Empathy Atrophied

I was asked to share a devotion at today’s staff meeting. As I was preparing it, I decided I wanted to post it here too because, like any good pastor, you think about ways to repurpose things. Hah.

When they asked me to give a devo today, I was wondering if there was something behind asking a former youth pastor to share on 420. They said there wasn’t, but I have my doubts.

But when I think about April 20th over the course of my life, it’s not the normal 420 reference that comes to mind (though after years of student ministry, there are many). = rather what comes to mind is what happened on April 20th, 1999. Today marks the 22nd anniversary of me sitting in Mrs. Browers’s science class as a freshman in high school, watching the news of the Columbine shooting with a weird mix of fear, confusion & anger.

As a 15-year-old in that moment, I never would have dreamed that I’d regularly continue to hear similar news of mass shootings whether they be at schools, malls or FedEx plants like this last week back home in Indy. So, April 20th is usually a somber day for me.  

Over the last year, a verse from Romans has been stuck in my head a lot. In Romans 12, Paul is trying to help clarify to the Romans what it actually looks like to love one another. In Romans 12:15 he writes, “Rejoice with those who rejoice & mourn with those who mourn.” The piece about mourning particularly has been on repeat for me.

Over the past year, it seems like there’s been way more to mourn than to rejoice about:

| coronavirus
| racially motivated murders
| normalization of hate
| increasing rates of loneliness & anxiety in teenagers
| political divisiveness

Those kinds of things have worn me thin. But when I think about the Christian community, I think some of what has discouraged me most is how we’ve responded to so many of these things. We have not done a very good job of rejoicing with those who rejoice or - especially - mourning with those who mourn. Rather than sitting in the mess with someone, we (the Christian community) are too often trying to talk people out of their experience. Either that or we tend to lead with explaining why they’re experiencing it in the first place & why it’s their fault.

I can sort of be awful at this with my kids. When they get hurt doing something I tell them they shouldn’t do (this is a daily occurrence in the Talley house), it’s sort of hard to not be like, “well….i told you” rather than sitting with them, consoling them & then having the conversation when it can actually be helpful. 

It feels like we have an empathy problem. Both in our nation & in the Church. The problem is, the Church has some far clearer calls & expectations to be empathetic that we’ve seemed to move lower & lower on the list of what it means to follow Jesus. 

It’s almost like there’s a correlation between the lack of time we’ve been able to spend with others over the past year & our lack of empathy.

It’s like empathy has become a muscle in the Church that has begun to atrophy. 

Maybe this past year has made it more difficult for us to put ourselves in the shoes of others because we’re spending so much time in socks. Yes, that was an attempt at a lockdown joke. Despite my bad attempt at being clever, what I mean is that I think our empathy currently sucks as the Church & one reason might be how disconnected we’ve been to others in the midst of the pandemic. We experience things differently when we live in a bubble & so many of us have been forced into a smaller bubble this past year.

At Orange Conference a few years back, the theme was It’s Personal. The tagline was “everything changes when it’s someone you know”. When someone we know is going through something that causes them to mourn, our empathy grows, it builds. We feel it differently than we would if it were outside our bubble. But in the midst of everything over the past year, there are just fewer people that we really know, feel connected to or feel like we’re in community with.

So that empathy muscle atrophies. 

So, not only because it’s the anniversary of Columbine, not only because the past year has been challenging in ways many of us have never experienced, not only because we’re waiting on the verdict in the George Floyd murder, not only because of the divisiveness & violence & pain we’ve seen in our world & even locally in our communities (here in ATL & back home in Indy)...but the idea of mourning with those who mourn feels like it’s never been too far from my mind this past year. There have just been too many opportunities for it.

And as that verse comes to mind & as I read & see the ways that the Christian community does or does not mourn well with others, it’s a constant challenge to re-evaluate what following Jesus looks like in these moments. 

When those around me are celebrating or they’re mourning...

What should my response & posture be?

How can I most accurately reflect Jesus at this moment? 

I’m not sure I always respond how I’m supposed to - like when my kids get hurt - but I do feel like the world we currently live in is ripe with opportunities to exercise our empathy. My prayer is for discernment in situations where someone is mourning - that my first response wouldn’t be defensive or maybe even rational...but empathetic.