I saw this video today and thought is was so precious!
It immediately put me in mind of someone who once explained the compassionate, sacrificial, incarnational love of Jesus using this illustration:
Do you love your dog?
If you knew that the only way to save the entire race of dogs from becoming extinct was for you to give up all the comforts and privileges and benefits of being a human, and take on the form of a dog knowing you could never return to your original form and human glory, in order to enter in their lower canine "realm" and save them, would you do that?
Most of us dog lovers would be quick to shout, "Yes! Absolutely!"
But if you thought about it... would you really be content to eat dog food, pee outside, perhaps live outside, possibly be abused and neglected with no way to control that, possibly homeless or left to wander the streets and eat out of trash cans, or in every way subject yourselves to suffer the indignities of being a "lower" canine creature for eternity? Would you really still say yes?
Jesus did that for us.
Jesus did that for us.
I recently read an interview by Jazz Theologian, Robert Gelinas, in Urban Faith with Rev. Dr. Soong-Chan Rah titled, Sharpening Our Cultural Intuition. While I have not read Rev. Soong-Chan Rah's book Many Colors yet (it's on my list), there was a quote from the interview that has resonated in my soul since I read it. The entire interview is excellent and I recommend you take a few moments, click on one of the links above, and read it. The quote by Soong-Chan Rah that struck a chord in me was this:
The Bible teaches us that this is the example that Jesus gave to us. He came into the world in human flesh, and he can empathize with our suffering because he himself also suffered. Our inability to show compassion towards the suffering is a horrid witness to the incarnational love that Jesus has shown.
True compassion sees only the suffering. It doesn't see social status, race, creed, color, age, income, or gender. It doesn't ask how you got in your terrible condition, nor does it place conditions on whether it will help or not. It simply understands the value of life, sees the suffering, comes alongside of the one suffering and says:
... I will weep with you (Romans 12:15) and I will help.
May we learn.
I didn't read your entire post--sorry--but what really caught my attention was that someone let their baby lay there crying just for this "cute" video?
ReplyDeleteThat's so inappropriate.
Have a good day!
No worries on the blog, Anon. I think the video lasted 44 seconds, so my guess is the child was perfectly fine. I've seen parents doa whole lot worse to their children and video tape it! But, if you feel it was inappropriate it would be more effective for you to comment about that on the YouTube video itself where the video maker (likely one of the child's parental units)would be able to see that it disturbed you. Thanks for your comment!
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