Intertheoretical Religion

Can common religious ideas about compassion be intertheoretically reduced into a single adjective “religious compassion”? Baha’u’llah’s writing about past manifestations of God collectively teaching a single body of truths to be followed by the Baha’i faith encourages a collective evolution towards the universal compassion, justice and education. However, these past manifestations have specific contexts in which they were writing, often thousands of years apart. Compassion, then, as taught by these manifestations must be very different in many respects. The Catholic, Hebrew and Muslim teachings about compassion are unique in each religion, and just each religion establishes itself apart from others, so do their “religious compassion”.

One of the pillars in Judaism is the tikkun olam, or the duty for all Jews to help repair and perfect the world. This is an idea that by nature implies the idea that there can be a world without suffering. Thus this duty places a large burden on the behalf of the faith to do works of mercy until this goal is achieved. The Quran states "(Zakat) charity is only for the poor and the needy and those employed to administer it, and those whose hearts are made to incline, and (to free) the captives, and those in debt, and in the way of Allah and for the wayfarer – an ordinance from Allah. And Allah is Knowing, Wise." (9:60). This is a very different kind of compassion from Judaism. Islamic compassion is used rather as a tool to help only the truly suffering. This promotes a very different message, one that focuses specifically on those who suffer inherently more than others. Catholicism sums up an important pillar of their faith in Corinthians, “And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not love, it profiteth me nothing” (13). Catholicism emphasizes the importance of love over compassion. Compassion, therefore, must be in the name of God and the loving relationship between him and man. Without this, compassion is empty and trivial.

All of these ideas about compassion are used in different ways to achieve different means. What compassion means to these different faiths is very unique and any reduction of these ideas into a single term would be derelict in its duty. These are all different types of compassion, to your needy, to yourself and to God and therefore illustrate important ways in which we might be able to show compassion through religion.