A Word from Bob: You’re reading Part 3 of a mini-series on Biblical Empathy: How to Care Like Christ. Read Part 1: Biblical Empathy: How to Care Like Christ. Read Part 2: How Not to Empathize: Job’s Miserable Counselors. I’ve taken this blog post and mini-series on biblical empathy from my book Gospel Conversations: How to Care Like Christ. In Gospel Conversations, you learn 22 biblical counseling skills. Empathy is one of those relational competencies.
Rich Soul Empathy
Rich soul 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.”[1]
Perpetua, the first female martyr of the church and the first known Christian female author was 
moments away from being martyred when she, in the midst of her own agony, empathizes with and consoles others.
Her father, completely exhausted from his anxiety over his daughter’s pending death, came from the city to beg Perpetua to recant her faith in Christ. Perpetua writes:
“I was very upset because of my father’s condition. He was the only member of my family who would find no reason for joy in my suffering. I tried to comfort him saying, ‘Whatever God wants at this tribunal will happen, for remember that our power comes not from ourselves but from God.’ But utterly dejected, my father left me.”[2]
On the day of her final hearing, the guards rushed Perpetua to the prisoners’ platform. Her father appeared with her infant son, guilting her and imploring her to “have pity on your son!”
Again, Perpetua writes:
He caused such an uproar, that Governor Hilarion “ordered him thrown out, and he was beaten with a rod. My father’s injury hurt me as much as if I myself had been beaten. And I grieved because of his pathetic old age.”[3]
Perpetua provides a classic portrait of biblical empathy. Her as if experience of her father’s pain is the essence of sustaining soul care.
Perpetua not only finds in Christ the strength to empathize with her father, she also summons Christ’s power to console and encourage her family and her fellow martyrs.
“In my anxiety for the infant I spoke to my mother about him, tried to console my brother and asked that they care for my son. I suffered intensely because I sensed their agony on my account. These were the trials I had to endure for many days.”[4]
Incredibly, Perpetua’s greatest pain was her ache for others who hurt for her!
Incarnational Empathy
Rich soul empathy requires compassionate imagination. We need to imagine what it is like for our friends to experience their life situation. To understand others with intimate knowledge, we must read into their experiences asking:
“What is it like to experience and perceive the world through their stories, their eyes, their feelings?”
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.
As a biblical counselor or one-another minister, the more human we are, the more real, the more fully alive and passionate, the more we will tune into others. Then we’ll experience a sympathetic resonance no matter the melody, dirge, minor or major key, or discordant note.
When our soul is attuned to others, then we “pick up their radio waves, the vibes of their inner reactions.” Having accomplished this, we need to go the distance. We need to communicate to our spiritual friends in a way that helps them to “have empathy with our empathy.” They need to feel that we feel with them. Otherwise, their sorrow is not shared, it is simply “understood.” When both our “soul radios” are tuned to the same frequency, then we can share our soul friends’ experiences. We share their sorrows by climbing in the casket with them, and they know we 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.
The Rest of the Story
Join us for Part 4 where we explore levels of effective soul empathy.
Join the Conversation
Who has been a Perpetua for you—experiencing as if empathy with you?
Rich soul empathizing is entering into another person’s soul and experiencing their suffering as they experience it. If this competency is foreign to you or difficult for you, explore why this is so. What life experiences or heart issues might you want to work through in order to grow in this area?
[1]Quoted in, Thomas Oden, Classical Pastoral Care, Vol. 3, p. 8, emphasis added.
[2]The Martyrdom of Perpetua,” in Wilson-Kastner, A Lost Tradition Ibid., 22.
[3]Ibid., emphasis added.
[4]Ibid., 20.
