THE DANGER OF GROWING NUMB TO HUMAN SUFFERING

When algorithms replace empathy, our faith demands we look again—and act

I saw a video of someone dying the other day.

It wasn’t on the evening news. It wasn’t in a documentary. It was sandwiched between Cesar Millan training a pit bull and a meal-prep tutorial, served up by Instagram’s algorithm like just another piece of content to consume and scroll past.

And I did scroll past. Because that’s what we do now.

The Crisis of Convenience

We are the most connected generation in human history. We carry the world’s suffering in our pockets—every war, every famine, every injustice, every tear—available at the swipe of a thumb. We witness global news being made in real time, often in gruesome, unfiltered detail.

And then we set our phones down and pretend any of this is normal.

I’ve spent two decades documenting humanitarian crises—disasters, conflicts, poverty, and injustice, often involving children. I’ve seen things I carry in an invisible backpack that weighs a hundred pounds. I know firsthand the heavy toll of bearing witness to suffering.

But here’s what’s changed: We’re all bearing witness now. And many of us are breaking under the weight.

Compassion fatigue isn’t a weakness—it’s a survival mechanism. Our hearts weren’t designed to process the collective trauma of 8 billion people. When every week brings a new crisis that shreds our souls, numbness becomes a shield.

But as Christians, we cannot surrender to the numbness. We cannot allow our hearts to harden while the world burns.

The Politics of Caring

Here’s something I’ve noticed: Caring for “the least of these” has become political. Conversations about poverty, refugees, and suffering are now filtered through partisan lenses, dissected for ideological purity, and weaponized in culture wars.

Let me be crystal clear about something:

It’s not political. It’s biblical.

When Jesus stood on that hillside and said, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” He wasn’t making a policy recommendation. He wasn’t endorsing a political party or a particular approach to governance. He was issuing a command that transcends every human system, every ideology, every boundary we’ve erected.

The Gospel doesn’t ask us to check our compassion at the door of our political beliefs. It demands we carry it everywhere we go.

The Great Commandment: Love Without Limits

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself.” (Matthew 22:36-40)

We’ve read these words so many times that we’ve lost their radical edge. We’ve domesticated them, made them comfortable, stripped them of their revolutionary power.

Consider the Parable of the Good Samaritan. The traveler the Samaritan encountered wasn’t just a stranger—he was a sworn enemy. The Jews and Samaritans despised each other. They had centuries of hostility between them. And yet Jesus chooses a Samaritan as the hero of His story, the one who shows what true neighbor-love looks like.

Jesus calls us to a radical, global, no-limits, big-hearted love that doesn’t flinch in the face of suffering.

Not love for those who look like us. Not love for those who share our politics or our nationality or our faith. A love that crosses every dividing line, that embraces every enemy, that sees Christ in the face of every sufferer.

The Great Commission: Going to the Suffering

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations…” (Matthew 28:18-20)

The Great Commission isn’t an accident in our faith. It’s central. It’s the heartbeat of everything we believe. And it sends us—all of us—outward.

I wish I could bring you with me. I wish you could stand at the Simón Bolívar Bridge in Colombia and watch women cut off their hair for a few dollars to feed their children. I wish you could meet the children who survived the Rwandan Genocide, coloring their trauma with crayons in a church basement. I wish you could walk through Malawi’s drought-stricken villages and see families eating grass to survive. I wish you could visit the Thai border and look into the eyes of stateless children caught between conflict and nowhere to belong.

This suffering is almost unbearable to witness.

But we must not cower. Because the Great Commandment and the Great Commission are deeply intertwined. We love our neighbors by going to them. We make disciples by embodying Christ’s love to the suffering.

The Danger of Comfortable Christianity

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: We’ve built a comfortable faith. We’ve created churches that cater to our preferences, worship that soothes our anxieties, and theology that lets us off the hook.

We’ve convinced ourselves that caring from a distance is enough. That a “like” or a “share” or a “thoughts and prayers” post constitutes engagement. That giving five dollars or signing an online petition fulfills the demands of the Gospel.

Awareness is not meaningful engagement.

You can scroll through tragedy after tragedy, feel momentary sorrow, and never actually do anything. You can be “informed” and remain completely uninvolved. You can know about the suffering of the world and let that knowledge become just another piece of content.

What Real Engagement Looks Like

This is daunting. I know. The problems are too big, the suffering too vast, the needs too overwhelming.

So let me give you a simple starting place: Take inventory of what God has given you.

Your giftings. Your personality. Your resources. Your skills. Your unique position in this world.

There are no accidents in how God made you.

• If you’re strong, He made you strong to defend the weak.

• If you’re brave, He made you brave for those who are afraid.

• If you’re generous, He made you generous for those who have nothing.

• If you’re compassionate, He made you compassionate for the broken.

• If you’re wealthy, He made you wealthy to be generous.

• If you’re influential, He made you influential to advocate for the voiceless.

Think about the causes and issues God has embedded in your heart. Those passions aren’t random—they’re signposts pointing to where and how you’re called to serve.

Moving Past Our Paralysis

When I first started working with Compassion International, I was overwhelmed by extreme poverty. My first trips to West Africa left me paralyzed—the need was so vast, the suffering so deep, the systems so broken. I felt like a tiny drop of water trying to put out a forest fire.

But here’s what I learned: We’re not called to solve it all.

The simplicity of Jesus’ message is to meet the needs we see and can meet. To love others as we would hope to be loved. To act purposefully without carrying the unbearable weight of being unable to erase all suffering perfectly.

You cannot help everyone. But you can help someone.

You cannot solve every problem. But you can solve one problem for one person.

A Call to Action

As I wrap up these words, my challenge to you is this:

Don’t look away.

Don’t let the algorithm desensitize you. Don’t let the constant stream of suffering harden your heart. Don’t let compassion fatigue win.

Instead:

1. Keep your heart soft. Spend time in Scripture that reminds you of God’s heart for the poor and suffering. Pray with your eyes open to the needs around you.

2. Stay informed, but don’t stop there. Move from awareness to action. Find one organization, one cause, one community where you can make a tangible difference.

3. Use what you have. Your time. Your money. Your skills. Your influence. Your voice. These aren’t accidents—they’re tools for the Kingdom.

4. Engage intentionally. Don’t just react to crisis; build a sustainable rhythm of compassion that can outlast the next headline.

5. Remember your calling—and your legacy. How do you want to be remembered? As someone who looked away? Or as someone who loved well, who acted bravely, who let God’s compassion flow through them to a hurting world?

The Final Word

Carry God’s word close. Keep your heart soft. Look to the horizon.

And then, move.

Move toward the suffering. Move toward the broken. Move toward the forgotten. Move toward the stranger, the refugee, the hungry, the imprisoned, the abandoned.

Because when you do, you’re not just doing good works—you’re encountering Jesus Himself. You’re fulfilling the Great Commandment and living out the Great Commission. You’re rejecting the numbness that threatens our age and embracing the radical, unconditional love that defines our faith.

The world is watching. The suffering is waiting. And the Kingdom is calling.

Will you answer?