God’s empathy for a fallen humankind, the sending of a Messiah to save, being God’s instrument of forgiveness, demonstrates the cosmic understanding that was and is and always will be there. God understands, accepts, and forgives our imperfection.
Our challenge is to accept our own and others’ imperfections,
and to empathise for ourselves and others when we get it wrong.
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Compassion is God’s nature, and the practical outworking of compassion is empathy. Empathy is understanding as if the person empathising KNOWS what the other person experiences. When we KNOW what the other faces, we cannot condemn them.
Empathy is therefore kind, compassionate, understanding, gentle, patient. Empathy is thoroughly good, and given that goodness is the presentation of love, empathy is the practice of love.
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Humankind’s empathy for itself, a gift of forgiveness that heals not only those who have been hurt but offers hope to those who would turn from their sin, is the second greatest gift one human being can offer another or receive from another.
The greatest gift anyone can receive is to receive God’s empathy in the terms of the experienced forgiveness, breeding peace, hope, and joy, that reigns as salvation from eternity to eternity. In Jesus’ name.
When one has received such a gift—and it is always there for all, a person only need ask—that person enters a journey of learning God’s empathy as a way of worshipping God, not least by loving others as God has loved us all. This is experiencing God!
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Great personal blessing is experienced in authentically empathising for another person.
When we feel for another person as they feel, it not only lightens our own load, but we are also granted a heart that is after God’s own heart—seeing as God sees, feeling as God feels. This can only be received as a gift, but to receive the gift we must want it, we must make a place for it, we must make room, and we must nurture such a gift, also.
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It’s happened more than once where I’ve been in a conversation with someone, and they trust me enough to open up. “Please don’t judge me when I tell you something about myself.” Then there is a characteristic pause, perhaps a big deep metaphorical breath, and then the liminal space of trust that goes into operation.
So many people feel judged before they even open their mouths.
So many feel they are not good enough even for God.
Before they even contemplate sharing with another person, many people get incredibly anxious that they’re about to be misunderstood, criticised, judged, condemned.
Whenever we are vulnerable to another person’s acceptance, maybe it’s a part of ourselves that we are not proud of, or it could even be something nobody’s ever enquired about, the biggest barrier to sharing can be our own reticence.
We expect judgement, not empathy.
But God empathises.
Christians who follow their Lord empathise.
None of us has ever lived even a day anywhere close to perfection.
Many victims of abuse suffer judgement because they have never experienced anyone say to them, “I believe you.” They have never had anyone simply sit with them and say, “Please trust me... allow me to hold this space for you.” They are more accustomed to being judged and condemned for not stopping what was out of their control. People are far less accustomed to being understood and empathised with.
Imagine God saying, “I believe you because I saw it.”
Imagine hearing, “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
I have summoned you by name; you are mine.”
—Isaiah 43:1
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There are times in all our lives where we judge without having all the information at hand—when we fail the love of empathy for another. We often fall for what’s called dualistic thinking, where we judge “right or wrong” and “good or bad” and such judgement has no love of the deeper understanding of empathy about it. Such judging thinking does not bear the curiosity needed to withhold judgement.
It’s because we are a mess with unconscious biases.
Empathy requires honest introspection and true self-awareness.
The prayer of Psalm 139:23-24 is powerful
to liberate us from our judgement:
“Search ME, God, and know MY heart;
test me and know MY anxious thoughts.
See if there is any offensive way in ME,
and lead ME in the way everlasting.”
(Pronouns emphasised as CAPS)
We are all capable of getting it wrong and being harsh about someone else’s experience—especially when their experience runs cross grain against ours.
The last person we empathise with is the person who has hurt us, but perhaps we have also hurt them, so forgiving each other can seem a bridge too far for both.
Think about it for a moment. When we can empathise for another person, which is to step inside THEIR reality and feel as if we ourselves were them, we find it far easier to understand and therefore forgive, and peace, hope, and joy are the signs of our redemption.
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There’s so much fear and even dread experienced when we are conditioned by others’ judgement. That conditioning leaves us in a state of expectation for the worst. Little wonder people vacillate between the extremes of rallying against the abuse done to them, self-condemnation, and reactive abuse. That whole process is exhausting mentally, emotionally, and spiritually and it saps us at a soul level.
We don’t realise how insidious it is until we are caught in the cycle of injustice.
Truly, we can live our whole life thinking things about “victims” and then through the twist of events, and cruel irony, we become one. Suddenly, we are in a place where we are consumed by injustice when not long ago we would not be caught in “victimhood” for anything.
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The opportunity we all have if we want to grow in life is to engage our senses in the curiosity of empathy for others. We cannot grow if we cannot give. It is in the giving that we receive, and only by giving without seeking to receive anything. Such space for empathy, understanding, and love is a gift that comes in forgiving, which takes great faith.
The more we live like this,
the less we judge,
the more our own lives blossom and flourish.
And this is power for others in our orbit of influence.
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Empathy expands our humanity, but judgement reveals entitlement.
Empathy is an expanded vision, beyond oneself.
Judgement is a constricted vision often borne of ignorance.
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Our world needs more Christian love borne of empathy to create understanding and positive change in our society’s culture. Love is a force that will transform the world, yet we battle all our lives against the forces of judgement and condemnation that keep people in bondage.
Our world needs individual human beings who receive the empathy of God in their own lives and portray this empathy so it flows into others’ lives. These are filled by the Spirit to overflow into others’ lives. We are to be filled with love so we can overflow with love.
We cannot give what we have not first received.
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