Henry Williams

Snip·pet | ˈsnipit | noun a small piece or brief extract.

This one is from Monday’s edition of The World and Everything In It. Each year WORLD recognizes a handful of poverty-fighting organizations through the Hope Awards for Effective Compassion. Before their profile of one of the finalists, the podcast hosts explained that…

“To qualify as a candidate, a ministry must embody three elements of effective compassion: It must provide help that is challenging, personal, and spiritual.

“Challenging means the organization must recognize the dignity of the people it serves by giving them a hand up rather than a hand out and empowering them to live lives of worshipful work that glorifies God.

“Personal means an organization understands the individual needs, background, and context of the people and area they serve. It means building relationships and tailoring its approach.

“Finally, spiritual. Effective compassion is more than saying, ‘Jesus loves you.’ But it’s not less than that, either. It means introducing those they serve to Jesus Christ and His finished work on the cross. …[to] be committed to sharing the gospel and discipling participants.”

This definition and understanding of effective compassion has been a big influence on my thinking regarding compassion and church ministry since I read Marvin Olasky’s The Tragedy of American Compassion over 25 years ago, and it continues to be.

Olasky was Editor in Chief of WORLD until recently, and he was the one who coined the term “compassionate conservatism.”

If there’s a critique I would have of this perspective in practice, it is that Christians too often equate the Christian faith with the “conservative” aspects of this approach. The “conservative” in “compassionate conservatism” is a political term. Olasky (a former communist before becoming a Christian) was and is politically conservative AND a big advocate for the kind of compassion Jesus called us to embody. I think one of his life goals has been to increase the compassion quotient and practice of his fellow political conservatives.

Being politically conservative as a Christian is completely legit, but I’m increasingly stunned at how I (and people in my circles) have unwittingly and consistently equated a Christian worldview that is theologically conservative with political conservatism. They are not the same thing, and there are great spiritual and practical dangers in equating them.

I absolutely love and agree with one of the mantras of the & Campaign:

“There is a cross that neither political progressivism nor conservatism is fit to bear. There’s a civic hearing in need of faithful witnesses who love social justice and won’t surrender the truth to be loved by the world. Politic with the boldness and compassion of Jesus Christ.”

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash.

Snip·pet | ˈsnipit | noun a small piece or brief extract.

This one is from David French in “Against the Extremism of the American Masculinity Debate”:

“The differences between men and women are value-neutral. One of the more problematic documents I’ve read is the American Psychological Association’s 2019 ‘Guidelines for Psychological Practice with Boys and Men.’ The document, as summarized on the APA website, declares that ‘traditional masculinity — marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance, and aggression — is, on the whole, harmful.” But wait. Many of those characteristics spring forth from the inherent temperament of millions of young men, and aside from perhaps ‘dominance,’ not one of those characteristics above is fundamentally harmful. In fact, in the right contexts, they can be extraordinarily beneficial. Even aggression is sometimes necessary. Think of the Uvalde police officers….”

French begins the post with some statistics that should be alarming. Men account for 70 percent of the decline in enrollment in American higher education. One response might be that that’s because men dominate in that sector.

Nope. Women in the U.S. have earned more bachelor degrees than men every year since the mid-1980’s.

And, of course, there are the alarming statistics about boys, men, and gun violence.

A few years ago I remember hearing a commentary on NPR by a self-described feminist journalist who attended a university graduation ceremony. Ten academic awards were rewarded that day. Nine went to women. One went to a man. The award that went to the man prescribed that a man and woman must be chosen.

He described his ambivalence until he went home and noted…his two young children are boys.

There are many other alarming statistics and trends, of course, And most who look at them can’t help but realize that something is deeply wrong.

But many of the proposed solutions can often bring more harm, which I think is what happens when mistakes and harms of the past are ignored or when new ways of harming people and society become the new norms (like what French is getting at in the snippet above).

It’s a great post that you can read here or here: https://bit.ly/3zor1Fv.

I’ll just include one more snippet to whet your appetite for more:

“Suppressing boys’ essential natures—labeling the core of their personalities as somehow problematic or toxic—leads to its own profound harms. …there’s a strange convergence between left and right on the matter of gender stereotypes. The stereotypes are too powerful on both sides. One side identifies what a boy or girl is ‘really like’ and tries to make all kids conform. Another side makes the same judgment and questions whether nonconforming kids are ‘really boys’' or ‘really girls.’ Skyrocketing rates of youth gender transition are the fruit of a radical movement that sows unnecessary and destructive gender confusion.”

Photo by Robert Collins on Unsplash