I have had the privilege of working with folks at the Salvation Army on a variety of projects. It’s amazing how many of the staff and officers personally experienced the life-changing work of the Salvation Army in their own life struggles before joining the Army and working there. And more striking than that is the passion and authority their experiences give those folks in their communications and work.
Every person I’ve ever met associated with the Salvation
Army is deeply committed and cares for the work they do. But there is a fire of
determination in folks who have themselves been in the position of those they
are serving—they can see themselves there because they have been there. They
personally know specific realities and dark details of that life. They
sometimes still shake with fear like someone who is actually sitting in that
place. And they are determined to lift up the people they see with the same
fire that they would lift themselves up because they have done that. They have
deep empathy for those they serve.
At one event I heard a woman speak about reaching out to
homeless people to “see” them as people and offer them a pathway to a different
life. She spoke of having herself been homeless on the streets in Seattle and
sleeping on a sidewalk with no shoes and no coat. She told how she had wondered
if she was dead and in hell because she was so miserable and no one seemed to
notice her. She exuded commitment and determination that no one in her area
would wonder if they were dead and in hell. She does amazing work every day to
support that commitment.
Empathy reveals and fosters connection to others. And the
relationship reciprocates: connection fosters empathy. Empathy is both a
pathway and an expression of love. Your ability to empathize will significantly
impact the quality of your relationships. It’s really important to your life.
Like so many words in our language, empathy and sympathy are
defined and used differently by different writers, resulting in confusion as to
their meaning and the difference between them. In this writing I am using
sympathy to mean understanding and feeling good or bad for someone else because
of something that has happened to them, while empathy takes it a step further,
meaning understanding and feeling good or bad for someone else as if what
happened to them happened to you—sympathy is third-party or external, while
empathy is first-hand or internal.
The importance of empathy
has long been known across cultures around the world. We have all heard some
version of the Native American expression, “You can’t really understand another
person’s experience until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes.” And the Bible
tells the Israelites, “You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as
the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were
strangers in the land of Egypt.”
Research across a wide range of disciplines continually
affirms the importance of empathy in relationships, professional success, and
mental health. Unfortunately, research also suggests what we already observe
all around us—that empathy is in short supply: a representative study found
that empathy was the most critical driver of leadership performance, but also
the second-to-lowest skill exhibited by leaders. Empathy is important but
uncommon.
How, then, can we develop empathy? In another chapter I
wrote, “Hardship allows us to empathize.” As indicated there and in my opening
story here, I think that personal experience is a primary way we are able to
empathize. In his book, Hope for Hurting
Hearts, Greg Laurie writes of having deeper empathy in ministering to
others who have lost loved ones after he lost his son. Anne Sullivan was better
able to teach Helen Keller because she experienced blindness herself. In The Purpose Driven Life, Rick Warren
writes, “Who could better help an alcoholic recover than someone who fought
that demon and found freedom? Who could better comfort a wife whose husband has
left her for an affair than a woman who went through that agony herself?” In
fact, he suggests that “your greatest ministry will most likely come out of
your greatest hurt.” Our own experiences give us natural empathy for others
going through those same experiences.
But we can also develop empathy through the experiences of
those we care about. Anyone who has seen the 1982 academy award winning movie,
Gandhi, probably remembers the chilling scene in which the bed-ridden Gandhi,
weeks into a hunger strike, is approached by a wild-eyed man who has just come
from the bloody riots in Calcutta. The man, a Hindu, tells Gandhi, “I’m going
to Hell!”, and then explains, “I killed a child! I smashed his head against a
wall.” When asked why he had done this, the man cries, “Because they killed my
son! My boy. The Muslims killed my son!” To this, the weakened Gandhi replies
with a path to peace: “I know a way out of Hell. Find a child, a child whose
mother and father were killed and raise him as your own. Only be sure that he
is a Muslim and that you raise him as one.” Gandhi knew that if the man adopted
a child, he would come to love that child. He knew that if that child was a
Muslim that he would have empathy for Muslims through his love for that child
that he could not have without either being Muslim himself or loving someone
who is Muslim so deeply that he became a defender of Islam himself.
At the heart of Gandhi’s answer was our need—and a
pathway—to develop empathy: to the extent we care for others we will empathize
with them. It is natural to care for, and empathize with, your children, your
parents, and other members of your family. But there are ways to extend your
circle of empathy beyond your family. When you serve others, especially over a
period of time, you develop connection that leads to empathy. When you love
your neighbors as yourself, you will develop empathy for them.
And there are still other ways of developing empathy.
Research shows that reading well-written fiction or listening to thoughtful
song lyrics or watching shows with richly defined characters can lead to
connection and empathy—stories activate the brain and create empathy. This is
part of what Madeleine L’Engle shares in her book, The Rock That Is Higher: Story as Truth.
There are many pathways to developing empathy if we focus on
it.
It seems to me that one of the greatest impediments to
developing empathy is related to our perception of ourselves and recognizing
our strengths and shortcomings. Each of us has areas of strength or giftedness.
Those may be obvious to all, like the ability to solve difficult problems,
represent complex ideas clearly when writing or speaking, or create great art
or music, or they may be less obvious, like the ability to empathize, be
patient, stay organized, or forgive. Whatever your gifts are, the implication
is that you are strong in those areas relative to other people.
But it is easy to forget that, and expect that everyone else
will perform as you do in your areas of giftedness—and to become frustrated,
impatient, and even critical and condescending of others when they can’t do
what you can do. Your gifts were meant to bless you and others by their use,
but they can easily turn into curses if you don’t keep them in perspective.
Part of gaining and keeping this perspective is acknowledging your gifts, which
can seem like arrogance or pride—and may be those things if acknowledged in
prideful ways. But without recognizing and acknowledging your gifts, you will
not be able to accommodate and be patient with others who lack your gifts (but
have other gifts!) You will constantly be expecting that they will be able to
do what you can do, and you will experience, and perhaps express, frustration
that they don’t. If you surround yourself with people with similar gifts (which
can easily happen at school and work), your tendency to assume that your gifts
are common can be greater and your understanding and empathy for those without
them can be limited.
Recognizing your shortcomings—that you are sometimes in need
of the empathy of others—is also important in allowing your empathy to develop.
The Bible stories about the shepherd leaving the ninety-nine sheep behind to
search for the lost one, and the prodigal son returning home to a joyful
celebration, and workers being paid generously despite having worked a short
time can leave us with little empathy for the one, the prodigal, and the
workers who arrived late. These stories can seem unfair, so long as we assume
the perspective of the ninety-nine, the older brother, and those who worked all
day. But we can appreciate the stories more when we realize that sometimes we
are the one (even if just 1/100th of the time!), the prodigal, and the
late-arriving worker. Those stories can create empathy, but only if we realize
they are about us. I once heard of an eight-year-old asked to summarize the
first book of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books, The
Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, to which he answered, “We are all
Edmund.”
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