On Empathy
The 2020 presidential election was called this morning. My family decided to watch President-Elect Joe Biden’s speech, as our children are immensely curious about the American election process right now.
Flashing on the screens behind the stage read the words:
"AMERICA HAS CHOSEN EMPATHY"
Now, I fully recognize that this message was politically-charged, but it stood out to me as a hopeful prayer. Not only for our politics, but as a people.
Over my entire adult life, I have seen us become less and less empathetic as a country - Christian or non-Christian - as we become more rooted in political identity. That’s idolatry. We collectively don’t love our neighbors because we see the other side as evil. We say we care about the common good, but we’re most concerned about our own good. Our collective lack of empathy in our society that feeds the suspicion, fear, and rhetoric that seems pervasive these days.
We need to relearn how to be human.
“Compassion asks us to go where it hurts, to enter into the places of pain, to share in brokenness, fear, confusion, and anguish. Compassion challenges us to cry out with those in misery, to mourn with those who are lonely, to weep with those in tears. Compassion requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless. Compassion means full immersion in the condition of being human.”
Imagine the country we might become if we were a people defined by empathy.
Imagine the church we would be.
