Compassionate Accountability

CHAPTER 1

THE EVOLUTION OF COMPASSION

I’VE BEEN exploring, studying, and teaching compassion my whole life. As a child, I lost track of how many times my parents admonished me by saying, “How would you feel if someone did that to you?” As I got a little older, the message changed to “Show some compassion” or “Walk a mile in their shoes.” I learned that compassion meant showing empathy and practicing the Golden Rule.

I grew up as a Mennonite missionary kid in Africa. My father was a farmer from Kansas who got an advanced degree in animal husbandry and sought to solve the problem of protein deficiency among Congolese tribes in tropical climates. ...