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No Gentile or Jew...

                 Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all. Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. (Colossians 3:11-12)

                The second half of this passage makes it sound as though we’re supposed to wear our hearts on our sleeves. That’s why I backed up a verse to give it some context. Paul wrote that the various tribes and cliques did not belong in the Church. It didn’t matter what you looked like, what your social status was, or how you had identified before coming to Christ. Once you were in Christ, you were part of the family, and the behavioral code for family members was different from the behavioral code for everyone else. Everyone in Christ was “us.” They were to be treated as family, or as we wanted to be treated.

                In our culture, we are called to be compassionate or empathetic, to feel with others. The problem is, people think that if you weep with them or cheer for them, that you must agree with their assessment of the situation. If you say something that differs from that assessment, you’re a fake or a liar. Sometimes, the call for us to be compassionate is made based on someone’s identity. We’re to be compassionate to members of this group or that, but if our compassion is directed toward a different kind of person, we are denounced.  The Merriam-Webster Dictionary online defines compassion as sympathetic consciousness of others’ distress, together with a desire to alleviate it. That means that it might be compassionate to tell someone to get off their backside and do something.

                I like to define kindness as lending someone your strength. It might not involve making them feel better. Humility, likewise, doesn’t necessitate becoming a slave to another person. It does mean that who you think you are isn’t relevant. As I see it, gentleness is declining to use one’s full capacity to act against someone, or to decline to act against them. Patience is being willing to wait for them to do as you desire. None of these things puts the other person in charge or requires us to release them from responsibilities or reasonable behavior. 

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