Empathy has become a widely used term in recent times. As our society advances the authority of “lived experience” it is important that we practice empathy – especially if we are to speak meaningfully into another’s life.
The word empathy is a transliteration of the Greek term empatheia (“in-passion”) that meant physical affection. The term does not appear in Scripture. The first appearance of the word in English was in 1908. It began as a translation of einfühlung ("in-feeling"), a German psychological term that described how spectators projected their own feelings and movements into objects of art and nature. This early conception of empathy transformed into its opposite over the following decades. Social scientists and clinical psychologists refashioned empathy to require the deliberate putting aside of one's feelings to understand more accurately the feelings of another.[1] Psychologist Paul Bloom defines empathy as “the process of experiencing the world as others do, or at least as you think they do. To empathize with someone is to put yourself in [their] shoes, to feel [their] pain.”[2]
Putting yourself in someone else’s shoes to understand their experience and perspective is especially challenging in a self-determined, self-focused world. Psychologist, Frank M. Lachmann, states that our typical responses to people's pain—lines ranging from "It could be worse" to "Let's talk about something else"—"appear to be kind and aimed at soothing," but are really nothing more than code for "Don't confront me with things that are unpleasant," or "Don't bother me with your pain."[3]
Today’s meaning of empathy is what is meant by the biblical term sympathy or sympathize which means to suffer with. Consider the God/man, the incarnate Creator, the second person of the triune Godhead, “He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not” (Isaiah 53:3). He can “sympathize with our weaknesses” because he was “in every respect tempted as we are” (Hebrews 4:14). He entered our humanity and endured our suffering as described in the Gospel records and theologically affirmed in Philippians 2:6-8 and Hebrews 2:17-18.
In his classic, The Imitation of Christ, Thomas a Kempis wrote, "We must imitate Christ's life and his ways if we are to be truly enlightened and set free from the darkness of our own hearts. Let it be the most important thing we do, then, to reflect on the life of Jesus Christ.”
[1] https://books.google.com/books/about/Empathy.html?id=7TdsDwAAQBAJ&source=kp_book_description
[2] https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2022/april-web-only/imagining-neighbors-ourselves-good-samaritan-story-empathy.html
[3] Amanda Robb, "Empathy deficit disorder—do you suffer from it?" The O Magazine (April 2008)
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