Judgmental Compassion

True love does not exist in the absence of judgment.  It only exists in the presence of it.

"Compassion" means, not just that you care about something deeply, but that you make a moral judgment about something and it moves you to the depth of you being to do something about it.

You have compassion in the face of poverty when you make a moral judgment and say, "That is wrong!" but you're not just happy to sit there and judge it, otherwise all you have is moralizing.  It moves you to the depth of your being, and you are motivated, and you reach out to do something about it.  That is compassion.

We worship a great and compassionate God.  He looks into every human heart and He makes a moral judgment. "That is wrong!"  And then He is moved to the depth of His being to do something about it.  That is why the cross is at the center of the Christian faith.

So much of our so called compassion ministries today are simply present in our lives to make us feel better about our Christian faith.  "Look, I know I'm a Christian, tough luck, I tell you you're wrong.  But hey, I'm a nice guy too, I also help the poor."  If that is the basis of why we reach out to our society and cities, it means that the main reason we're doing it is because we want to feel better about ourselves.  That would be a sad indictment on our church.  The reason we reach out in compassion is because we believe so totally and completely on God's justice.  We live in an incredibly compassionless society because we're not prepared to make moral judgments anymore.  But we have to.  We have to look and see what has gone wrong in our society, and call it for what is it, and say, "This! Is! Wrong!" And then be willing to be moved by the Spirit of God to do something about it.  What drives us to reach out is not any sense of a great need in our life, but an understanding that we are living out of the consequences of what we ourselves have received through the cross.

 Expert from "God of Love, God of Judgment"
by Michael Ramsden from the "Just Thinking" podcast 
by Ravi Zacharias International Ministries