirit…” Our spiritual achievement are possible only thanks to God’s power. We shouldn’t rely on ourselves.

You shouldn’t measure your spiritual advancement by counting the good actions that you do. You should detect your own previously overlooked shortcomings and work on eliminating them. Just take a look inside yourself and see what happens in your heart when you are blamed and scolded unjustly, when they prefer another person to you — and you’ll see how Christian you really are.

There is a story about Abba Anthony in the Book of Memorable Stories. Some monks told Abba Anthony about a wonderful ascetic. When the said monk came to Abba Anthony, the latter decided to test whether the monk could be able to put up with an insult, and he couldn’t. Abba Anthony told him, “You’re like a village that looks great from the outside but is devastated by robbers inside.” Likewise, we sometimes appear to be decent but are torn apart with passions, anger, and the search for our own “truth” inside.

If I lose my temper when someone pulls a joke on me or criticizes me, it means that I haven’t made any spiritual progress. If someone’s words are capable of taking my composure away, where is my spiritual maturity and stability?

We make spiritual progress only when the negative impact from other people, their reproaches, annoyance, or resentment don’t quench our love towards them. When our souls love so much that no one in the world can hurt it. When we are happy with someone else’s success and forget about our own — these are the first indications of our spiritual growth. However, it is achievable only if we pursue God and repent of our spiritual flaws sincerely.

To that extent, your confession must not consist of a formal enumeration of your imperfections, which are common for all of us. You should confess your own spiritual issues, the painful memories of your life that you have a hard time struggling with. Have a closer look at what you keep stumbling over and what you may even be ashamed to admit: that’s what you should confess to make sure that you move forward in your life.

May the Lord help us not to stumble on the road of our spiritual life.

By Fr. Valery Dukhanin

Translated by The Catalog of Good Deeds

And he coming forth saw a great multitude, and had compassion on them, and healed their sick. (Mt 14: 14)

A glance at almost any daily media broadcast will readily show anyone who doubts that many in the world have forgotten the virtue of compassion that this is certainly true. Occasional secular commentators have suggested a variety of sociological causes for this lack. Our holy Spiritual Church Father Nikitas Stithatos notes accurately that lack of compassion is directly connected with our separation from God. He tells us that:

A soul receives either blessings or penalties and punishment according to its inner activities. If it concerns itself with things divine and tills the ground of humility, tears fall like rain from heaven, and it cultivates love of God, faith and compassion for others . . . attracting [others’] attention with the rays of its virtue . . . . But if the soul devotes itself to the mundane and merely human matters, stirring and agitating the fetid waters of sin, it nourishes hatred and repels what is good and beautiful. (Philokalia IV, p. 87-88).

The exact connotation of the word mundane is: a lack of direct connection with God. In today’s information technology (IT) world much can be found that not only disconnects us from God, but also actively fosters the disconnection. When this happens, as St. Nikitas so aptly puts it, the “good and beautiful” are repelled and loss of compassion for others is a major consequence.

The Etymology of compassion

The English word ‘compassion’ has its roots in both Greek and Latin. In the Greek, we trace the usage back to the related word for ‘suffering: pathos. In Latin, we can see the root word cum, meaning ‘with’ and passio, or suffering, and patior, I suffer. In English, the dictionary meaning of the word encompasses: “A deep awareness of and sympathy for another's suffering,” as well as “understanding the suffering of others and wanting to do something about it”. Individuals who have an illness and disease are called patients due to their suffering. In a sense, those with compassion co-suffer with them. The dictionary understanding of compassion correctly identifies three essential psycho-behavioral aspects: an emotional component: co-suffering, .i.e. feeling with the patient; a cognitive component: understanding; and a behavioral component: actions to alleviate the suffering.

Compassion: The Psychological Component

Compassion differs from empathy. The critical element in compassion that differentiates it from empathy is its behavioral component. Empathy is thinking and feeling what others are thinking and feeling. Compassion combines the deep awareness of the sufferings of others with a desire that leads, eventually, to an action to relieve the suffering

The Developmental Sequence

In terms of human development, natural empathy is the foundation of pro-social behaviors such as altruism. (Lewis and Haviland, 1993) Compassion is a component of love (the practice of agape, as it is known in patristic literaturei). Love is what we do, not just what we feel, for the good and welfare of others. Psychologists would ask: how can we love, how can we work for the good and welfare of others, if we are not aware of their suffering nor have a desire to relieve it? We love others only if we can first sense their needs. Empathy, then, may initiate the compassion process.

A Spiritual Caveat

However, as I discuss later in this article, we have to be spiritually predisposed to be empathic in order to practice altruistic-compassionate behavior with a specifically Godly ethos. This means that the compassion sequence should be of Divinely inspired agape indwelling in the heart. Such heart-centered agape would propel the mind to engage in both empathy and the compassion action steps. This would be the fullness of compassion because it would be enlivened by Godly love.

Understanding compassion by considering indifferent and/or malevolent behavior

One approach to understanding compassion is to consider its polar opposite: aggression, an anti-social component. One promising research endeavor on this aspect is the Dynamic Systems Model discussed by Granic and Patterson, 2006. This model uses coercion theory that was mainly developed in the research laboratories of the Oregon Social Learning Center (OSLC) by collecting and analyzing parent-child interaction data over various naturalistic settings. (Patterson, 1982; Patterson, Reid, & Dishion, 1992; Reid, Patterson, & Snyder, 2002).

Coercion theory uses the processes of cognitive-behavioral psychology to study how family members mutually interact in such a way as to shape aggressive behavior in children and to simultaneously decrease parental influence over the child’s inappropriate belligerent behavior. As described by the researchers, it initially starts with parental demands that their children perform appropriate pro-social behavior. As I point out in an earlier article (Morelli, 2007):

In popular terminology such coercive controlling behavior is called Nagging. In discordant relationships, Patterson (1976, 1982) discovered that coercive controlling behaviors by one individual produce reactive similar coercive counter-behaviors in others, thus creating a pattern of escalation. This controlling aggression, or nagging, becomes stronger because of the expectation that persistence results in a pay-off (Bandura, 1986).

As parental coercive attempts increase they are often also accompanied by escalation of a harsh strident tone of voice [speech pragmatics). (Morelli, 2007]. A child (or any person for that matter) being coerced may feel controlled and resist the nagger. One reason may be that the person being nagged (child or adult) needs to maintain a sense of healthy self-worth (Morelli, 2006a). The child may view the coercive tasks as symbols of a power struggle between a greater power and himself with a resultant loss of freedom and sense of being boxed in. A coerced child may want to avoid compliance as much as possible. Also, such a child may follow this avoidance with oppositional behavior to reassert his power and sense of control, to maintain some sense of control, and thus asserts himself by acting contrary to what he perceives he is being coerced into doing. As Granic and Patterson (2006) point out, this “finally [leads to] the parent's capitulation.” The researchers conclude: “. . .coercive interactions are the fundamental behavioral mechanisms by which aggression emerges and stabilizes over development.” This pattern is likely to be repeated in different settings over a lifespan. It should also be noted that the parents are simultaneously modeling coercive behavior, which means they are teaching their children to be coercive.

Malevolence generalizes

For example, the first encounter many children have with a social institution outside of his/her family home is nursery school. The coercive interactions first learned at home are likely to be repeated and reinforced by the reciprocal behaviors of the child with the other students. Patterson, Littman, & Bricker, 1967 point out that “When victims of aggressive behavior cry, give up their toy, or leave the disputed territory, the aggressive child “wins,” and he or she is, therefore, more likely to use the same aversive strategies in the service of future goals.” This then continues throughout a lifetime. Both early and later patterns of anti-social behaviors (including failure to empathize and act compassionately) are conceptualized by researchers as also being influenced by child-parent similarities or differences including: cognitive appraisals; emotions; global personality structures, and neural underpinnings of these emotion–appraisal feedback cycles and processes (Lewis, 2005).

The role of appraisal processes

Appraisals of cognition and emotion play a key role in developing anti-social patterns. As Lewis (2005) posits, a complex interaction exists between cognition and emotion. Reinforcement of patterns [between cognition and emotions] forms the structure of self-organizing interpretations of events in real time and accounts for personality patterns over development. Over time, and with repeated experiences, cognitive appraisals emerge in relation to their accompanying emotions, which then serve to amplify or constrain behaviors. Such cognitive appraisals serve the purpose of guiding an individual’s attention to elements in any situation that are relevant to their goal. Granic and Patterson (2006) conceive of these as cognitive-emotive-behavioral biases. These appraisal processes are similar to the pre-potency of automatic thoughts that elicit cognitive and behavioral dysfunction as described in the work of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) researchers and clinicians. (Beck, A.T. 1991, Beck, J.S. 2011, Burns, 1980 and Morelli, 2010).

A concrete example of coercion enhancing malevolence

One researcher (Forgatch, 1989) found that anger and contempt are the major emotional effects for parents and children in coercive situations. This could be conceived of as an escalating synergistic process in which the total effect is greater than the sum of the effects of the two (or more) interacting individuals. An example illustrating this process is provided by Granic and Patterson (2005) and is worth quoting in full:

A mother asks her son to comply to a vague request, for instance, “Help clean the house.” Just before her request, she is feeling anxious, thinking about the many things she needs to get done by the end of the night. The child, playing a video game, hears his mother’s request and begins to feel irritated, thinking that his mother always picks on him rather than his brother. As these low-grade [dysfunctional] emotions and appraisals coalesce, he rudely refuses his mother’s request (e.g., “Go clean it yourself!”). Her attention is now fully tuned to her son’s defiance and, through [favorable] feedback, her anxiety increases with the expectation that her son will force them into a confrontation. She also begins to feel irritated with his defiance. In an attempt to regulate her anxiety and her irritation, the mother suggests that they could go out to a restaurant afterward if he would just help her. Perceiving his mother as a nag and an obstacle to his goal (i.e., to continue to play video games), the child’s irritability grows into anger, expressed through loud complaining. In turn, through continued [favorable] feedback processes, his mother’s irritable feelings become amplified into anger, overriding her anxiety, and coupling with appraisals of her child as “selfish and nasty” and an obstacle to her goal of eventual rest. Her hostile emotion–appraisal amalgam motivates her to begin threatening her son with extreme consequences or to denigrate him in retaliation. Perceiving her rage, the child likewise escalates, becoming angrier while his appraisals change from mother as nuisance to mother as monster. Soon, these reciprocal interactions among appraisal components, emotions, and harsh words stabilize through [unfavorable] feedback processes. The child goes on playing his video games, ignoring his mother pointedly and angrily, while his blameful perception of her stabilizes. His mother, feeling beaten and unable to continue the fight, shifts from anger to contempt, which stabilizes along with an appraisal of her child as “useless” and “always bad.” Both dyad members remain in this seething state for the rest of the evening. (p. 108)

One way of interpreting this scenario is that the response of each person is guided by self-focus and thus blocks taking the perspective of the other. The child’s mother feels she has the right to force her son to comply with her will. The boy perceives his mother’s nagging behavior as “an obstacle to his goal.”

Anonymity of Social Media fueling indifference and malevolence

Numerous studies show that another psychological variable that influences the lack of compassion and the corresponding open display of anti-social aggression is anonymity. Anonymity is growing due to the proliferation of social media (Suler, 2004). One group of researchers (Postimes, Spears & Lea, 1998) suggests that individuals who share a common social identity (so readily prevalent in contemporary social media), may be more susceptible to group influence, social attraction, stereotyping, sex-gender typing, and discrimination in anonymous Computer Mediated Communication (CMC).

Compassion as an Emotion

Some of the early studies on compassion were focused on understanding compassion as related to empathic concern (Davis, 1983), sympathy (Eisenberg, et. al. 2007) and pity (Fiske, et al., 2002), which involves appraisals of concern for less fortunate individuals. In one study, Campos et al. (2009) found that compassion and sympathy were grouped together with similar words for pro-social emotions such as “kindness, tenderness, warmth, and caring.” Some studies have investigated compassion as a state (brief reaction-response to a specific situation or context) versus an ongoing trait or disposition over time (Shiota, Keltner, & John, 2006).

Critical Variables in Compassion Research

There are various theories concerning the critical variables that make up compassion. Researchers Goetz, Keltner, & Simon-Thomas ( 2010) suggest that “. . .within the concepts of appraisal research, this analysis suggests that compassion will be shaped by: 1) the relevance of the sufferer to the self; 2) the sufferer's blameworthiness for the [unfavorable] outcome; and 3) the individual's ability to cope with the situation at hand.” These appraisal processes are summarized in Figure 1.[ii] It could be hypothesized that the anti-social malevolent effects of the Dynamic Systems Model and the ascending anonymity factor now being actualized in social media, as discussed above, would influence any appraisal processes. Initial research investigating such variables as culture,(for example, differences in how compassion is facially and bodily displayed and communicated), gender differences, psycho-neurological variables such as age, evolutionary change and sex differences remains to be further explored.

Compassion-Love?

Goetz et al (2010) make a distinction between compassion and love: “Compassion responds to suffering and negative [unfavorable] events, whereas love antecedents are primarily positive [favorable]” (p.363). However, this distinction is not made by Christ, and this distinction is not understood as such by His Church. In psychological terms, love, as taught to us by Christ, is congruent with what George Kelly (1955, V. 2, p. 57) would call a superordinate construct – it encompasses all. It derives from the “organizational corollary which states “each person characteristically evolves, for his convenience in anticipating events, a construction system embracing ordinal relationships between constructs." Then Kelly goes on to say that “one construct may subsume another as one of its elements” (p.57). This could be understood as an hierarchical organization in which higher-order or abstract superordinate constructs influence individuals’ perceptions of the world around them. Kelly also considered superordinate constructs as "core-constructs" that significantly contribute to our identity and to how we perceive ourselves interacting in the world.

However, Goetz et al. (2010) do cite one study that they call an “intriguing possibility:” that love is, in fact, a core factor underlying compassion. They point out that the work of Greitemeyer, Rudolph, & Weiner (2003) suggests that compassion can be “moderated by love and valuing of the other person, probably through appraisals of self-relevance.” This research also extends to appraisals of blameworthiness and the extremity of the need of the recipient for compassion.

“Love” the ultimate superordinate construct

Christ Himself has given us the ultimate “superordinate construct.” He said: “And that he should be loved with the whole heart, and with the whole understanding, and with the whole soul, and with the whole strength; and to love one' s neighbor as one's self, is a greater thing than all holocausts and sacrifices.” (Mk 12:33). This is certainly the understanding of the Apostle Paul who writes to the Galatians (4: 14): “For all the law is fulfilled in one word: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” Thus compassion without love is meaningless in a Christ-like sense. As St. Paul tells the Corinthians: “And if I should distribute all my goods to feed the poor, and if I should deliver my body to be burned, and have not charity [love], it profiteth me nothing.” (1 Cor 13:3). Certainly, for Christ-like compassion, any differentiation of individuals based on such appraisals must be rejected and/or modified. Did not Christ tell us:

And whosoever will force thee one mile, go with him other two, Give to him that asketh of thee and from him that would borrow of thee turn not away. You have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thy enemy. But I say to you, Love your enemies: do good to them that hate you: and pray for them that persecute and calumniate you: That you may be the children of your Father who is in heaven, who maketh his sun to rise upon the good, and bad, and raineth upon the just and the unjust. For if you love them that love you, what reward shall you have? do not even the publicans this? And if you salute your brethren only, what do you more? do not also the heathens this? Be you therefore perfect, as also your heavenly Father is perfect. (Mt. 5: 41-48)

The need to discern real need

As Morelli (2009) points out, appraisal of the criterion for helping (in this case having compassion) is “that it be for the good and welfare of the individual.” Such an appraisal must be guided by discernment, or what our Church Fathers call diakrisis, the virtue of being able to discriminate between Godly and un-Godly thoughts. For example, dependent individuals not being provided with the opportunity to learn functional behaviors they need and that they are capable of learning, would not be for their good and welfare. Thus the need for a Godly appraisal of their real need.

Since the Vietnam War I have visited Spinal Cord Injury units of Veterans Administration (VA) hospitals. Hospital staff and even visitors were instructed never to do any action for a paralyzed veteran that they could do themselves unless they specifically asked and you determined they could not perform the task. This was personally difficult for me. I was brought up, for example, to open doors for people, pick up something they may have dropped and give it back to them etc. Now I had to watch a paraplegic or quadriplegic veteran struggle to perform such simple tasks. Truly, however, this was for their good and welfare. They had to learn to do as much as they could do for themselves in order to maximize being self-sufficient. Even now as an on-call Orthodox Chaplain for the local VA Health-care Center, I have to and do abide by these instructions.

Consider what St. John of the Ladder (Moore,1979) says of pride in his spiritual classic the Ladder of Divine Ascent:

Pride is denial of God, an invention of the devil, the despising of men, the mother of condemnation, the offspring of praise, a sign of sterility, flight from Divine assistance, the precursor of madness, the cause of falls, the foothold for satanic possession, a source of anger, a door of hypocrisy, the support of demons, the guardian of sins, the patron of pitilessness, the rejection of compassion, a bitter inquisitor, an inhuman judge, an opponent of God, a root of blasphemy. (p. 138)

In today’s terminology we would rightly say that pride is the mother of all other passions. It is the perfect storm in which all the other passions can develop; self-love, presumption, arrogance, and vainglory all can be seen to stem from this root. St. John even specifically relates pride to “rejection of compassion.”

Reflecting on St. Maximos the Confessor’s counsel (Philokalia II, p. 274) may also help provide a connection between lack of compassion and the anti-social aggressive behaviors described above. St. Maximos, although specifically talking about the passion of gluttony, includes a caution against “self-love [as] it severs the natural bonds of compassion.” This understanding is further developed by our holy Church spiritual father Nikitas Stithatos who first points out that “nothing so prevents someone newly engaged in spiritual warfare from practicing the commandments as this pernicious vice of self-love, (Philokalia IV, p. 86) and then suggests a spiritual basis for a solution: “If it [the individual] fills itself with things Divine and the ground of humility [overcoming narcissistic self-love] . . . it cultivates love of God, faith and compassion for others.”

A modern example of the vacuousness of compassion without love is given to us by a saintly contemporary spiritual father of the Church, Elder Paisios of the Holy Mountain (2008). First he tells us:

This is the most important thing of all: to have true love among yourselves . . . not false love. Always, when there is true concern for each other, compassion and love, one can act correctly. Kindness and love are empowering. (p. 234)

Then the saintly Elder goes on to make the connection between Godly-love and compassion even more explicit with a concrete example:

Love is a divine attribute and informs the other person. Even in hospitals, when the doctors and nurses feel genuine compassion for their patients, this is the most effective medicine of all the medications given to them. The patients feel they are being cared for with love [emphasis mine] and have a sense of certainty, security and consolation. (p. 347)

By Fr. George Morelli

Source: http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/OT/view/compassion-the-forgotten-virtue1

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