Do As I Say, Not As I Do

As my kids grow up, I find myself the subject of very close observation, which is uncomfortable to say the least.  I don't always think very carefully about how I talk, what I listen to on the radio, watch on TV, or about what I eat, but those are basic things that I am trying to teach my kids how to do better than me.  It's a challenge for me as a parent to be a good example in many areas of life, to live as I would want my kids to live, rather than how I actually live myself.
It is with that awareness that I would like to challenge all of us collectively to stop doing this one thing: outrage comparisons.  Let me explain what I mean by outrage comparisons with the latest example, the bombing in Istanbul where a bunch of people died at the hands of terrorists.  It has been noted by some that our collective rending of garments is not quite as enthusiastic as it was for Paris or Brussels.  Other examples have been: Orlando to Wounded Knee,  how can we spend our time and energy trying to help Syrian Refugees when we have Homeless Veterans in this country; how can we get upset about victims of (insert natural disaster that happened in some other country) when (insert natural disaster that happens here); and of course, any time there is an outbreak of violence, someone, somewhere is going to say it wasn't like 9-11.
Now, I will admit that the reasoning behind these comparisons can seem complicated, there are large geopolitical reasons, there are deep seeded issues of tribalism, there is the simple fact that we're pretty much on tragedy overload, but what they all boil down to is people assuming that our ability to have empathy and compassion for the suffering of our fellow humans is somehow a limited resource.  I don't know about you, but every time a terrorist blows up a bunch of people I get a whole new burst of sadness, and while it has changed character as these things have become more common, it doesn't seem to dry up at all.
I'm kind of running out of eloquent things to say in response to this sort of nonsense.  My responses are growing less shocked as time goes by, but I'm still grieved, not more, not less, pretty much the same.
So, I'm going to tell you not to judge other people's reaction to tragedy, by judging other people's reaction to tragedy.  If your reaction to tragedy is to immediately try to negate the tragedy, all or in part, by comparing it to another "worse" tragedy, you are wrong, that's not how this works.  The fact that Hiroshima happened does not make the bombing of some little village in the mountains of Afghanistan where some goat farmer's daughter was the only victim any less of a tragedy.
We have fallen into the grievous error, I would go so far as to call it a sin, of ranking tragedies according to numbers.  We are obsessed with how many people died, in doing this we are ignoring the fact that for every individual life that is lost there are families and friends that will mourn for years, there are permanent voids created in countless lives, who cares how many? Who cares whether they're "your" type of person or not?
This is, for me, a Jesus thing.  Comes up a lot, I know. He taught us to care for the least of these, and I think that meaning stretches to not just meaning the poor and the oppressed, but extends to victims of violence, even if they weren't particularly poor or oppressed in life.  The Gospels tell us rather poignant and surprising stories of Jesus actually learning the lesson at the core of what I'm talking about here, I think particularly of the Syrophoenician woman in Mark 7. She asks that Jesus heal her daughter, Jesus refuses, because in his mind that's not part of his mission, she's an outsider, an other, a Gentile Dog.  I don't like the interpretations that have Jesus only "play acting" the part of a prejudiced Jew to prove some point, that to me is far too Gnostic (Docetism specifically, the idea that Jesus was not really a human, but rather some sort of astral projection of God, essentially denying the reality that Jesus could suffer, learn and change).  I think he was acting fully consistently with the cultural norms of his human society, it is not necessary to say he was sinning, but he was privileging his group over others. This foreign woman, through her humility and through the action of the Holy Spirit, teaches Jesus that this is wrong. Indeed his mission is to heal the broken and bring the Kingdom of Heaven near to all, that doesn't change but the scope expands. The end result of this is that Jesus again establishes an above and beyond standard of human love and compassion, as he did with the Sermon on the mount, "The law says... but I say..."
This is a difficult move to make for sure, which is why the Gospels and Acts and a good part of Paul's letters spend so much time talking about how grace is supposed to set us free, not just from whatever punitive condemnation we might feel, but free from narrowness and bigotry and the constant pissing matches of the sinful human nature.  The Jesus Way is a challenge to all of us to move, as our Lord did, in the direction of love and grace, we don't always get that message, or follow it, but wouldn't it be great if we did?