In this provacative essay on that least understood virtue, compassion, the authors challenge themselves and us with the questions: Where do we place compassion in our lives? Is it enough to live a life in which we hurt one another as little as possible? Is our guiding ideal a life of maximum pleasure and minimum pain? Compassion answers no.
The authors place compassion at the heart of a Christian life in a world governed far too long by principles of power and destructive control. Compassion, no longer merely an eraser of human mistakes, is a force of prayer and action – the expression of God’s love for us and our love for God and one another.