In my book But I Tell You, Jesus Introduces a Better Way to Live, I translated the Greek word agape as “honor,” to get away from the confusion that the normal English translation of “love” creates.
This is legitimate because the first century – particularly the Greco-Roman world – was an honor culture. You honored your peers and your superiors by how you treated them, and didn’t bother to honor those beneath you or foreigners. To show contempt was a serious business if done to a peer or superior.
Matthew Fox in The Coming of the Cosmic Christ - a thought-provoking book if the very idea of feminine theology doesn’t make you cringe – translates it as “compassion.” By this he doesn’t mean “pity,” as we so often think of the word, but the older, more accurate meaning of “feeling with,” that is, learning to understand another’s thoughts, feelings, dreams – and pain.
I chose “honor” because it was the best way at the time I could understand this concept. But I find now that I like compassion even better.
Listen to how that well-known verse John 3:16 sounds using this new understanding: “God showed his compassion for the world by sending his only son…” Or how about I Corinthians 13:1: “I may speak in the languages of humans and angels. But if I don’t practice compassion, I am a loud gong or a clashing cymbal.”
Pity and sympathy can be of the ego – I can stand at a distance and feel either of those without lifting a finger to help. But true compassion requires that I listen to the other so that I may understand what is needful at the moment.
Jesus told us to love – to have compassion for – our enemies. When we listen to others at the place of their humanity, hatred will melt away of its own accord.
Quakers are taught to “look for that of God in everyone.” That seems like a good way for this compassion to start.
(By the way, you can order my book at this URL: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=1594980101/karensquoteoftheA/. End of commercial!)
