I have believed for several years now that the core value that most religions (and many ethical systems) share can be articulated in a simple word: compassion.  “Feeling with or sharing the feelings of another” is the pedantic, pedestrian definition.  Another way to say it might be that compassion is the ability to take the imagination and intellect that God gave us and use them to understand what it would be like to walk a mile in another person’s shoes–without having to actually change footwear.

Compassion is more than a feeling, though–it’s one of the few emotions we have, maybe the only one, that requires a certain level of interaction or exchange with another, if only conceptually.  Being able to look outside one’s own perspective, one’s own narrowly-defined self-interest and imagine the suffering or joy or desires of another person and be moved to action: that is compassion.  It’s all about…