It is vital, vital, vital that we care for each other in the complete body-and-soul, now-and-forever integrity of each human being. Shortcuts to compassion that make us enablers of destructive behavior do not heal. Rather, enablers themselves become caught in a vicious cycle of self-justification and falsification of their self-understanding, needing to push ever harder in the direction of a flawed “compassion” rather than admit the damage they are doing.
We must care for whole people as whole people, as a people…as the People of God.
John Henry Newman was an unflagging opponent of what he called “the religion of the day.” Whereas a previous age may have stressed too much the fierce and grim aspects of Christianity, Newman believed that his own age cared only for “the brighter side of the Gospel,—its tidings of comfort, its precepts of love.” He saw that the God who is described as a consuming fire in the Letter to the Hebrews had been forgotten.
(source: Always Fear, Always Love)