Jul
25
Sunday Sermon: Empathy–the importance of “changing places”
Filed Under Inspiration, Sunday Sermon, Teamwork
(Sunday, 7/25/2010) In our “Sunday Sermon” series we take a break from the craziness of local politics and news to seek a more timeless & spiritual perspective. If that doesn’t interest you, you’ve got hundreds of other posts and thousands of comments to choose from.
Today’s thoughts are excerpted from a letter I received last month from a friend, Paul Rhoads, formerly assistant pastor at a church in Lakewood, currently with Christian Resource Ministries. In it he shares some truths that I think will hit home with most of us, but he definitely approaches the topic from a Christian perspective.
“Changing Places” is an attitude, or “posture” that my friend Paul believes is essential to “a life of on-going growth and renewal.” I’ll let him explain in his own words:
Changing Places means seeking to truly understand whatever situation I am in from the other’s point of view. There are three biblical convictions that undergird this posture:
We are incurably self-focused
Why? Because of our finiteness and our fallenness: We are limited by our own experience. We have only lived our own lives. We cannot know what it is really like to be someone else. We can imagine; we can try to put ourselves in their place, but our efforts are limited by that fact that we can only live our own life.
What makes matters worse is that we have been distorted by the disease called sin. Sin creates a centripetal force that pulls us intoourselves. The only thing that really matters to us is what we think and feel. Even as an adult I am like a little child that sees the entire world as only about me.
That’s why. . .
We must intentionally try to put ourselves in the other person’s shoes.
Otherwise we’ll be bound and blinded by our own emotions and experience.
The decision to seek to do this is an act of faith because I cannot do this in my own strength. Only the Holy Spirit can both give me the desire and will to do this, as well as the power to step outside my own self-focused world.
Jesus is the ultimate example of “Changing Places”
Though all knowing, God did not rely on his own knowledge but became a man in the Person of Jesus Christ to fully experience our situation.
John 1:14: “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.”
Hebrews 2:16: “Therefore he [Jesus] had to become like his brothers and sisters in every respect. . . . “
Hebrews 4:15 “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin.”
What astonishes me is that Jesus spent the first thirty years of his life (and he only lived 33 years) fully entering into our situation. If God chose to do that, surely we are called to do no less as followers of Jesus in all our relationships.
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I posted the above summary of Paul Rhoads’ thoughts on empathy because I found them so challenging.
All of our relationships flow more smoothly when we attempt to see things from the other person’s perspective. It’s true for me with Barb, with our kids, with co-workers, with clients, and even with local politicians.
Empathy doesn’t always mean I change my opinions or convictions, but it does give me a broader perspective, and even some common ground to hopefully build upon.