A Word from Bob: 4 Guest Posts by Joe Hussung
You’re reading Part 4 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.
To read Part 3, visit: Understanding—Empathy as a Way of Life.
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.
The Big Picture
It might be helpful to start by briefly tying the first three posts together, and connecting them to today’s post.
- To ground empathy biblically we must start by defining empathy as we understand it today. Then look at the Scriptures to see what established biblical categories speak to the modern construct of empathy.
- As we have done that, we have seen that when we say “empathy” we mean a disposition or a group of characteristics that a counselor embodies, that engages with a counselee’s story.
- These characteristics are necessary for compassion to take place as commanded by our Lord and for loving the way we are called to in interpersonal relationships.
- So, as we move to the counseling task, I will argue that empathy is the cog in the methodological wheel. It is the disposition that moves us from ministry opportunity, to accurately ministering to a soul in front of us. Without it, we will either give overly simplistic counsel, or we will give destructive counsel that will do the opposite of what we intend. The reason this is true is because counseling is a long-form act of compassion. One of its goals is to address the suffering of the individual in front of us. If empathy is inherent in compassion, and compassion is what counseling is all about then, as we fail in empathy, we fail in counseling.
Counseling Methodology: Where Does Empathy Fit?
When we think about caring for individuals who are struggling, what is required for their care? Different people may answer this question differently. Many of us would say Scripture is needed. AMEN! We must have the Scriptures to care for people and to rightly interpret their stories from God’s perspective.
However, it has been long recognized that Scripture must be used strategically when counseling so that it has its intended effect. Listen to what David Powlison says,
The task in any ministry moment is to choose, emphasize, and “unbalance” truth for the sake of relevant application to particular persons and situations.”[1]
What he is saying is that the person’s situation, and experience, in that ministry moment, is the variable that should help us to pivot to the Scripture/truth they may need. In this way, the greater connection and understanding we have about the person; how they are feeling, perceiving their life, underlying beliefs, fears, dreams, and failures, we will inevitably be more capable of providing them with pointed care from God’s Word.
Empathy helps us get to that place. It helps us to carefully engage with the counselee’s story by connecting with the counselee, creating a safe environment in which to open up, and helping the counselee feel understood and listened to. Without connecting with the counselee’s stories on a deep, heart level we will never be able to offer them Scripture with precision.
Empathy with the Person’s Earthly Story and Connecting the Person to God’s Eternal Story
What this means for biblical counseling is that empathy is integral to the process of setting the trajectory of care. This shouldn’t be controversial at all. If you look at any methodological model within biblical counseling, you will see that empathy is what precedes our moving toward helping counselees to apply God’s Word.
Consider the diagram of the three trees from CCEF.[2] Empathy works in the top half of this diagram. It is the posture by which we engage with our counselee’s heat, fruit, and responses. Without this relational ministry of empathy we will not be able to accurately call them to repentance, or show them how Scripture reframes their experience, or help them to move to God for comfort in lament, or any other way we might apply the balm of the gospel to their hearts.
Empathy is necessary to the counseling task to engage people’s stories with care and compassion.
3 Ways That We Fail at Empathy
Since it is so integral to the counseling task, we should consider some ways that we as counselors (and also as human beings) fail to empathize and show compassion.
First, we lack patience in uncovering their story before we open our mouths to offer guidance.
One major reason for this is that we might not be able to tolerate incorrect or sinful statements. Hearing a counselee express sin in the moment and feeling the need to correct it immediately, oftentimes says more about our lack of patience than it does anything else. It also says something to our counselees that we may not intend. It says,
“Even if your suffering is 99% someone else’s fault and 1% yours, that 1% is the important bit, and I can’t listen to you say/do that without correcting it.”
Let me be clear, this does not mean that we don’t correct sin, it means that we need to understand what they are going through before we fully understand what we might correct or how we might address that sin. Be patient, be curious, be understanding, then correct and speak the truth in love.
Second, we don’t have a good base knowledge of their presenting issue to really understand their experience, even when they are telling us about it.
Abuse is the most obvious category here, but many presenting problems have a level of complexity that without prior knowledge to help us understand the problem, we may offer less empathy and compassion than we should. In abuse situations, the trauma responses can be so stark and shocking, that without prior knowledge of how trauma affects the nervous system, how those responses came about, or why they continue. Without a base knowledge, we are likely to judge these responses as different than what they are and likely misjudge them and not really hear what our counselees are saying.
Third, we rely too much on our opinion of their suffering instead of their perception of their suffering.
Our perception of the suffering of an individual should not be the determining factor of how we feel about their suffering. Here is why. If you come into the counseling relationship with lots of trauma and pain, a high level of struggle and suffering can easily cause us either to resonate so much that we have a hard time speaking the truth in love when we need to. Or, we could compare our pain to theirs and perceive that it just isn’t as bad as it could be.
Inversely, if we walk in with very little pain, then we may have no reference point on which to scale their pain. We might think, on the one hand, that their pain isn’t much because we don’t understand what that level of pain is, or we could be so overwhelmed by their pain because we can’t imagine that level of pain.
All of these can be a hindrance to empathizing with someone we are trying to help. We need to weigh our perception of their pain heavily toward their perspective.
They are the experts of their story, and we should listen well.
Empathy: A Final Encouragement to Counselors
Empathy is about who we should be as people who engage the difficult stories of others. It is about patience, humility, understanding, and compassion. There is a lot more to be considered about empathy, but I hope that this outline of grounding empathy and placing it as a necessary aspect within biblical counseling has been helpful and encouraging. I want to encourage all of us to grow in this area and in our hearts, as we attempt to apply the truth and power of the gospel to the hearts of the people we serve.
Notes
[1] David Powlison, How Does Sanctification Work? (Wheaton, IL, Crossway 2017), 34.
[2] Paul Tripp & Timothy Lane, How People Change, (Greensboro, NC, New Growth Press, 2008) 84.
