The famous anthropologist Margaret Mead was once asked: what was the earliest sign of civilization in any given culture? Her answer was: “a healed femur.” The femur, of course, is the leg bone below the knee. Mead explained that no healed femurs are found where the law of the jungle – or survival of the fittest – reigns. A healed femur shows that someone cared. Someone had to do that injured person’s hunting and gathering until the leg healed. The evidence of compassion, she said, is the first sign of civilization.
The Bible tells us that it is also the first sign of true spirituality. It says “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep from being polluted by the world.” Belief without compassion is empty. But where love is, God is