It’s a very fragile word in the English language and can fall from the fence of meaning in two directions. There is a trite and trivial use of the word “pity”, or there is the extremely noble quality of human compassion. Like its Latin root, pietas, or piety, it can cut both ways. We can mean by piety that a person is syrupy sweet, or we can understand that a person’s authenticity is deeply rooted in a faith that illuminates the darkness with a greater source of meaning.
I recently heard a group of people describing a little get-together as a small “pity party” in which everyone sat around and played the old human game of “ain’t it awful” and cried in their beer. Children learn at an early age how to play the pitiful game to elicit attention — and then play it the rest of their lives. Others despise being on the receiving end of pity, not wanting the sympathy vote in order to win anything from anyone. Remember beleaguered and pathetic Job in the old testament whose friends came with a form of pity salted with piety that sounded like they were at least one-up on their suffering crony and would not take pity on him for his plight. With friends like these, who needs enemies.
Something’s happening to pity in our culture, and that’s a crying shame. It’s being erased or covered over. Or perhaps it’s being manipulated in some ways. Whether it’s wars or natural disasters or refugees with images coming into our dens every night, there’s a distance created from their hurts and our hearts. We have become almost immunized against what seems the tyranny of pity and there’s hardly a merciful bone in our bodies anymore.
In his most powerful parable to summarize the gospel truth, Jesus talks about the victim on the roadside who was passed over by the pious priest and the law-abiding Levite. But a Samaritan while travelling came near him; and when he saw him, he was moved with pity. What a simple Sunday School lesson to learn by heart and apply to the current needs staring us in the face.
Remember the rabbi’s sermon on the mount: Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy…a sentiment echoed in Portia’s appeal to Shylock in the Merchant of Venice:
The quality of mercy is not strained.
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.