Recently I blogged about Depression and the Power of Empathy. I thought it would be helpful to provide something of a “Part 2” by exploring together the distinct differences between secular empathy and biblical empathy.
Empathy Is Sourced in the Trinity
Empathy is not a Trojan Horse trying to sneak secular concepts into biblical counseling.
Empathy is all over the Bible. Just a few biblical examples:
- We are to weep with those who weep (Romans 12:15).
- When one part of the body of Christ suffers, we all suffer with them—we are to suffer with those who suffer (1 Corinthians 12:26).
- We are called to comfort one another with the comfort we have received from God (2 Corinthians 1:3-4).
- God the Father empathizes with us. He is the Father of compassion/mercies and the God of all comfort (2 Corinthians 1:3-4).
- God the Son empathizes with us. He is our sympathetic High Priest who knows and sympathizes with our infirmities (Hebrews 4:14-16).
- God the Spirit empathizes with us. He is our Comforter (John 14-16). He groans with us as we experience the agonies of life in this fallen world (Romans 8:26-27).
The Greek word behind our English word empathy is empathos. Pathos is passion, pain, agony, inner suffering. Em is within, along with. So biblically em-pathos pictures experiencing the pain of another person as if it is our own agony.
Secular Empathy
Clearly, secular counseling believes in and practices empathy. And, theologically, because of common grace and the imago Dei (image of God), we know that a secular counselor certainly can feel for and feel with a counselee—to some extent, to some level—sometimes quite deeply.
But by very definition, the “secular” counselor’s goals will stop short of connecting the grieving counselee to Christ. We might picture it like this.
- Level 1 Empathy—Social Empathy: The secular counselor has a social goal in empathizing: The counselor wants their counselee to sense that another human being (social) feels for them.
- Level 2 Empathy—Self-Aware Empathy: The secular counselor has a self-aware goal in empathizing. The counselor, by grieving for their counselee, gives the counselee permission to grieve. By feeling with their counseling, they give them permission to feel—to face honestly what is going on inside of them.
These are two laudable goals. Sadly, sometimes in our biblical counseling world, we could learn a thing or two about these two foundational levels of empathy. The biblical counselor doesn’t do less than the secular counselor. The biblical counselor does more than the secular counselor. How so?
Biblical Empathy
- Enriched Level 1 Empathy: Social Empathy Flowing from Spiritual Empathy—2 Corinthians 1:3-5
Consider from 2 Corinthians 1:3-5 the source of the Christian’s empathy:
“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ.”
My empathy for you flows from God’s empathy for me.
The best comfort givers are comfort receivers.
God’s eternal, infinite comfort flows into my life as I cling to Him and then overflows and spills over out of my life into your life.
- Enriched Level 2 Empathy: Self-Aware Empathy Flowing from Spiritual Relationships—Psalm 42:5
In Psalm 42, David is pouring out his soul in grief over the loss of human relationship he is experiencing. He used to go with God’s people to worship and fellowship together. Now he is rejected and alone.
How does David respond? He models the reality that God created us as self-aware beings. David talks to himself. David reflects on himself.
“Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.”
We also find this capacity for God-designed self-awareness in Romans 12:3.
“For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you.”
Some Christians mistakenly take this verse to mean that Christians are never to think about themselves. But that’s not what the verse indicates. We will think about ourselves. But in what context will we do that? We will do that as in-relationship-to-God beings. Think of yourself in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you, Paul says.
David does the same thing. He connects his self-aware soul (“Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me?”) to his spiritually-attuned soul (“Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God”).
When I encourage a counselee to grief, to “vent,” to candidly face reality, I’m doing so out of a theological conviction that God designed my counselees to know themselves and to experience their lives fully in relationship to God—with God as their circumference, with God as their ultimate environment.
- Enriched Level 3 Empathy: Spiritual Empathy Flowing to and from the Trinity: 2 Corinthians 1:3-4; Hebrews 4:14-16; Romans 8:26-27
This is the most vital distinction between secular empathy and biblical empathy. Secular empathy misses the holy of holies of the soul—we are spiritual beings designed for a worship relationship with the Trinity.
Secular empathy, to some degree, can direct us to feel another person’s feeling for us. It can direct us, to some degree, to candidly face our own pain. But secular empathy is empty at its core—the core being our spiritual relationship to the God of the universe.
In biblical counseling, we move with our suffering, hurting counselees toward God’s empathy—toward the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, toward their sympathetic High Priest, toward their groaning Comforter who dwells within them.
The Practical Outworking of Spiritual Empathy
What does level 3 spiritual empathy mean practically? What does this look like in biblical counseling?
- We remind our counselees that our empathy is an infinitesimal reflection of the Trinity’s infinite empathy.
When a counselee effusively praises and thanks us for being so empathetic, it’s easy (in our flesh) to take that in and bask in it and let it stop there.
Instead, we could say something like:
“Whatever empathy you feel from me—and I do care and I’m pleased that you sense that—let’s be sure to realize that my empathy only comes from the empathy I receive from God. And my empathy is tiny compared to God’s infinite care for you…”
We point people not to ourselves, but to God and His infinite empathy. That’s a huge difference between secular empathy and biblical empathy.
- We journey with our counselees to the Trinity’s intimate empathy.
As we direct people to Christ, we invite them to invite the Trinity into their pain—because the Trinity is already there residing in their pain and suffering (2 Corinthians 1:3-4; Hebrews 4:14-16; Romans 8:26-27).
There is no larger story for the secular therapist. There is no larger Person in secular therapy. But in biblical counseling there is the larger Person—the caring Trinity. And there is the larger story—of a God who pursues us in our sin and comforts us in our suffering—through Christ.
In secular therapy, the counselee is left with venting. In biblical counseling, the counselee is invited into lamenting—sharing their soul with their Soul Physician.
- We encourage our counselees to find Christ’s healing hope in the midst of their suffering.
When the Apostle Paul felt the sentence of death and despaired even of life, he saw the larger picture and the larger Person, and Paul realized that “these things happened to us so that we might not rely upon ourselves but on the God who raises the dead” (2 Cor. 1:8-9).
As we said in Depression and the Power of Empathy, we don’t deny people’s hurt; we enter their hurt. More than that, we help them to see how God is entering their hurt. But even more than that, at the right time we journey with them from earthly hurt to eternal hope.
The best the world has to offer is “acceptance”—the typical 5th and final stage of the “grief recovery process.” A suffering person is to come to accept that this loss is their new lot in life. But in Christ, even our losses are redeemed—they encourage us to rely upon the God who raises the dead.
- We empower our counselees to point others to the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort.
Now we’ve come full circle. The comfort we the counselor receives from God, we share with our counselee. And then the comfort that the counselee receives from God, they then share with others.
Secular empathy leads to someone knowing that another human being cares.
Biblical empathy leads to a Christian knowing that the body of Christ cares, that Christ cares, that it’s possible to hope in the midst of hurt, and that they can powerfully minister Christ’s care to others.
Biblical empathy leads to biblical encouragement which leads to biblical empowerment which leads to biblical exaltation—as we give praise together to the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort.
Join the Conversation
How would you distinguish between secular empathy and biblical empathy?
Have you ever had a Christian stop with “secular empathy”—care for you, but not point you to Christ? How did this impact your soul?
Have you ever had a Christian skip biblical empathy and try to race you to hope before joining you in your pain? How did this impact your soul?
Who has offered you biblical empathy—their compassion (co-passion) pointing you to the Father of Compassion? How did this impact your soul?
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