Empathic Compassion: Experiencing Your Pain In My Heart

I carefully watched him as he walked down the hall; he was dressed in a long flowing white coat. His head hung unpersuasively from his shoulders. The doctor's demeanor suggested he was intensely contemplating what he would say to us, or he was envisioning another appointment.

Halfway down the hall he entered a room in the center section of the hospital. As I stood at the end of the hall, a hall that ran around the perimeter of the floor, he approached us from the other side of the hospital.

The doctor quietly passed by us and entered the room. He did not say anything to the couple standing next to me. They, too, were dumbfounded. I was not sure what I wanted the physician to say or do. He could have said, "I'm sorry your father died," or "he was in much pain, now he is resting in peace" or some other comforting words. He could have taken the initiative to invite us into the hospital room.

During the brief encounter, I was not sure what I expected of the doctor, he simply turned and walked back down the hall. It was late at night; the nurse in charge had summoned me to the hospital.

Without an affirming word or a warm touch, he had pronounced what we already knew; the man in the room was dead. The sterility of a modern and popular hospital confronted us with the delicate nature of human relationships. I went into the hospital room with the couple, a daughter and a son-in-law, as they attempted to bring a treasured relationship to closure.

First, I learned that caring for people is not synonymous with providing correct information. This young couple, consciously aware of the pain and grief that had invaded their life, struggled to make sense out of death. They needed something more than knowledge, pious words that profess power to rivet together wounded hearts. As strange as it may seem, this would become a lesson for me on compassion. We must never let our hearts become indifferent, regardless of the hurt, compassion fatigue, or any other reason.

A familiar phrase echoed in my mind as I stood beside the deceased, his daughter, and his son-in-law: OTHERS WILL NOT CARE HOW MUCH YOU KNOW UNTIL THEY KNOW HOW MUCH YOU CARE. The couple needed more than medical or religious data about death and grief.

We are an information driven society. Knowing is often equated with faith and ministry. A danger that modern Christianity faces is in making the acquisition of knowledge an end to itself. Chuck Swindoll said,

In place of compassion we have deliberately substituted information. Somehow, we have determined that knowledge will heal wounds. We have convinced ourselves that facts are what the hurting soul really needs. (Chuck Swindoll, Compassion: Showing Care in a Careless World (Waco: Word Books, 1984), 39.)

The crystalline call of the Gospel is to empathize with people who are struggling to make sense out of life. Caring for people involves more than giving them correct information to fix them; caring for people means we are willing to experience some of their pain in our hearts.

I have also learned that developing relational skills is prerequisite to caring for people. Ministry is not so much a task to perform as it is an opportunity to build compassionate relationships.

I have become increasingly concerned about our methodologies for proclamation and ministry. First, I am concerned when we use our primary energy and resources simply to get the right information to people, instead of building personal relationships.

For example, evangelical groups have smuggled Bibles and Christian literature into places like China and Russia. At the time Mao imposed the Cultural Revolution there were only approximately one million Christians in China; today there are 20-40 million. (Obviously there are many more today) (George G. Hunter, How To Reach Secular People (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1992), 114. Hunter attributes this phenomenal growth to the lay led house churches. These small groups were surely impacted by the way many missionaries to China suffered

persecution. The missionaries were often more concerned for their Christian friends in China than for their lives. The missionaries, those like Lottie Moon, modeled the faith for the Chinese. Likewise, they kept the faith alive.) We have learned that Christianity flourished in China and Russia when it was politically incorrect. Christianity expanded not because of the actions of zealot Christians who smuggled in literature, but because Chinese and Russian Christians cared for each other during adverse times.

Second, I am concerned when we become more distressed about statistics than building personal relationships. Churches and denomination often overemphasize numbers, to the detriment of individual needs.

Third, I am concerned when we falsely believe it is our role to announce judgement, while failing to extend grace. During a Renovaré Conference I witnessed surprised expressions when a conference leader, Jim Smith, said, "God loves you the same when you are sinning as he does when you are praying." (Eulogy of Jim Smith presented a Holmeswood Baptist Church, Kansas City, Missouri. Jim Smith, along with Richard Foster, led a Renovaré Conference September 24-25, 1994). The Good News tells us God is for us, not against us.