A Word from Bob: 4 Guest Posts by Joe Hussung
You’re reading Part 3 of a four-part blog mini-series by my friend and guest blogger, Joe Hussung. Here’s Joe’s bio.
Joe Hussung is the Director of Recruitment and Remote Counseling Coordinator at Fieldstone Counseling. He holds an MDiv in Christian Ministry and DMin in Biblical Counseling from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
To learn more about Joe, check out his longer bio at the Fieldstone Counseling site here.
To read Part 1, visit: Tilling the Ground.
To read Part 2, visit: Compassion: Divine Love for Sinners.
As regular readers of my blog, you know that I’ve written a great deal on Empathy. For a free 42-Page PDF that collates some of my thinking on empathy, see my Empathy Is Biblical PDF.
For a summary of my writings on empathy, along with links to a ten-part blog series on empathy, see my Empathy Is Biblical blog post.
I’m thankful for Joe’s insightful contribution to the important topic of biblical empathy in our lives and ministries.
Empathy as “Understanding”
Alongside compassion (see: Compassion: Divine Love for Sinners), there is one other biblical category related to empathy that we should consider. I will call this category “understanding” but in the Bible, it is a larger category than this one English word. There is a grouping of passages that practically apply how we love people in dispositional terms instead of mere action. It isn’t always “do this” but “be this way.”
In this post, I want to focus on how we are commanded to have a disposition (mindset, way of life) that considers others’ wants/desires/perspectives as extremely important. Not only important, but as a baseline for how we should act toward them.
“Understanding” in Scripture
There are many passages that link this particular quality to loving others, but I want to focus on two clear passages: 1 Peter 3:7 and Philippians 2:4-5.
Let’s start with 1 Peter 3:7. This passage deals with the way that husbands should treat their wives. Peter states,
“Husbands, in the same way, live with your wives in an understanding way, as with a weaker partner, showing them honor as coheirs of the grace of life, so that your prayers will not be hindered.”
In this passage, Peter’s concern is not just some actions that husbands might do for their wives. Instead, Peter wants to encourage a way of being with their wives. He wants them to live “in an understanding way.” Meaning their way of being with their wives should exhibit a level of understanding of their wives. They should consider their wives, their weaknesses, strengths, likes, dislikes, past, preferences, etc.… when they act toward their wives.
This verse is describing a disposition more than an action. Peter doesn’t say do this for/to your wives. He says be this kind of person with your wife. It is by this disposition that they show honor to them.
The next passage is Paul’s exhortation to the Philippians 2:4-5. In these verses he makes a general command, stating,
“Do nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility consider others as more important than yourselves. Everyone should look not to his own interests, but rather to the interests of others. Adopt the same attitude as that of Christ Jesus.”
In a similar way, Paul is exhorting the Philippians to be a certain way. He gives several specific commands (consider others more important and seek others’ interests) and then a more general command to follow Christ in His attitude of selflessness. This selflessness works out into looking to others’ interests instead of their own. Kent Hughes puts it this way,
Paul’s concern for the Philippians was not so much for their minds as it was for their interactions (for the whole congregation), that they would live out in their mutual relationships the same humble attitude that characterized Jesus.[1]
Both passages detail how we should love one another. Christians are called to not only do certain things, but be a certain way. They should walk into situations with a default setting of humility, understanding, valuing others’ perspectives, and compassion.
Loving Disposition
To connect how these two passages connect to empathy, I want to consider a passage that is classically (and rightly) linked with empathy: Romans 12:15. Paul tells the Romans,
“Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep.”
Paul isn’t really giving a command about what we are to do in every conversation and situation. He is speaking to the way we are to be in every conversation and situation. We are to carry ourselves in such a way that when we encounter stories of rejoicing, we…rejoice. And when we encounter stories of sadness we… grieve.
This is what love means and what is at the heart of compassion. As we serve people in a counseling context, we should be the kind of people whose default setting is one who listens, weeps, and shows compassion first. Empathy, in this way, is what naturally happens when a godly heart encounters a story of suffering.
Biblical Empathy
Now, we need to bring these two parts together. How do we define an empathy that is deeply rooted in the biblical text?
Let me offer my definition and offer some points on how this might differ from and be similar to a secular definition.
Biblical empathy is a disposition of love that willingly resonates with the suffering of another image-bearer. This disposition serves the greater work of counseling by helping to discern the nature and extent of the suffering of those being counseled so that one can move with accuracy toward the alleviation of their suffering.
I want to address three parts of this definition to explain why each is important.
First, empathy is a disposition of love.
Empathy, in psychological literature, is in some respects, value-neutral. Empathy, as a construct used in counseling, is a positive attribute, but only in so far as it seeks the good of the person being counseled. In fact, the perceptive capacity could potentially be used in an evil way as well as positive (abuse is a good example of this).
But for empathy to be constrained by the biblical categories and within the greater counseling framework, it must come from love and therefore used for the good of the suffering person. It also must be a disposition, not just a cognitive process. It is a way of being, not just a thing we do.
Second, empathy should engage in resonating with the sufferer’s experience to understand what the sufferer is experiencing.
Resonating with the sufferer’s experience involves engaging them in asking questions, reading non-verbal cues, and other skills that allow the person helping to understand better what they are going through and how they are experiencing the suffering. Without this resonating, one can only make surface-level judgments based unilaterally on their own perceptions, which prevents the person caring from truly understanding and making a good assessment as to the nature and extent of their suffering.
Third, empathy should be affective.
The natural outworking of the two previous statements is that empathy is emotional. If it is a disposition of love and it resonates with the story of suffering, then the resulting response will be one of emotional connection. True love, when the loved one is suffering, naturally moves towards fellow-feeling.
As Aquinas explained, the effect of love is the “union of the affections. . . . since he who loves another looks upon his friend as another self, he counts his friend’s hurt as though he were hurt himself.”[2] Therefore, empathy must be emotionally connected to the person who is suffering.
The Rest of the Story
In my (Joe) fourth and final post in this guest blog series on empathy, we’ll explore: Biblical Empathy as the Cog in the Biblical Counseling Wheel.
Notes
[1] Kent Hughes, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon: The Fellowship of the Gospel and the Supremacy of Christ (Wheaton, IL, Crossway 2013), 83.
[2] Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 2.2.30.2, 1312.
