Empathy: Are You Feeling Me?

This is a message I shared a couple weeks ago with Ann Arbor. It's one that I was hoping would work out that I'd get to share here in Detroit. It is working out nice this week. It's an important one because we live in a really busy world. I often refer to it as a crazy busy world because we're crazily running from event to event, from appointment to school to home to doctor appointments only to, at the end of the day, just to crash. At the end of the day, how many times have we got home and it's just changing your PJs and just got to do something else because we're just done. It's been such a busy day. But then what do we do again the next day? Get up and we start it all over again doing the same thing, running from appointments. Often we do this day after day. And oftentimes we bump into people along the way. I use the term bump again because we don't often have really meaningful conversations with many of the people we bump into through the day. We bump into our family members, our coworkers, we bump into our store clerks, doctors and teachers, and many others through the day. But often because what we're going after and what we're trying to do will result focus, we're trying to get something accomplished, we don't have that meaningful conversation with people. It's kind of just bump into them. How are you doing? It's brief. Let's get the job done, whatever we need, and then we move on.

We're looking for a quick answer or maybe a brief hello and then we're on our way again. And the things in our life which are supposed to make our lives easier, like our cell phones, our iPads, laptops, texting, all these things only cause us to interact with others less. As a society, we are showing less empathy towards others, and this is the topic I'd like us to focus on today, the topic of empathy.

We live in a world of increased social isolation, people who are more self-centered, more competitive, more confident, and more individualistic. People today are success-focused, they have a fast-paced nature, and all this leads to people spending less time focusing on the conversations and the emotions of others.

Today I would like to explore with you the subject of empathy and the importance for us as Christians to show empathy towards others. Because it is an important aspect and it's an important part of our character and it's part of the character of God. And so it's something that we should be developing ourselves as Christians and we should be developing it so that we can show more empathy towards others. So what is empathy? From the cultureofempathy.com website, empathy is defined as a mirroring or vicarious experience of another's emotions, whether they be sorrow or joy. That's kind of a key component of it, too, whether they be sorrow or joy. But it's a vicarious experience of another's emotions, whether they be sorrow or joy. So how is empathy different from sympathy or compassion? From the same website, sympathy is defined as a feeling of sorrow associated specifically with the suffering or need of another. So it's a feeling we've often felt sympathy. You hear somebody going through a difficult time and you feel this sorrow for the struggle that they're going through. Compassion, on the other hand, is defined in a similar way, much like sympathy, in that it stems from the suffering of another, but it also includes the need or desire to alleviate that suffering. That's what the big difference from sympathy to compassion is sympathy or compassion. You have this desire that what can I do to help somebody? And you want to somehow take that suffering away from them.

So going back again, back to empathy, to define empathy again, now that we've defined sympathy and compassion, empathy is defined as a vicarious experience of another's emotions, whether they be sorrow or joy. So there are two components to empathy, and one is the ability to see a situation from another person's perspective, to kind of put yourself into their shoes, to phrase it another way. The second part is more emotional. It's the ability to imagine what the other person is feeling and then to actually care about what they are expressing. So that's exactly like putting yourself into their shoes, because an empathic person puts themselves into the shoes of another person and feels or lives what that person is going through. Where compassion and sympathy, it's not as much of an emotional response. It's more of just a recognition that somebody is suffering and you feel that sadness for them. But where here, with empathy, you're actually putting yourself into another person's shoes. As the definition described, it can be based on sorrow or joy. So we can show empathy towards someone by sharing in their excitement of a new job or an answered prayer. Because when we empathize with another, we are imaginatively experiencing the same thing ourselves. You're pretending almost that you're that same person. What would you feel if you were in their shoes? That joy that they have about this getting this A on an exam that they needed in order to pass? Or the sadness they feel of losing a loved one? And boy, that would change my life in a dramatic way. Can't imagine how difficult that would be. But we say that word, but we really should be imaginatively experiencing what that person is going through. That's empathy. I know I'm a bit into the message, but I sometimes like to give a title, and today's message title is, Empathy. Are you feeling me? Empathy, are you feeling me? It's a little bit of a play on the word, Are you feeling me? or in the phrase.

Let's start off by looking in Romans 12 and verse 15 today. Empathy itself, the word Empathy, is not in our Bibles. But the concept, I think, is. And it's a solid one that we see even through the example of Christ that we'll get into later in the message. But first, starting off here in Romans 12 and verse 15.

It's a short verse, but it's an important verse as we dive into this today. Romans 12 and verse 15. Rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep. It's very quick, concise, short, but it's weighing out both sides of this word, Empathy, and the importance of it. Rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep. How can we truly rejoice or weep with someone if we don't understand why that person is rejoicing or why that person is weeping? We must listen to and understand the emotions behind their expression, or we just can't share in it with them. That is what we're getting down to here. This is Empathy. There's another similar passage in 1 Corinthians 12 and verse 26. 1 Corinthians 12 and verse 26.

Here Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12 and verse 26, And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it. If one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it. Why? He gets into 27. Because now you are the body of Christ and members individually. So it's that paradox that we are one body in Christ, yet members individually. We each have a unique life, unique experience, unique growing up, unique background, unique trials. Our trials might be similar. There are difficulties. The things that we do in life could be similar, but they're unique to us. We're the only person that gets to experience our life. And so as Paul says here, that if one member suffers, we all suffer in it. If we rejoice, we all rejoice together because of being the one body of Christ. Something that's interesting to kind of help illustrate this a little further is, I don't know if you've ever done this. I've done it before. You'll maybe be at church services and you see somebody excited. Somebody's happy. Something happened. And you can see the people around them kind of rejoicing with them. But you across the room, you don't really know what's going on. You could see that there's joy and there's something good, but you don't understand because you're not part of that conversation. Many times in conversations that you are in, that I'm in, sometimes we just stop right there at that understanding of what that person is experiencing. Maybe they talked about the importance of getting that new job or that importance of getting an A on an exam.

And you're like, oh yeah, I could see why that's important. But a lot of times we stop right there instead of really understanding why was that important to that person to get that A. And then you realize after talking with them or the difficulties, maybe they're dyslexic. And that to get an A on an exam that maybe had they not got that would have failed a class, that was huge in their life. That's where we can go from just saying, okay, yeah, getting an A on an exam is great to actually putting ourselves into their life to understand why was that so significant for them. Because that's empathy. When we take that next step and we emotionally involve ourselves in somebody's triumph or in somebody's sadness, somebody's difficulty that they're going through to put yourself in that other person's shoes to say, wow, what would I do? Or what would I experience if I was going through that same thing? We can only empathize if we put ourselves into their life and to see things through their eyes.

There's a scripture in 1 Peter I'd like to look at next. 1 Peter chapter 3 and verse 8. Again, this scripture here in Peter is drawing us together, calling us to unite under the one calling that we all have that is not unique. We've all been called to God through His great mercy. 1 Peter 3 verse 8 speaks to that again. 1 Peter 3 and verse 8 says, Finally, all of you be of one mind, having compassion for one another. Love as brothers. Be tender-hearted. Be courteous.

There's a lot in here, but in the New Living Translation, we make a whole sermon out of this one verse if we wanted to. In the New Living Translation, it reads, Finally, all of you should be of one mind. Sympathize with each other. Love each other as brothers and sisters. Be tender-hearted. Keep a humble attitude. I like the easy-to-read version of the same scripture. It says, So all of you should live together in peace. Try to understand each other. Love each other like brothers and sisters. Be kind and humble. You can see, as we dive into here, all these different aspects of having compassion, loving, being tender-hearted, being courteous, really describe in a lot of ways what I've kind of already worked through here of being an empathic person. Naturally, we can begin having empathy as we apply these parts of the scripture into our lives.

So why is empathy important? Why would I want to bring this up today? In a 2011 article by Jamie Zaki, it's Z-A-K-I, on scientificamerican.com, she wrote an article titled, What? Me Care? Young or Less Empathic? That's the title of it. What? Me Care? Young or Less Empathic? In this article, she states, We know that this world is governed by a being that wants to do all he can to break and destroy relationships. Satan looks to break our relationship with God, and he looks to break our relationships with each other. But on the flip side, how do we build relationships? They are built by spending time on the relationship itself. By talking, by understanding, by caring for another person. We build relationships by loving other people. Empathy plays an important part of truly knowing what another person is going through, and it allows us to relate, even if it's not something that we have gone through personally in our own lives. Often our walks are unique to us, but empathy helps bridge that gap. That's that power of empathy, and that's why I believe this is a characteristic of our Heavenly Father, that he can have empathy towards us and wants us to have empathy with one another. As the article from ScientificAmerican.com mentioned, people today are showing less empathy towards others than at any point in history. That's one of those statements, how do you prove it, how do you weigh it all out. They have done some research, but at any other point in history, it's tough to say. I think we can all acknowledge that we are seeing it less in the news. We're seeing it less from peers that we work with. People are less patient with problems and things. We're not seeing the communication like it used to be, the understanding.

I think in our own lives, we have seen probably the same thing that they're recognizing, even though if we don't have the scientific facts in our lives to back it up. But the article goes on to state some of the scientific reasoning that they have behind it. Here, and I'll continue to read from the article, the research led by Sarah Conradt, the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, so we have a local person, that's something neat, and published online in August, and this is August of 2011, in the magazine Personality and Social Psychology Review. In it, they found that college students' self-reported empathy has declined since 1980, with an especially steep drop in the past 10 years. To make matters worse, during the same period, students' self-reported narcissism, which is excessive love or admiration of oneself, has reached new heights. This is part of the research that they're drawing this conclusion on. Once again, let's review the words that I started out with today's message to describe. Society, people are more self-centered, more competitive, more confident, more individualistic. I think we'd acknowledge that a lot of these things we see in people, we see in our society. Many in our society today are only concerned with their own feelings, their own desires, their own goals in life. They're not able to see something from another person's point of view.

So what is the cause for the drop in empathy? The same article, the scientificamerican.com article, goes on to say, This information seems to conflict with studies suggesting that empathy is a trait people are born with. There are theories, however. Conrad cites the increase in social isolation, which has coincided with the drop in empathy. So people are not together as often as they used to be.

In the passage, he goes on to say, In the past thirty years, Americans have become more likely to live alone and less likely to join groups, ranging from PTAs to political parties to casual sports teams. Several studies hint that this type of isolation can take a toll on people's attitudes towards others. I think that's one of the important reasons why God wants us to fellowship together as family, not only to worship Him on the Sabbath, but us drawing together. We are part of a group here, and that's the beauty of it. Each one of God's congregations of people gathering together to worship Him draws us together. So even though we live separate lives through the week, this is part of our family. This is part of our group, so that we can have a connection. We can't have relationships with one another. A book that I'm currently working through, I'm currently reading, you can see where my bookmark is. It's not too far in it yet. But it touches on a few of the topics, the concepts and other, maybe a slight angle differently on what we're looking at today. The book is titled Hashtag Struggles by Craig Groeschel. It's really good so far. In the book, he's talking about the difficulties that technology and some of the social media technologies that are up the sites and the damage that he feels or the concerns he has about the impact it's having on our society. Because he talks about, like back in the day, because he's, I think, about my age, he talks about how you didn't used to be able to call around the world, or if you did, it was major expense. There were hindrances to it. You couldn't do video chat. You couldn't do a lot of the things that we have now that people feel like it's drawing us closer together. But here in the book, he's raising some concerns. Let me find my first note here I wanted to share with you. He says, this is a little bit into the book, he says, But if we're honest, we all admit that while technology greatly enhances our ability to stay in touch with people in our lives, the contact is not the same as actually being together and sharing the important events. While we can have a video, we can have a phone call, we all know it's not the same as actually being there. Being there for Thanksgiving is completely different than having a video of your family enjoying Thanksgiving. Imagine if that's all we had. You could even have your own Thanksgiving. You could have your turkey, you could have your pie, you could have your mashed potatoes, and they could be outstanding dishes. They could be very enjoyable. But if you're sitting there enjoying it, but yet you're just watching a video of family in another state, it's nowhere near the same as actually being there, enjoying that food together, enjoying that time together. So we can see just in a quick little analogy like that, it's completely different. We all recognize that. In the introduction of his book, he actually says this. This is how he starts off the book, kind of just to describe it and to get people hooked. He says, I have a love-hate relationship with technology. Most of us are well acquainted with the feeling, but can't quite put our finger on why. We know we're obsessed with our devices, but we don't know how to manage the challenges that come with using them, challenges that continue to multiply. We're busy, but bored. We're full, but empty. We're connected, but lonelier than ever. Our lives are filled with more activity than we thought possible, but we often feel hollow at the end of the day.

We have more stuff, cars, homes, clothes, gadgets, toys, than any generation in history, yet we long for more. We're more connected online than ever, but we often feel more alone than we can describe. We know God intends for us to have something different, something better, something more, but we aren't sure how to find it. Most everyone seems to agree that life is getting busier, crazier, and more frantic each day. We're bombarded by more information than we know how to process.

News, ads, commercials, blogs, tweets, pictures, soundbites, music, games, more ads. What's crazy is that we now have more devices, programs, and apps than ever before vying to fulfill our needs. Our world abounds with countless technological breakthroughs, each one promising to make our lives better. I found it really profound as I read through that, because I'm like, yeah, this describes me at times. It's difficult. He goes on to say, let me find my next note, he talks a little bit about, like, back in the day for him.

Like I said, back before cell phones, back before, probably even cable TV and things like that. That some people say, well, the good old days, life must have been better back then. And part of the book he describes, no, we had our issues. There's problems. We had things that distracted us too. But he goes on to say, we had plenty of struggles and distractions back then too, as people had throughout history.

But there's something different about what we're experiencing now. Some of us are starting to sense that something is wrong, even if we can't identify what it is. We still have the old age struggles with comparison, envy, jealousy, greed, lust, and a variety of addictions. Only now we have new ways to escape from those real life struggles, even as we create new battles in the virtual world we inhabit. This combination is what I call hashtag struggles.

That's the name of the book. What's that concept he's getting at? It's the struggles of the internet world today and of social media today. He continues to say, and this is the last part I want to read of the book, I can't prove this, but I have some theories which I'll be sharing about why we hate social media.

In a nutshell, it makes everything so much more about us. We're sucked into measuring our lives by how many followers we have and who they are. We want to believe we're not the sum of the likes our last post received, but it feels like those little clicks matter. The odd thing is the more we focus on ourselves, the less satisfied we feel. And the more we're consumed with the things of this earth, the more we feel empty.

The reason is that we are created for more, much more. We were created not for earth, but for earth eternity. We were created not to be liked, but to show love. We were created not to draw attention to ourselves, but to give glory to God. We were created not to collect followers, but to follow Christ. I'm writing this book because it's time to be honest about our hashtag struggles and to regain control of the amazing tools that technology provides us.

It's time to put technology back in its place. It's time to love God with our whole hearts. With our whole hearts. So I thought I haven't gone all the way through it yet, so I can't totally recommend the book. But so far, it's a very interesting read, just acknowledging the difficulties that not only we as adults face, but our teens. This is a new battleground for our teens, too. Something that maybe most... well, we didn't experience. I didn't have a cell phone. I didn't have social media as a teen. It's something new. And so it's not just for us adults who are... because we know adults are struggling with this, but also for our teens.

It's a good book, as part of it as I've gotten into. It just speaks to the fake persona that social media puts out there on a lot of us. This is a little bit of a tangent. But how the side that most people put out on social media isn't the real side of their life. How many times do you see somebody put on social media how bad their whole week has been?

I mean, detail out. I mean, but how often do you see them put every photo from their vacation? I mean, you see that flip side. So he gets into this a little bit, and it starts to portray that people are... and that's what other people are then starting to measure their lives against. I may, at some point, work another message out of this, because this is that aspect alone of portraying one side of your life and then other people trying to measure up to it, or you measuring your own life according to other people, what they put out there. That's fraught with danger and all kinds of issues as well, but that's a little bit of a tangent.

I'd like to get back to the empathy message. Because as he outlines, technology is only one piece of the puzzle that is causing a separation between personal relationships. Again, it's not that technology in itself is bad. I'm not here to say that today. But it is part of the problem of this lack of empathy that people are having. Another identified cause of this drop in empathy is that people are reading less, therefore putting themselves less in the shoes of others.

The same Scientific American dot com article again states, The type of information we consume has also shifted in recent decades. Specifically, Americans have abandoned reading in droves. The number of adults who read literature for pleasure sank below 50% for the first time ever in the past 10 years. And so again, this is eight years or seven years ago, so this is going back a ways. With the decrease occurring most sharply among college-age adults, and reading may be linked to empathy.

In a study published earlier this year, psychologist Raymond A. Marr of York University in Toronto and others demonstrated that the number of stories preschoolers read predicts their ability to understand the emotions of others. Marr has also shown that adults who read less fiction report themselves to be less empathic. So that's another aspect or part of the quote from the magazine. The question I had asked myself is, Am I surprised by what the research is coming up with?

Really, we shouldn't be, because we know in God's Word, He provides insight that this is the direction that society is heading. What is one of the signs of the end of the age? Matthew 24, verse 12 states, Because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold. It's part of the prophecy of what the future is going to hold. The Apostle Paul warned that to the newer minister of Timothy, and we can go ahead and start turning there to 1 Timothy 3, verse 1, because Paul warned the newer minister Timothy that there will be other signs in the last days, and these signs all spring from a heart pointed inward.

Not inward towards our own nature, not outward towards others. This is in 2 Timothy 3, verse 1. I might have said 1 Timothy. I'm not sure. 2 Timothy 3, verse 1. This is one of those passages we've gone through before again, but it's one of those that when we're talking about the change in society or what we're seeing today, it's one that we read through, and yeah, these things are happening. 2 Timothy 3, verse 1. But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come, for men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful and unholy.

I mean, we can stop right there and say, yep, that applies, but then let's keep going, because these other words, we see this more and more in society today. Unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of Godliness, but denying its power. And it says, from such people turn away.

For of this sort are those who creep into households and make captives of gullible women loaded down with sins, led away by various lusts. And verse 7, always, and this is describing them, always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. We read through this list and realize this does describe, to some degree, our society today. Is it going to get worse? Because we're not at the end. We're not at the end, so is it going to get worse? Really, I mean, you think about society today, always learning, and as it says here, never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.

As a society, we have grown tremendously in knowledge about science, technology, medicine, and the functioning of even our own human body, the complexity of how our body works. And we don't even fully understand that, but we have grown in that knowledge. Yet what has mankind done with this? Has it drawn us closer to God? Or is mankind continually pushing God further away, saying, No, we don't need God. No, he's just this abstract, this fantasy.

If you want to believe, that's fine, but look at all the knowledge we have. Look at everything we've advanced in. Look at everything we can do. We see that today. In a different article, this one is from August 16th of 2014, so this one's just a few years old, this article by Olga Kazan, K-H-A-Z-A-N, it's titled, Four Words to Seem More Polite. In her article, it backs up some of the research that we've already outlined, but adds a little bit different perspective on the importance of empathy on our society.

Her article, she says, Empathy is considered by many psychologists to be essential to cooperation, problem-solving, and to human functioning in general. Researchers have described it as social glue binding people together and creating harmonious relationships. Empathetic people are more likely to forgive others for small errors, like running late.

Asking narcissists to imagine themselves in other shoes can help shrink their big heads. Empathy helps people behave more generously, but some are worried that our society, with its personal brands and Snapchats, is losing this crucial characteristic. Recent research has suggested that college students have become less empathic since the 70s, so much so that scientists are saying that they should read great works of literature in order to better see situations from different points of view.

That ends her statement. So what can we do to become more empathic? What can we do? There is good news. Empathy can be nurtured. Again, from the original scientificamerican.com article, they consider this point. The researcher Sarah Conrad points out again, if life choices can drive empathy down, then making different choices could nurture it. She went on to add that if empathy can change in a negative way, it can also change in a positive way. So if you feel maybe empathy is not a strong trait that you have, you can work at becoming more empathic with others.

You can work to look at your life and to see if other things are squeezing in to your life that is separating out your relationships with others. Is it separating? You don't have time because of everything that we have on our plate. Do you feel pressured to end conversations quickly because of responsibilities that you have, or maybe even here at church? Maybe it's something that you're supposed to be doing or serving.

I know that's a struggle for me personally. I have to just add this in here. Because in the role I play, sometimes church used to be I could come and socialize and really enjoy, but now there's things that I need to do sometimes. And my own mind, I have to make sure I remember I'm part of a congregation. It's not just that I have a task list, but we're family. And it's something I have to remember, spending that time and not pre-thinking, okay, what is the next thing on my task list? Kind of like we do at work or whatever that is.

So it's something that I have to remember. Because we all have times where we're thinking of the next person that we need to talk to, and that changes our approach to the person that we have right in front of us. We have somebody standing right there that is trying to have a conversation with us, yet our mind is on that next thing that we need to do.

We've all done that. I've done that before being in this calling. But it's something that is difficult. We all struggle with things that are squeezing out our conversation, pressures to end conversations quickly, or thinking about that next thing that we need to do. Let's look at Philippians 2 and verse 1 as we consider this approach that we should have to one another again.

Because, again, while empathy is not directly listed here in God's Word, the concept, I think, is very strong. This is Philippians 2 and verse 1. Here again, the Apostle Paul says in Philippians 2 and verse 1, Therefore, if it is any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and mercy, fulfill my joy by being like-minded, having the same love being of one accord of one mind.

And here's the key. Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind, let each esteem others better than himself. Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others. Let this mind be in you, which it was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation, taken the form of a bondservant and coming in the likeness of men.

And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Therefore God also has highly exalted him and given him the name which is above every name. At the name of Jesus, every knee should bow, of those in heaven and of those on earth and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

We know as Christ gave all that he had in him for each one of us, we must also look on each other the same way as Christ looks on us. Giving himself completely, Christ did, and pouring himself out. Again, the same thing that we're asked to do here in Philippians 2-3. We let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind, let each esteem others better than himself. Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others.

It's a powerful passage right there, but one that's really difficult to apply and to live and to keep on the forefront of our minds constantly. It's a struggle. When we esteem others, we put our needs in the back seat. When we are excited or saddened by what someone else is going through, that's an aspect on the opposite side. By putting our own interests out of our mind, we put someone else's first in our life.

We have another example of Christ, as I mentioned previously, of showing empathy for a difficult situation. This is in John 11. It's a very difficult situation, one that we've been through ourselves. And here, Christ is living that experience as man in the flesh, as God in the flesh, as a human man. This is John 11, and we'll start reading in verse 1. Now, a certain man was sick, Lazarus of Bethany, the town of Mary, and her sister Martha.

And it was that Mary who anointed the Lord with fragrant oil and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother, Lazarus, was sick. Therefore the sister sent to him, saying, Lord, behold, he whom you love is sick. Paul's right there for a minute. So Christ had love. We know from Scripture that he did.

But here, others recognized that love. Others saw the love. To say that the one whom you love is sick. So not only did Christ live this life, but he lived it. He really lived this physical existence. That others could see that he had love for them in the way that he lived his life. So continuing on in verse 4, when Jesus heard that, he said, This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified through it.

Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus. So when he had heard that he was sick, he stayed two more days in the place where he was. Then after this, he said to his disciples, Let us go to Judea again. Verse 11, These things he said, and after he said to them, Our friend Lazarus sleeps, but I go that I may wake him up. Then his disciples said, Lord, if he sleeps, he will get well.

However, Jesus spoke of his death, but they thought he was speaking about taking rest and sleep. Then Jesus said to them, Plainly, Lazarus is dead. Verse 17, So when Jesus came, he found that they had already been in the tomb four days.

He had already been in the tomb four days. Now Bethany was near Jerusalem about two miles away, and many of the Jews had joined the women around Martha and Mary to comfort them concerning their brother. Now Martha, as soon as she heard that Jesus was coming, went out and met him. But Mary was sitting in the house. Now Martha said to Jesus, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.

But even now I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you. Verse 30, Now Jesus had not yet come into the town, but was in the place where Martha met him. Then the Jews who were with her in the house comforting her, when they saw that Mary rose up and quickly went out, followed her, saying, She is going to the tomb to weep there. Then when Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she fell down at his feet, saying to him, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.

Therefore, when Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who came with her weeping, he groaned in the spirit and was troubled. He felt this pain. And verse 34, And he said, Where have you laid him? And they said to him, Lord, come and see. And then we have the shortest verse in our Bibles, Jesus wept. So we see this emotion, this outpouring of emotion that Jesus had. Not only did he pour out the love that they saw the love, but then he displayed weeping, he displayed tears, this sorrow. Then the Jews in verse 36 said to him, See how he loved him. And some of them said, Could not this man who opened the eyes of the blind, had also kept this man from dying?

Then Jesus, again groaning in himself, this troubling, this sadness that he felt, came to the tomb. Was a cave and a stone lay against it. And Jesus said, Take away the stone. Martha, the sister of him who was dead, said to him, Lord, by this time there is a stench, for he has been dead four days. Jesus said to her, Did I not say to you that if you would believe, you would see the glory of God? Then they took away the stone from the place where the dead man was lying.

And Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, Father, I thank you that you have heard me. And I know that you always hear me, but because of the people who are standing by, I said this, that they may believe that you sent me. Now when he had said these things, he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth.

And he who had died came out, bound hand and foot with grave clothes, and his face was wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, Loose him and let him go. It's a really, really powerful example that we have of Christ being human, being a man, experiencing emotion, understanding what others around him are going through in their grief and their trial. Many times we ourselves hear of someone's troubles and immediately begin to evaluate what that person did to cause their problems, or what they could do to escape the challenge.

This is something especially us guys like to do. We're problem solvers, by nature, I believe. We like to get straight to the issues, and we like to resolve the problems. Jesus Christ could have done that. He knew he had the power to raise Lazarus from the dead. He knew he had the ability. He could have just walked straight into the town, walked straight up to the tomb and said, Boom, fixed it. All done.

But yet he took the time to talk. He was careful in his actions, and by doing that, he was moved by the whole situation. He was able to put himself, I believe, in the shoes of those around him, and to truly experience what they were going through and the difficulty. The impact this death had on those he cared deeply about. He loved Mary. He loved Martha. And he was willing to insert himself into kind of their shoes, to say, to understand what they were going through. He allowed himself to be moved and touched deeply by the experience this moment was having, not only on himself, but others. Was he moved because of the death of a friend? Some could read into that and say yes. Was he moved because of the impact of sin and death, the impact that sin and death have on the whole world, and that impact that what it was having on these he cared deeply about? I believe that's a strong aspect of why he was moved, because he saw sin entered in and with it death. And he saw the pain that this is causing, those he loves deeply, those that he cared a lot about. I think part of the grief that he was experiencing could be over losing a friend, but I also think it seemed that the cause of death, or sin, and the cause of that sin is death, and seeing that that is part of what's going on in society around us. I personally believe this probably more than the other. It's just my view. We should try to put the fixing and the problem-solving that we do often in life aside and truly seek to understand the difficulty one in our family is facing. Then when adequate time has been permitted to emotionally understand the ins and outs of their situation, at that time, see if there's an avenue available to try to help them. See if there's one permitted. Possibly, and I underline possibly in my notes, possibly seek to help the other person. Because if we remember back, that's more of a definition of compassion, seeing the sorrow they're going in and then being moved to help. Empathy is putting yourself emotionally into their shoes to experience what they're going through, as if you yourself were going through that. And when we do that, sometimes there's an avenue that exists to help them. But often, just us understanding and that drawing closer to them and understanding what they're going through is the bigger, more important thing to take away, not necessarily what we can do to fix it. To experience empathy, it can help if we reflect on four questions during a conversation. These are not points per se, but just things to consider. Things that for me to even consider as I talk with people. I'll repeat these a second time later on, so if you don't get them the first time, they'll come back around. But just four questions to kind of just help change our mindset, to help us put ourselves in somebody else's shoes. The first question is, as we're talking with somebody, or as we're trying to be more empathic with another, the first one is, why are they acting or speaking this way? Why is the person that we're talking... Why are they acting or speaking this way?

Second question, what is the situation or background or what is happening in their life? What's going on in their life? What is the background? What can I ask? What questions can I ask to better understand? What is the situation or the background or what's happening? The third question we can consider is, what feelings are they expressing? What are they actually saying to me? What are the emotions that's behind what they're expressing? What feelings are they expressing? And then the fourth question, how would I feel if I was in their shoes? How would I feel if I was in their shoes? This really gets down to the crux of empathy. To apply these points, you can't be in a conversation with one foot out the door. I've done that. You're conversing with somebody, your body shifts, your foot is pointed the direction you want to go, and it's not at that person. I've done that. I'm human. I've made that mistake before. You can't be in a conversation with one foot out the door. You have to give your whole heart and all of your attention to somebody to really be able to do this. You don't have to focus on the words, or you do have to focus on the words they are saying and how they are saying them. You don't try to guess where they're going. Another mistake I've made, how many times you've been in conversation, you're like, oh, I know where this is going, and I know how to fix it, and you're starting to put pieces to fix the problem before you've even got there. We've all done that before. If you don't feel like you are understanding them completely, repeat or rephrase back to what they're saying so that you can verify that you do understand what's going on. Again, as we consider how we're listening, once again ask these questions again, why are they acting or speaking in this way? What is the situation or background or what is happening? What feelings are they expressing? That's the third one and the fourth one, how would I feel if I was in their shoes? As we close today, we have looked at how empathy is a powerful emotion that God has given us, an emotion that He Himself has. The power that this emotion can have can unite us together and allow us to grow closer and tighter with one another. Today, we will live here, still part of a society that is showing less empathy towards others than before, but we have an option. Follow the example the world is setting or decide to make a change. And what better way to make a change than to increase in love by showing more empathy towards others?