Why is it I lack compassion?

In Job 30:25 Job says, "Did not I weep for him whose day was hard? Was not my soul grieved for the needy?" Job spoke these words in the midst of his severe affliction. He remembered the time when he was extremely blessed and how he still had an eye for the needy. This was a demonstration of his righteousness, his reflecting the Heavenly Father. But now it seemed that there was no one who had compassion on him.
Our God truly is a God of compassion; One who has an eye for the needy. In our reading in Exodus 12 today we see the culmination of God's compassion. We see, after Israel's 400 years of bondage and crying out to the Lord, the Lord sets in motion His deliverance of the people. He had heard their cry. He had seen their distress, and now moved with love He brings about a great deliverance.
We see the same compassion in Luke 15. Each parable tells of something lost (a coin, a sheep, a son) and how someone diligently sought them out until they were found. In each case heaven's joy is ignited as the lost becomes found. Perhaps the most poignant picture comes in the third parable when the Father takes off running to his returning son, embraces him, kisses him, and calls for a celebration. Truly our Lord is a compassionate God.
Since that is the case, why is it that sometimes we Christians do not have compassion for the lost and needy? Why is it that we can live our lives and not see and respond to the needs all around us? That apparently was true among the "religious" leaders of Jesus' day. In fact, this lack of compassion was what led Jesus to share these three parables. So, what is it that keeps us from an active love like the Father's?
Well, in the case of the religious rulers of Jesus' day, they had not really come to grips with their own neediness. They were on what I call a "self-salvation" project; they were trying to save themselves by their own good works, and they felt they were doing a pretty good job. But that lie was blinding them to the unloving realities in their own lives. When Luke tells us that they were grumbling because Jesus was receiving sinners and eating with them, we have to say something is gravely wrong with their "faith".
I think the principle spoken by Jesus in another passage is in operation here: He who is forgiven little, loves little; he who is forgiven much, loves much. That is to say the religious rulers who thought well of themselves, who thought quite frankly that they were better than others, had in their mind little to be forgiven. As a result, they loved little. But those of us who know our heart, or who have allowed the Lord to reveal to us the true nature of our heart, know that we have much need of forgiveness. We know true neediness. And those who have known the depths of their own neediness tend, by God's grace, to be more loving, more compassionate for other needy people.
This brings a very important application to mind. Why is it we fight so hard to cover our own sinfulness? Why is it we strive to want to look good before others? When we do that we are really cheating ourselves of the depths of God's grace and forgiveness in our own lives, and making it more difficult, and less likely, that we will be lovers, like our God, of the needy. May the Lord enable us all to freely let Him shine His light on our hearts, and may that revelation lead us to experience and then display the fullness of compassion of our Father.