A sustainable church community must have a complete dynamic functioning vision of Empathy. Empathy “is the confident art of stepping imaginatively with personal awareness into the shoes of another person, understanding their feelings and perspectives, using this understanding to guide actions.” It is a gift from God to all people. Early childhood experiences can make us very self-judgmental and blind to ourselves and our own abilities and gifts. Sadly, psychopaths and deeply emotionally impaired have 0° ability of empathy. 98% of all people have empathy. 21st century research and theological developments are pointing towards a renewed understanding and a broader need of empathy within the Christian church.
Roman Krznaric has done groundbreaking work in exploring this area. He has identified six basic habits that we will explore to assist society and individuals develop this innate trait: Six basic habits of highly empathetic people (1) Habit one: switch on your empathetic brain. Habit two: make the imaginative leap. Habit three: seek experiential adventures. Habit four: practice the craft of conversation. Habit five: travel in your armchair. Habit six: inspire a revolution. (Roman Krznaric. Empathy: Why it Matters, and How to Get It. New York :Perigee, 2014)
Exploration of the Habits: Habit one: switch on your empathetic brain. Empathy is often viewed from a point of introspection. Christian empathy calls us to understand “Outrospection”. This is a call to move away from self-absorbed individualism and personal salvation of the 20th century to a looking out to the wider society. “Therefore, treat others as you would have them treat you. This is the whole meaning of law and the prophets.” (Matthew 7:12) This is Jesus’ call for empathy.
Psychological experiments (Piaget) with children have demonstrated an innate ability of humans to be empathetic and to cooperate with each other. Two major types of empathy are cognitive empathy (perspective taking) and affective empathy (mirroring). Empathy shares both joys and suffering in another person. Compassion means “to suffer with another”. Empathy starts at birth with good attachment to mother and/or father. It is taught by the modeling of the parent(s) and the greater nuclear family. Cognitive and Affective Empathy can be learned later in life. The Holy Energy of God gives all of us ability to evolve new understandings and behaviors.
