How to Empathize with Your Friends
Note from Bob: You’re reading Part Two of a two-part blog post on developing biblical empathy. You can read Part One at Developing the Biblical Counseling Skill of Empathy.
How to Empathize: Climbing in the Casket—Hebrews 4:15-16
In yesterday’s post, we saw illustrations of the opposite of empathy from Job’s “miserable counselors. Today we learn biblical principles of how to empathize with others.
Empathy involves our capacity for “as if” relating. The Church Father, Ambrose, wrote, “Show compassion for those who suffer. Suffer with those who are in trouble as if being in trouble with them.”
Empathy requires compassionate imagination. We need to imagine what it is like for our friends to experience their life stories. To understand others with intimate knowledge, we must hear their experiences asking, “What is it like to experience and perceive the world through their stories?”
Hebrews 2:14-18 and 4:15-16 teach that empathy is not less than, but more than, intellectual. It is also experiential. Biblical, Christ-like empathy shares the experiences of another, connecting through common inner experiences. Such soul sharing occurs by way of incarnation—entering another’s world and worldview.
Empathy, however, does not come from sharing the same experience, situation, or suffering. No two people experience a situation identically, nor do they share the identical experience.
Empathy comes from sharing the same dependency upon God.
The God of all comfort, comforts you in your specific trouble so that you can comfort those in any trouble with the infinite comfort you receive from the God of all comfort.
I derive a core spiritual friendship principle from these concepts:
You will be empathetic with others to the degree that you are facing your struggles face-to-face with God.
When your soul is attuned to others, then you “pick up their radio waves, the vibes of their inner reactions.”
Having accomplished this, you need to go the distance. You need to communicate to your spiritual friends in a way that helps them to “have empathy with your empathy.” They need to feel that you feel with them. Otherwise, their sorrow is not shared, it is simply “understood.” When both your “soul radios” are tuned to the same frequency, then you can share your friends’ experiences. You share their sorrows by climbing in the casket with them, and they know you are there.
While death is separation; shared sorrow is connection. It is the stitch connecting the wound. It is the healing balm. However, shared sorrow must never be a healing replacement. It must not replace grief. Shared sorrow does not purpose to eliminate sorrow, to rescue, or to cheer up. Shared sorrow purposes to help another to face and embrace sorrow.
Levels of Empathy
Effective soul empathy includes several “levels.”
1. Level One Empathy: “How would that affect an image bearer?” Here you understand your spiritual friend through God’s eyes. A foundational level of empathy, it builds upon a universal understanding of people (a biblical Creation, Fall, and Redemption understanding of people).
2. Level Two Empathy: “How would that affect an image bearer like me?” Here you understand your spiritual friend through your eyes. A filtering level, you use your life as a filter through which you relate God’s truth to your friend’s life.
3. Level Three Empathy: “How would that affect an image bearer like him/her?” Here you understand your spiritual friend through his or her eyes. You move from universal to unique empathy. In this final, deepest level of soul empathy you need to:
a. Adopt Your Friend’s Viewpoint: Replace your internal frame of reference with his. Neither condone nor condemn, agree or disagree, at this point. Simply seek to see what it is like to be him—to be his character through his mindset and frame of reference.
b. Express Your Friend’s Viewpoint: Express in your own words what you sense that she has said, felt, and thought about the situation. Then seek clarification.
c. Encourage Your Friend to Accept His/Her Viewpoint: Nudge him to acknowledge his own storied experience. Help him to verbalize how he sees things and to accept his own perspective.
d. Help Your Friend to Biblically Evaluate His/Her Viewpoint: She needs to begin to assess how near or far her viewpoint is from scriptural reality.
The Rest of the Story 
To learn more about twenty-two skills of biblical counseling, visit my Spiritual Friends page.
Join the Conversation
Who has empathized well with you? How have they moved into your life—into your soul? Who is God calling you to empathize with—to connect with deeply soul-to-soul?
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