Yesterday, our retired pastor gave a sermon on the subject of empathy and he talked about the way that our trials and experiences pay off by allowing us to be able to relate to people through our own experiences, and pointing out that this was part of the reason why Jesus Christ lived a human life, so that he could empathize and not only sympathize with our conditions.  While it is a subject I seldom write about directly, empathy is a matter of considerable personal interest to me.  I consider myself to be a person of limited sympathies and not entirely reliable compassion, but I am fully aware that I can be powerfully motivated by empathy in ways that show a rare degree (for me at least) of passionate fire for justice and equity that cannot be obtained from appealing to my appreciation of common humanity.  If empathy has not been something I have been interested in articulating very often, it certainly exists as part of the unconscious side of a great deal of my own service and efforts.

While I was listening to the service and typing notes (more like a transcript) for our deaf member as well as anyone else who accesses those notes online, I pondered what sort of situations I have been in have led me to have empathy for others.  At times that empathy has had powerful effects on the sorts of causes I have supported and the books I have read and the position I have held and the intense sensitivities I have in various areas.  In my mind I listed some of these areas where I have empathy, many of which should be obvious to those who know me personally and who read what I have written and comments about the books I have read.  For example, I have a strong degree of empathy for survivors of child abuse, children from dysfunctional and broken families, people who are bullied for reasons of envy, intelligent people who grow up in areas where this is not well-regarded, people who have to deal with abusive and corrupt authorities, those who suffer from gout, especially through little or no fault of their own, people who are profoundly and deeply misunderstood and maligned, and so on.

There are, of course, clear limits to empathy.  Those limits are our own experience, and the extent to which we recognize the same qualities being present in the experience of others that have lived ourselves.  While empathy is a far more powerful spur to kindness and deep feeling than compassion or sympathy are, especially for those of us who are simply not as sympathetic as the general level of humanity, there are strong limits to empathy in that it only extends as far as our own experiences and reflection upon those experiences allows.  How, then, is empathy to expand?  As we only have limited time to experience life and a limited attention to reflect upon those experiences, if we are to expand empathy either we must do more to reflect upon the sorts of experiences where we can gain some level of understanding of someone else or we are to expand the amount of people we know whose empathy can be used to build up others and to encourage those who are suffering.  So long as those whose opinion matters are limited to a small and unrepresented group of people, empathy is going to be correspondingly limited to that which those people can relate to.  To relate to more, one must seek the insights and experience of those whose experiences have been different from our own.

It should be noted, though, that as powerful as empathy is, there are certain limits to how much we should let empathy govern our better judgment.  While it is very good for us to be able to identify with others and let them know that they are not isolated and alone in their suffering, it is of considerable importance that we do not let empathy overcome our good sense as well as our moral standards.  To the extent that we let empathy war with higher matters, we reach the sort of sad state where people let feelings trump truth, and become governed by their hearts and not their better judgment.  But if empathy can help to fire our sense of justice and matters of truth as well as equity, that is for the better.  But acquiring wisdom and judgment is a task that can take a lifetime and is certainly not something that one can discuss in detail in only a brief note such as this.