Thinking about the Chapmans, and Other People

If you are a Christ-follower and you spend time in the blogosphere, chances are you have heard about the tragedy that befell Steven Curtis Chapman’s family this week, where their 5-year-old adopted daughter Maria was accidentally run over and killed. The calls to pray and the outpouring of love for this family has been overwhelming, to say the least.

Like many others, I was deeply moved by this news and cannot imagine what the family must be going through. Like many others, I’ve been praying for this family whenever the thought crosses my mind.

(Warning: What I’m about to write might seem insensitive or unmerciful at first…but if you read it carefully, you’ll see it’s exactly the opposite.)

So yesterday I was driving down the road, and as I thought about the Chapmans, I prayed for them again. And a provoking thought occured to me…

There are probably millions of people praying for the Chapman family right now. That is an amazing amount of prayer. But the only reason they have so many praying for them is that Steven Curtis Chapman is famous; he is a high-profile Christian musician, and many people feel like they know him (even though they really don’t). And yet…tragedies like this happen every day, in our own home towns. Are those not-famous people in any less need of prayer and compassion than the Chapmans? Is their pain any less real? And would we be so quick to drop what we’re doing and pray for them, like we are doing for this family?

Okay…I said it. But notice I did not say to stop praying for the Chapmans. I will continue to do so as I have done, and I still think the support they are being shown is wonderful. No problem there. I am only asking what we would have done if the Chapmans weren’t famous. I am only asking what we would have done if we had heard about this happening to some local family on the local news, where millions of people would not have even known about it. These are questions I think we need to ask ourselves.

These are questions I’m asking myself. I was deeply touched by the news of the Chapmans, yet news reports of tragedy come over my television set all the time, and I let them go by without a second thought. Why? There are those people who are naturally inclined to mercy, who (to their credit) would be touched no matter who it was. Does that excuse the rest of us who are not shaped that way? Does it excuse me from a Christlike sense of compassion because I don’t have a “gift” of mercy?

My point is this–and I say this to myself as well as you–our compassionate response as believers (however that looks) should not be based on the high-profile or celebrity status of the victims. It should be based on the love of Christ. Yes, it is good and right for us to remember the Chapmans, and we can (and should) pray for them. But it is also good and right to respond compassionately to people in our own neighborhoods when they are suffering–people who do not have access to the prayer support of millions, but maybe only a few. And we may have more ability to directly bless the life of a person near to us than we would, say, the Chapman family. This kind of compassion should mark our lives as believers–not just show up when the victim is immensely popular.

There might be some people who think my timing is a little insensitive here, and I want to assure you that I have no desire to de-value the Chapmans’ grief. But to my thinking, what more appropriate time to ask ourselves questions about compassion than when that compassion has been stirred in us? Our reactions show us something about ourselves, and I think if we let the moment pass, the point will be lost on us. And I think that would actually be a dishonor to Maria’s memory.

When something tragic like this happens, we look for some sense of redemption in it–some good purpose it can serve. We want it to count for something. If there is a lesson we can learn–if there is a way we can tangibly honor the memory of Maria Chapman, to make it count–it is to let the heart of compassion we feel for her and her family remain with us beyond this moment, and be released to other people whose suffering is just as real. As we grieve with this precious family, may this moment bring us deeper into the compassion of Christ for all who need it.