Compassion

[Anon]

I think sometimes we are really lacking in compassion. :-(

I have a good friend who is making some tough family decisions right now. Decisions I do not agree with...but then, I do not live her life. She knows what I feel about her decisions and now that she knows that, I'm just here to be her friend and be a compassionate ear while she hurts. I know that in some ways, things have happened in her life that she did not ask to happen and that has made some parts of her life difficult.

I told a family member what was going on (longtime mutual friend) and the family member just starts talking about how stupid my friend is and how bad she is and what a rotten decision she is making....Okay...what about "Wow I feel just awful that the family is hurting so badly."

Do we as Christians HAVE to get upset when someone else makes a bad decision? Why can't we just cry with them, and regret that their life has taken a turn for the bad?

[chev1958]

Too many of us want to play the Holy Spirit, I'm afraid.

[JerryNumbers]

Some people seem to be their own worst enemy, and it seems at every turn they will do something that actually puts them in a worst position. Sometimes in these situations the family has to stop pulling them out of it, and fly on their own. School of hard knocks can be a tough teacher.

I know such a person, until her mother died she spent nearly every penny her mother had, which was not much. she would get in a bind, her mother would bail her out. Once she ran up a gambling debt on the net, that nearly sapped her mother. Since her mothers death she has got worse, no one to bail her out. The place that was left her had some timber on it, sold it, took $10.000.00 to Texarkana, picked up a man at a bar, went to Shreveport, laid up in a motel, gambling it all away on a boat. I wonder looking back on it if she thinks those 4 days with a man she did not know, laying up in a motel, gambling it all away on a boat, if she thinks it was much fun?

Yes, she has hit an aunt, and some cousins for help, but she is having to fly on her own, live in the bed she made.

Lots of people have compassion for her, yet she is one you cannot help, she would drain you of every penny you had, and not have one thing to show for it.

People like this will say, No one has no compassion for me nor will they help me.

[chev1958]

I agree, Kitagrl, that too often we want to pile on when someone makes a poor choice in life. Believe me, when your children make unwise decisions, it can drive parents crazy. But once a bad decision is made and everybody understands it's a bad decision, then we need to become part of the solution.

And, Jerry, life definitely is a hard teacher, for sure.

[Brother Rick]

Dittos.

[JerryNumbers]

I agree, Kitagrl, that too often we want to pile on when someone makes a poor choice in life. Believe me, when your children make unwise decisions, it can drive parents crazy. But once a bad decision is made and everybody understands it's a bad decision, then we need to become part of the solution.

And, Jerry, life definitely is a hard teacher, for sure.

Leave me ask this, are you saying that we are to keep bailing them out? Actually that is the type compassion many people such as I spoke of recognize, they do not want someone to be there for them, they want them to keep on balling them out, if they want do that they have no use for them.

[John81]

No, we can't (or shouldn't) keep bailing those out who make unwise decisions but we can try to help them understand why they are in the situation they are in, help them discover the best way to get through it, and hopefully not to repeat such.

[chev1958]

And do it with compassion, not both barrels blazing.

[John81]

And do it with compassion, not both barrels blazing.

Absolutely!