Do not be too Proud for Mercy
About a week ago i found a young wood pigeon on the ground that couldn't fly yet and wasn't able to feed itself properly, people were walking past it, and it was obviously too young to be there by itself and obviously something was wrong, but apparently being small enough and quiet enough makes suffering very easy to step around.
I don't think people have to be particularly interested in animals to understand why that is wrong, God made them, they are living creatures placed under the care of human beings, and we have an enormous amount of power over them that they do not have over us. We can feed them, protect them, destroy where they live, injure them, frighten them, help them when they're hurt or simply walk away, and an animal cannot demand justice from you afterward, embarrass you into behaving properly, explain its suffering in words or make itself important enough that helping it benefits your reputation. Having that much power over something should make us more responsible for it, especially when the creature in front of us has absolutely no power to make us care.
Proverbs says, "The just regardeth the lives of his beasts: but the bowels of the wicked are cruel." I think cruelty includes more than deliberately hurting something, because there is also the ordinary hardness that allows somebody to see suffering, decide it isn't their problem and continue walking. Obviously nobody can rescue every injured animal they encounter, and sometimes the correct thing with wildlife is to leave it alone, but when something is clearly helpless and suffering, somebody should care enough to find out what can actually be done rather than assuming somebody else will eventually do it.
Christ speaks about sparrows, creatures people considered ordinary and worth very little, and still speaks of them as being known by the Father, which should make Christians careful about deciding that a creature is too small or insignificant to deserve attention. God made things that are weaker than us, things that cannot speak our language, cannot understand why they are suffering and cannot repay us for helping them, and none of that makes cruelty toward them less ugly. If anything, being unable to defend themselves should make our responsibility clearer, because there is nothing admirable about showing kindness only to creatures capable of rewarding it
the obligation becomes much greater when the weaker one is another human being, and scripture is relentless about the poor, the sick, widows, orphans, strangers and people who have very little power of their own. Christ repeatedly went toward people everybody else had learned to step around, and Christianity has never given the strong permission to use strength entirely for themselves, as though being healthier, wealthier, more intelligent, more socially capable or physically stronger means God has simply provided better equipment for arranging a comfortable life.
There is nothing impressive about being stronger than somebody if all your strength accomplishes is making your own life easier, strength becomes useful when somebody weaker benefits from the fact that you possess it. If God gave you a healthy body, there will be things you can do for somebody whose body is failing, if you can speak when somebody else is frightened to speak, then speak, if you have enough food, feed somebody, if you understand something another person struggles to understand, explain it without humiliating them, and if somebody is being mistreated because everybody knows they cannot defend themselves properly, stand beside them. If an animal is lying injured while everybody walks around it, at least stop long enough to care. people seem to like compassion most when it remains a feeling, because feeling sorry for somebody costs almost nothing while actually helping can interfere with your day. stopping can ruin whatever plans you had for the next hour, helping somebody who is ill can be exhausting, defending somebody unpopular can make other people dislike you, giving means having less for yourself, and caring for something helpless can require effort from which you receive absolutely nothing in return, but Christian charity was never supposed to depend on whether the person in front of you can make the inconvenience worthwhile. It is especially disgusting when weakness itself becomes the reason somebody is treated badly, because people notice very quickly who is easy to mock, who has trouble understanding social situations, who is physically unable to fight back, who is mentally struggling, who is poor, who speaks strangely, who is isolated, who has no friends standing nearby and who will probably remain silent if something cruel is said to them. A decent person should notice those things and become more careful with that person, yet there are always people who notice exactly the same weaknesses and recognize an opportunity, and Christians should be impossible to recruit into that kind of cruelty.
It should not matter whether everybody else is laughing, whether helping somebody makes you look strange, whether the person is socially embarrassing, whether the animal is ugly, whether anybody will know what you did afterward or whether the person you defended will ever be able to repay you. If somebody weaker is being harmed, standing beside the crowd because you value its approval more than doing what is right is cowardice, and there is no amount of popularity that turns cowardice into charity. Matthew 25 is severe about this, Christ speaks of the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick and the imprisoned, then says, "as long as you did it to one of these my least brethren, you did it to me." It is difficult to read that seriously and continue believing that vulnerable people are somebody else's responsibility, especially when God has placed one directly in front of you and given you something they currently lack. I think strength is one of the things people forget to be grateful for because it feels ordinary while they have it, being able to walk, carry something, understand what is happening around you, earn money, speak for yourself, make decisions, defend yourself or simply move through society without requiring somebody else's help can feel completely unremarkable until you meet somebody who cannot do one of those things. Then you have been shown exactly where something you were given can become useful, and wasting that gift because helping would be inconvenient is a very strange way to thank God for giving it to you. The little pigeon couldn't tell anybody what was wrong, couldn't ask people to stop, couldn't explain how long it had been there, couldn't promise gratitude and couldn't make itself useful enough to deserve anybody's attention, it was simply small, alive, helpless and made by God, while the human beings walking around it had been given everything it lacked.
Deo Gratias.