From Compassion to Bullying to Repentance
We correspond regularly with K, who sent us the following story about an encounter she had at the hospital where she works, in which her compassion received a bullying remark that later turned into repentance.
Thanks for your “weeping heart” sermon.
That reminded me of this encounter that I had with a patient’s boyfriend.
The patient and her boyfriend are somewhat homeless, although you’d never be able to tell. I guess they get by. So in the morning I brought the boyfriend fresh coffee. It is not customary that we do that for friends or family members. They are encouraged to go to the cafeteria and buy coffee there but I figured that he does not have much money.
One day the patient was meditating because she was in pain. So we started talking about spirituality. That was a great opening to bring up plant based diet choices and I did. She nodded her head and basically agreed with what I was saying.
The boyfriend was listening too, but all of a sudden he said “Oh but I love a steak from a horribly abused cow once in a while;” he then laughed.
Well, I smiled and offered him a free soda, which he accepted.
About an hour later he came to find me on the floor and said “K, do you have a moment? I really want to apologize for what I said to you about the animals. I know you are very passionate about this and I should never have done that.”
I thought that was pretty neat because most people would never do that.
Have a great day.
K’s compassion for animals and her desire to help others led to a bullying type remark in response, which we believe stemmed from this man seeing the truth in what she was saying. It’s a defense mechanism to try to justify the cruelty he knew he was causing, but it shortly led to his repentance for what he said.
And even though he didn’t give any indication that he would eliminate the cruelty on his plate, there is still hope, because he recognized the truth.
This is the way that many of us were before we changed our lifestyle to eating only plant foods, as God originally intended (Genesis 1:29-31).
Thank you for visiting all-creatures.org.
