Compassion before theology

In The Mountain of Silence, Kyriacos Markides tells of a young man aspiring to the monastic life, who came to a monastery eager to immerse himself in prayer and fasting, hungry to drink deeply from the teachings of Church fathers. He asked an abbot what he should set himself to reading first.

The abbot handed him a copy of David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens. Markides recounts the young man's indignant response, and the abbot's reply:

"'This is heterodox Victorian sentimentality, a product of the Western captivity! This isn't spiritual; it's not even Orthodox! I need writings which will teach me spirituality!"

The abbot smiled, saying, "Unless you first develop normal, human, Christian feelings and learn to view life as little Davey did-with simplicity, kindness, warmth, and forgiveness-then all the [theological writings] . . . will turn you into a spiritual monster and destroy your soul."

I've carried this idea with me because it struck me as I read it that I am so prone to seek out intellectual truths while walling myself off from the needs of others. I was struck by the abbot's forceful claim. He didn't say to temper one's theological learning with compassion, and he didn't say the first without the second opens gaps in one's moral development, or one's understanding of the fullness of God. He said intellectual theology (which we must distinguish from the theology of prayer), cultivated in a vessel lacking compassion, breeds monstrosity.

It puts me in mind of the Pharisees and Scribes, those immensely knowledgeable, walking tombs. And the people who will come before Christ on the day of Judgment, claiming to know Him, puzzling over why He does not claim them, realizing too late that they are the immortal horrors of whom C.S. Lewis wrote.

It puts me in mind, as well, of every time I have cast harsh theological judgment on someone I believe is mired in weakness, instead of reacting-immediately, in my heart-with heartache for his condition and prayer for the healing of his soul. I suppose each of us is somewhere along the path between godliness and monstrosity. I suppose as well that we should attend to every footstep. What a shame it would be to come to the end of our lives only to discover that all our learning was not truly knowing. Because to know God is to know love, and to know His great love is to be immersed in it such that we cannot help but live it out compassion.