A. One day a man was crossing the street to visit his neighbor.
1. As he started to cross the street, a car was bearing down on him, so he stopped and backed up to the curb.
2. The car stopped, so he started to cross, and the car started to move toward him.
3. The man changed direction and went back to the curb and the car turned and moved toward him.
4. The man then started to run across the street and the car swerved in that direction.
5. The man moved left and the car moved left. Then he moved right and the car moved right.
6. Finally the man just stopped in the middle of the road and the car screeched to a stop right in front of him.
7. The man walked around to the driver’s window and as the window rolled down, the man was surprised to see a squirrel was the driver.
8. The squirrel said to the man, “So now you know how it feels to be me.”
B. I wish there was an easy way for all of us to know what it feels like to be someone else.
1. That’s really what empathy is.
2. Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.
3. It means to have affinity with, rapport with, sympathy with, understanding of, sensitivity toward, identification with, and awareness of others and their feelings and experiences.
4. Do you think empathy is something we need more of in our world today?
5. Do you think empathy is something we need more of in our church today?
C. Unfortunately, we tend to live in bubbles and we only know and understand our own feelings and our own experiences, and those of people who are closest to us, or most like us.
1. Empathy is not equally developed and present in everyone, and it is downright missing in some cases.
2. In my research for today’s sermon, I came across a term that I didn’t know existed, called “Empathy Deficit Disorder.”
3. In an article from Psychology Today, Dr. Douglas LaBier (Ph.D.) wrote: “It’s possible that you're among the large number of people who suffer from EDD. No, that isn’t a typo, I don’t mean ADD or ED. It’s EDD, for “Empathy Deficit Disorder.”
I made it up, so you won't find it listed in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Normal variations of mood and temperament are increasingly redefined as new “disorders,” so I’m hesitant to suggest a new one. But this one’s real, and it’s becoming more pronounced in today’s world.
I’ve identified it from my decades of experience as a business psychologist, psychotherapist, and researcher into adult development. From that triple vantage point, I’ve concluded that Empathy Deficit Disorder is a pervasive but overlooked condition. In fact, our increasingly polarized social and political culture of the past few years reveals that EDD is more severe than ever. It has profound consequences for the mental health of both individuals and society. Yet it’s ignored as a psychological disturbance by most of my colleagues in the mental health professions.
First, some explanation of what I mean by EDD: When you suffer from it you’re unable to step outside yourself and tune in to what other people experience, especially those who feel, think, and believe differently from yourself. That makes it a source of personal conflicts, of communication breakdown in intimate relationships, and of adversarial attitudes, including hatred, towards groups of people who differ in their beliefs, traditions, or ways of life from your own.”
Dr. LaBier goes on to say: “Empathy is different from sympathy. Sympathy reflects understanding another person’s situation but viewed through your own lens. That is, it’s based on your version of what the other person is dealing with… In contrast, empathy is what you feel only when you can step outside of yourself and enter the internal world of the other person. There, without abandoning or losing your own perspective, you can experience the other’s emotions, conflicts, or aspirations from within the vantage point of that person’s world.”
D. Developing this kind of empathy isn’t easy, but it is what God wants us, His church, to do.
1. The apostle Peter puts it very well in 1 Peter 3:8-9, “Finally, all of you be like-minded and sympathetic, love one another, and be compassionate and humble, not paying back evil for evil or insult for insult but, on the contrary, giving a blessing, since you were called for this, so that you may inherit a blessing.”
2. The key words I want us to focus on are “sympathetic, compassionate and humble.”
3. They all are extensions or descriptions of love, but they are so helpful because the word love can be so general and nebulous.
4. The kind of love that God wants us to show to everyone, inside and outside of the church is a love that begins with humility.
5. Starting with humility keeps us in the mindset that everyone is as important and worthy of love and respect as I am, and that God is in charge, not me.
6. Then with humility in our hearts we attempt to be sympathetic and compassionate toward others.
E. One of the best ways to be sympathetic and compassionate toward others is to try to put ourselves in their shoes.
1. We are all familiar with the proverb that says, “Don’t judge a person until you have walked a mile in their shoes.”
2. In order to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes, then we first need a sufficiently developed capacity to feel what they would feel, to intepret the situation as they would interpret it, to make the kind of conclusions that they would make, along with the choices that come with it.
3. Putting ourselves in someone else’s shoes is not an easy task to do, but that is what empathy is all about.
4. Someone else’s shoes are rarely the same size as ours and they can either be tight and hurt our feet or be loose and awkward to walk in.
5. But we learn so much if we try hard to imagine what it is like to be the other person and to walk in their shoes.
F. How many of you have seen the Disney Film called Freaky Friday, starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan?
1. In this movie, Jamie Lee Curtis plays a middle aged widow and Lindsay Lohan plays her teenage aspiring musician daughter.
2. Curtis is about to marry her fiancé, but her daughter is not thrilled about this development.
3. The mother and teenage daughter couldn't be more different, and it is driving them both insane.
4. There is constant conflict because both mother and daughter have very little empathy toward each other.
5. Each is focused on what she wants for herself and is insensitive to the other.
6. In the movie they are mysteriously made to switch bodies and walk a mile in each other’s shoes.
7. And the only way they can switch back to their own bodies is to do some unselfish act for each other.
8. In the process, both mother and daughter develop a new sense of respect and understanding for each other – they learned to empathize with each other.
G. With God’s help, I hope that all of us can learn how to be sympathetic, compassionate and humble, without having to go through a “Freaky Friday” experience.
1. Let’s spend a few minutes trying to be more empathetic, sympathetic and compassionate.
2. Let’s start with thinking about the different shoes that we might walk in just among the members of our church family.
3. Let’s consider the places of our birth…
a. Please raise your hand if you were born in New York State.
b. Please raise your hand if you were born in another state in our country.
c. Please raise your hand if you were born in a country other than the U.S.A.
d. How might you feel different living here in N.Y.S. if you were born in this state, or born in another state, or born in another country.
e. How might your experiences be different if born here or another state or another country?
4. Let’s consider the gender of our birth…
a. Please raise your hand if you are female in gender.
b. Please raise your hand if you are male in gender.
c. How might you feel different if you were male rather than female, and visa versa?
d. How might your experiences be different in life if you had been male rather than female, and visa versa.
e. And keep in mind that a lot has changed in the past 50 or more years with a move toward gender equality, so the experiences of older men and women will have been different than younger men and women.
5. Consider what it might feel like and how your experiences might have been different if you were born a different race and had a different skin color.
a. And just like with gender that we just talked about, a lot has changed over the years and a lot needs to continue to change with regard to race relations.
b. Race relations were vastly different in 1850, than in 1900, or in 1950, or in 2000, or at the present.
c. Race relations have also been different depending on the part of our country you live in.
6. We don’t have time to go over in detail all of the possibilities for how we might feel or what our experiences would have been depending on all kinds of variables, but empathy, sympathy and compassion says we want to try to understand.
7. What about economic differences between the rich or poor, regardless of race, color, or nationality?
8. What about differences in family units: married, singles, divorced, widowed – we have a lot of single family units in our church – there are 74 single family units, 58 married family units.
9. What about differences in family units with regard to children – families with no children ever or empty nests now, families with biological children, foster children, adoptive children?
10. What about differences related to health – physical health, mental health – there are so many dynamics involved – chronic illness and pain, emotional instability.
11. What about differences related to addiction and rehab.
12. What about differences related to the law, a criminal record and imprisonment.
13. What about differences related to other things – religion, sexual orientation, foreign culture.
H. Are you beginning to grasp just how much work is involved in trying to have empathy, sympathy and compassion for how other people feel about their situation and experiences that may be so very different than ours?
1. Because it is so challenging, you can see why many have opted to not even try.
2. Many have traded empathy for apathy and truly have developed an empathy deficit disorder.
3. But that is not an option for those of us who want to please God.
4. In order to please God, we must obey God’s Word which tells us things like Colossians 3:12-14: Therefore, as God’s chosen ones, holy and dearly loved, put on compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving one another if anyone has a grievance against another. Just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you are also to forgive. Above all, put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity.
5. Notice that those same important words show up that we saw in 1 Peter 3: love, compassion, and humility.
I. In 2016, Nate Walker, published a book called “Cultivating Empathy: The Worth and Dignity of Every Person – Without Exception.”
1. The introduction of his book begins with a powerful story.
a. Over a period of several months in 1960 in New Orleans, child psychologist Robert Coles spoke with Ruby Bridges, a six-year-old African American who was threatened and taunted by people who opposed her enrollment in a segregated school.
b. Six-year-old Ruby told Coles she felt sorry for the people who were trying to kill her.
c. Coles clarified, “You feel sorry for them?”
d. Ruby replied, “Well, don’t you think they need feeling sorry for?”
2. Walker uses this story to introduce the idea of moral imagination which he defines as “the ability to anticipate or project oneself into the middle of a moral dilemma or conflict and understand all points of views.”
3. Walker explains how Ruby Bridges was able to “imagine the torturous existence the segregationist white supremacist experienced when threatening her life.”
4. This story and Walker’s treatment of it as an example of moral imagination are a great example of a way that empathy can lead to a moral path of action.
5. By imagining the experience of those who tortured her, Ruby was able to show them compassion, to offer forgiveness, and to pray for them.
6. How astonishing and challenging is her example!
7. It reminds me of our Savior and the empathy and compassion He expressed while hanging on the cross, praying: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” (Lk. 23:34).
8. Empathy is a tool that can soften our judgment and criticism of others as we try to see the world from their point of view.
J. But even as different as we may be in our personal, cultural, or racial feelings and experiences, we are all made in the image of the same God and have equal value as God’s creation.
1. And as different as we may be, in the most fundamental ways we are all the same.
2. In Erich Remarque’s book, All Quiet on the Western Front, he tells of a remarkable encounter between two enemy soldiers during the Second World War.
3. During one battle a German soldier took shelter in a crater made by artillery shells.
4. Looking around he saw a man wounded, an enemy soldier, and he was dying.
5. The German soldier’s heart went out to him.
6. He gave him water from his canteen and listened as the dying man spoke of his wife and children.
7. The German helped him find his wallet and take out pictures of his family to look at one last time.
8. In that encounter these two men ceased to be enemies.
9. The German had seen the wounded soldier in a new way - not as an enemy combatant but as a father, a husband, someone who loves and is loved - someone just like him.
10. This is always the path of peace and reconciliation, learning to truly see the other and in them recognizing someone just like yourself.
K. Every time I hear Mandisa’s powerful song called “Bleed the Same,” I am inspired – her song features TobyMac and Kirk Franklin.
1. The lyrics include these words:
We all bleed the same, We’re more beautiful when we come together
We all bleed the same, So tell me why, tell me why We’re divided
Woke up today, Another headline, Another innocent life is taken, In the name of hatred
So hard to take, And if we think that it’s all good, Then we’re mistaken
‘Cause my heart is breaking
Are you left? Are you right? Pointing fingers, taking sides
When are we gonna realize? We all bleed the same
We’re more beautiful when we come together, We all bleed the same
If we’re gonna fight, Let’s fight for each other
If we’re gonna shout, Let love be the cry
We all bleed the same
Tell me, who are we, To judge someone, By the kind of clothes they're wearing
Or the color of their skin?
Are you black? Are you white? Aren't we all the same inside?
Father, open our eyes to see!
We all bleed the same
We’re more beautiful when we come together
Only love can drive out all the darkness
We were made to carry one another
L. Jesus has shown us the way, and all we need to do is follow in His steps.
1. He died for all people, the whole world.
2. While he lived He showed love and compassion for all people.
3. Whether it was a leper who needed to be touched, or sinful outcasts who needed forgiveness, like Zacchaeus, the Samaritan woman, or the woman caught in adultery, or the selfish, self-absorbed rich young ruler who needed to be challenged to live a better way, Jesus cared for all people.
4. Jesus felt the pain and suffering of Mary and Martha when Lazarus died, and the widow who was about to bury her only son, or the centurion whose daughter had died, and Jesus did what he could to help them.
5. We are called to love and serve like Jesus did, to wash the feet of others, even the feet of those who hurt us, those who are considered our enemies.
6. Jesus said that all people will know that we are His disciples if we love one another (Jn. 13:35).
M. The apostle John wrote: Dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love…Dear friends, if God loved us in this way, we also must love one another. No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God remains in us and his love is made complete in us. (1 Jn. 4:7-8, 11-12).
1. The world is a place filled with people with empathy deficit disorder.
a. We can be part of the solution to that, rather than be part of the problem.
2. It starts with being born of God and having His love in our hearts.
a. Humility and repentance leads us to be born of God, because we know that we need God’s love, compassion and forgiveness.
b. Having been born of God, we embrace God’s mission of spreading the love of God.
3. Loving others as God loves us requires us to express empathy and compassion to all people, which includes doing our best to understand what they feel and what they have experienced, and to do what we can to help them bear their burdens (Galatians 6:2).
a. And as God’s love is made complete in us, the church becomes a powerful force to change the world, one person at a time.
4. I pray that all of us will be part of the solution and the healing of the fractured, hate-filled world we live in.
a. It won’t be easy, but it will be worth the effort.
b. It starts with making a commitment to try to understand and empathize with others before we many any judgments about them and what they might need from us.
5. Love first – start with empathy.
Resources:
The Place of Empathy, Dr. Stephanie May
www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-new-resilience/201004/are-you-suffering-empathy-deficit-disorder
