Compassion is a skill. One study showed that training in compassion led to more positive emotion and more altruistic behaviors. So compassion is a skill that we CAN grow in.

As Christians this should not surprise us. If we are made in God’s image, and God is compassionate, then we should have a huge capacity for compassion. It should also make sense that if we are sinners being transformed into the image of Christ, that we WOULD NEED TO grow in compassion. All of this makes a ton of sense from a scriptural point of view. We need to grow in compassion. God wants us to grow in compassion. He will transform our hearts to form compassion in us. Therefore, we can pursue growth in compassion.

So since compassion is a skill that we can master, and it has direct impact on our anger, here are 5 ways to grow in compassion:

1. Pray for compassion. Growing in compassion is not just a self-help technique. It is a requirement of growth in godliness (if we are to be transformed into the image of Christ, and Christ is compassionate, then growth in Christ means growth in compassion). The good news is that as God calls us to grow in this way, that means God provides the Holy Spirit to help us form compassion in our hearts. God promises to hear and answer our prayers. He desires to answer our prayer to grow in compassion. Let us pray.
2. Meditate on the compassion we have received. Stay with me on this one. As I looked into how to grow in compassion, there was a constant theme; a method which actually is found in the Budest tradition, and has been shown to be effective in growing compassion through psychological studies. What is that method?: Meditate on Loving-kindness. In case you are missing the irony, prophets and priests and preachers have been telling the people of God to “meditate on God’s loving-kindness for millennia. Loving-kindness or “hesed” in Hebrew is said to be God’s chief characteristic as He relates to us. It describes His faithful, long-suffering, covenantal, warm-hearted, zealously and jealously loving commitment to His people. So while our Budest and Psychologist friends can see but dimly a process to grow in compassion (and even that is effective), God’s people see the whole: Meditate on how Jesus treats us.

Jesus, in the gospel, treats us with the utmost compassion. He had every right to judge us and destroy us. Instead, He died so that we could live. There is no greater compassion that anyone could receive than a sinner being given life with Holy God. A powerful step in growing in compassion is to dwell in, meditate on, abide in, keep ever in front of us what Christ did for us. You could summarize by saying: if you want to grow in compassion and redeem your anger: do your quiet time!

3. Practice Self-Compassion (aka: Submit to God’s judgements over you). Since we have a foundation in the compassion that God has given to us, one (among many) logical conclusion is that we should be compassionate to ourselves. I think some Christians will hear “be compassionate on yourself” and dismiss it as new-age-feel-goodism. But in the gospel, self-compassion is a function of submitting to God’s judgements. In Christ, God’s final judgement on you is that you are holy, good, beloved, beautiful. You have zero authority to say otherwise. So allowing yourself or Satan to accuse you of being dirty, not good enough, unlovely, or gross is a failure to submit to God’s judgements over you. What is your self-talk saying to you? Are you negative and critical on yourself? Submit that inner critic to God’s judgements and receive His compassion on you, then treat yourself with that same compassion that He gives you.
   To be clear, I’m not saying don’t be zealous about holiness. I’m not saying don’t mortify sin. I’m not saying “you’re beautiful just as you are” or “just love yourself”. As Christians we live in the indicative and imperative. God declares us to be holy, beautiful and accepted (indicative) and we are commanded to live as though we are holy, beautiful and accepted (imperative). Self-compassion, ie: believing and living as though God’s judgements about us are true, is one among ten thousand imperatives which flow from the gospel indicative.
4. Practice Active Listening. Active listening is a way to communicate which boils down to putting aside everything that is in your mind or heart and focusing intently on what the other person is saying. There are two main ways to do that: A) Ask more questions than you think you need to. These questions should be about the other person and their experience of the situation. B) Listen to what the other person is saying and paraphrase it back to them.
5. Show Compassion to EVERYTHING! As far as growing in compassion goes, practice makes perfect (be doers of the word). But if you are going to grow in Christ-like compassion, you can’t be satisfied showing compassion in only some situations or only to some people. Out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks. If we have compassion in our hearts, we will show compassion to everything. We see this in the Jonah story itself when God also had compassion on the cattle of Nineveh. But as we seek to grow in compassion, we can begin by showing compassion to the smallest things. Show compassion to your computer when it won’t load. Thank God for providing the computer for you and thank Him for all the ways that the computer makes your life easier. Show compassion to the shelf you hit your head on. Touch the shelf and thank Jesus for the shelf and all the space that it frees up in your kitchen. It sounds crazy. But as you learn to show compassion on these small things, you will then more easily show compassion to the driver who cut you off. Then to your kids when they disrespect you. Then to your enemies when they are against you.