Should they not tell us to strive for Mercy and Compassion?

For the last few days, there has been much sorrow in my heart. There have been the senseless deaths in Pakistan. The earthquake in Haiti. Yet, when I read something like this, my heart breaks a little bit more.

Many could say, how could you ask for anything more from Pat Robertson, who is an evangelist, and a fundamentalist Christian. Yet, it is these agents of intolerance, who in many ways represent our religions. And when, in these moments of human misery, instead of searching out God's grace and encouraging all of us to reach within ourselves for compassion, mercy and charity towards God's creation, these people condemn those who are suffering, how can one not feel heart broken.

This reminds me of when after the earthquakes in Pakistan in 2007, Farhat Hashmi, a Pat Robertson equivalent in Pakistan, made a statement that the people of Northern Pakistan were paying for their sins. When she should have been extolling all of us to reach within our hearts and show mercy and compassion towards those who were suffering, the only comment of hers which reached everyone, was that somehow those who had suffered, had brought it upon themselves. The human condition can be so heart breaking.