Sadly, sometimes the folks who ought best know and follow Christ’s teachings (i.e., Christians) seem furthest from them. Tracy (a psych nurse) reports from a Christian hospital (full of overtly Christian nurses):
It all started with a report of a woman who was suffering from post-partum depression (with a little psychosis thrown in for good measure). She decided one day that her infant needed to be cleansed of bad spirits and lowered the baby into a tub of scalding hot water. FIGHT that initial reaction just for a second. The woman was fucking insane. She was not in her right mind. She heard voices and believed God was speaking to her. She actually believed that the only way to cure her baby was to cleanse her in this
manner. I felt that. I ached for her. I was just about to say, “That poor woman…” when the charge nurse slammed the tape recorder off and said, “This woman she be burned alive!”What followed were comments like, “She should be boiled alive,” “She should be stoned to death,” and “Skinning her alive wouldn’t be harsh enough.” I sat in silence until realizing they were waiting for me to say something. I did. I said, “Would ya listen to all the Christians.”
They stared in shock. Because the silence filled the room with such discomfort I thought I should say something else. “Judge not, lest ye be judged.” That didn’t go over well either.
Tracy goes on to relate further how the nursing staff dealt with the woman while in their care. It’s not pretty.
What most folks forget about the parable of the Good Samaritan is that, after being bypassed by a fellow Jew and by a priest, the victim in the parable was helped by a Samaritan — something akin to a story of an Israeli being helped by a Palestinian. Following Christ, and Christ’s direct of what is necessary to have eternal life (something
one would think Christians would be more than passingly interested in), requires compassion in both thought and, certainly, in actions to everyone, regardless of how repulsive you find their actions, their people, their traditions, their beliefs, or their Otherness.
Something I certainly need a reminder of now and again.
I had the same thought about the matthew 25 verses. Not that I like to see the Bible used as a bludgeon but sometimes it just delivers the juice.
Jesus went on, and on, and ON about how compassion was his whole deal, and you wouldn’t know it…
Alas, no matter how much Jesus tried to break folks away from the Law, people — including Paul, who got chosen as the exigeter of what Jesus really meant — keep dragging Christianity back to a “punish wrong-doers” mentality, which sure seems to fly in the face of what Jesus actually went on about.