Compassion

Two of my boys are compassionate to a degree that astonishes me. D changed out of his engineering class at school (!! engineering he doesn't like??!!) but won't get out of another class he's not that excited about because the same teacher teaches it and it would be "rude and mean" to quit BOTH of her classes.

Big A thinks it would be horribly wrong to round up illegals and ship them back to their native countries. I think it would be fine but he said, "Mom, think about it. You can't take a man from his life and family and just dump him on a deserted road and leave him there!" When I say this is the chance someone takes by not doing things the right way, his answer is that we can't treat someone that way.
This discussion was specifically without taking into account that someone may be here from desperation, we don't mean people who escaped from terror and came here however they could. That's a whole different situation in my opinion and mercy is much easier to extend.

How can my boys so easily put themselves in someone else's position and work from there? They didn't learn it from me I'm sure because I don't think I'm that considerate. I'm not sure what I think of it, I think they're being righteous and holy this way but it's so foreign to me!

I have made meager offerings to this type of thinking in that I usually point out (aloud) to them through their growing up years that if a person is being an absolute jerk, they probably just had to deal with something upsetting. Or if they're often like that, that they likely have suffered a lot and feel life is awful and dangerous, wonder how we can show them something better. But their compassion goes way beyond what I can truly fathom.