I’ve just finished reading, ”The Spiral Staircase,” by Karen Armstrong. This is the very moving story of one woman’s spiritual journey. At the age of seventeen she entered the convent eager to meet God. For Karen this was a brutal, unhappy, life altering experience. This memoir describes her journey through darkness as an ascent up a narrow spiral staircase that eventually leads into a place of light.
She concludes with this thought that is common to all religious traditions.
“The one and only test of a valid religious idea, doctrinal statement, spiritual experience, or devotional practice was that it must lead directly to practical compassion. If your understanding of the divine made you kinder, more empathetic, and impelled you to express this sympathy in concrete acts of loving kindness, this was good theology. But if your notion of God made you unkind, belligerent, cruel, or self-righteous, or if it led you to kill in God’s name, it was bad theology. Compassion was the litmus test.”
Does your faith lead you to acts of compassion?
1 comment:
I agree completely. I changed churches because I was having an increasingly difficult time showing compassion in the one I was in.
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