Saturday, August 10, 2013

95 Theses for Christian Racial & Ethnic Unity: #13


“True altruism is more than the capacity to pity; it is the capacity to sympathize.  Pity may represent little more than the impersonal concern which prompts the mailing of a check, but true sympathy is the personal concern which demands the giving of one’s soul.  Pity may arise from interest in an abstraction called humanity, but sympathy grows out of a concern for a particular needy human being who lies at life’s roadside.  Sympathy is fellow feeling for the person in need—his pain, agony, and burdens.”

Martin Luther King, Jr., “On Being a Good Neighbor,” Strength to Love (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1981 [1963]), 35. 

[Read the Introduction to 95 Theses for Christian Racial & Ethnic Unity here.]

No comments: