I remember the day my first wife died. Many came to offer their sympathies. I was somewhat in shock, but I remember that I was grateful. Then Pastor Lim Soon Hock came. He too had lost his first wife. He didn’t say much, just a few words of wisdom and care. But there was “I know you know” communicated in the silence. I remember that his presence gave me courage. He knew something of what I was going through. He could empathise.
What is empathy? Here is a definition from the New Dictionary of Christian Ethics and Pastoral Theology:
Empathy is about entering the other person’s internal frame of reference, understanding the person's world and knowing the person's self-perception. It means understanding not only what the person thinks and feels but also what are his or her values and goals in life. It is possible to help people without fully understanding them, but the person who can empathize is likely to be more effective.
Empathy is not just about understanding a person but also about communicating that understanding. The counselor needs to listen to the verbal and nonverbal messages and respond in a way that communicates understanding. (1)
Books on counselling would often put “an understanding and mastery of empathy” as one of the desired qualities of effective counsellors. I would say that it is a quality that is desirable for all people-helping roles, including mentoring.
It is also a desirable quality for believers as they seek to love one another. In Romans 12:15, Paul tells believers to rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep. To be able to do this we need to know what a person is feeling. In fact, one reason we are encouraged to turn to Jesus when we struggle with temptation is because He has also experienced temptation though He never gave in to it (Hebrews 4:15).
Let us be clear that we can never fully understand somebody’s feelings. I never say, “I know how you feel”. Even when I spend time with a widower, I don’t give the impression that I know what he is going through. Each person’s grief is unique. I don’t know your unique suffering but I know the suffering of losing a spouse. I know suffering. Pastor Soon Hock never said that he knew what I was going through. He didn’t talk much. But he was there. In the few words he shared, by his body language, I knew he empathised, and that was so healing.
Showing empathy to someone doesn’t mean I endorse all that person does or believes. Right and wrong are still defined by the Bible properly interpreted. But I hope that empathy shown can help a person be more open to being helped; to be more of what God wants that person to be. And can empathy be manipulated? Yes. The person who shows empathy may not be concerned for the welfare of the one being helped. He/she just wants to guide a person to a particular way of thinking or acting. It is also possible for people to manipulate those committed to showing empathy. Some people will prey on caring hearts, possibly with guilt-inducing statements, to do things that have nothing to do with growing in shalom for both the helper and the helpee. Like many good things, empathy can be misused. But that is no reason to abandon our commitment to a proper use of empathy in helping and relationship building.
There is some challenging news though. The impact of our growing use of smart phones seems to have affected our ability to empathise. Noreena Hertz writes:
As for our ability to feel empathy, the distracting nature of smartphones significantly erodes this crucial skill which helps us understand and connect with each other. This is because they fragment our attention, creating a splintered self, caught between the physical reality of an intimate in-person conversation and the tens, maybe even hundreds, of text- and image-based conversations happening simultaneously on our screens. When we are pulled in so many directions, it’s nearly impossible to give those in front of us the full weight of our attention and compassion, or see things from their point of view. (2)
Empathy is needed for meaningful face-to-face communication. Not surprisingly, it is also cultivated in face-to-face encounters.
Face-to-face experience with other human beings is central to developing a healthy respect for and empathy towards others. (3)
I think it is long overdue for Christians to relook at how we do church. The main activity of most churches is corporate worship. While such assemblies may be great for celebration, inspiration and instruction, they are not platforms for face-to-face encounters. Could this be one reason that many still feel that the church is a lonely place and that much of our evangelism feels like us pedaling a product rather than a caring human-to-human encounter?
We live in a world that needs healthy empathy more than ever. Followers of Jesus should be at the forefront of showing how this is done. Unfortunately, we too need help in this.
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(1) H. C. Hendry, “Empathy,” New Dictionary of Christian Ethics and Pastoral Theology (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1995), 343.
(2) Noreena Hertz, The Lonely Century (London, UK: Sceptre, 2020), 93–94.
(3) Christine Rosen, The Extinction of Experience (New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 2024),124.