Empathy - Can You Relate?

Send us Fan MailWithin this week's 'Words of Life' broadcast / podcast, we examine why empathy is not a mood; it is a 'mandate' woven through Scripture and proven in history. The opening scriptural text (Deuteronomy 10: 18-19) commands care for the fatherless, the widow, and the foreigner (wanderer, immigrant, refugee, oppressed, marginalized), grounding love in God’s character and Israel’s memory as former wandering slaves. Thus, empathy differs from sympathy by sharing another’s burden as one who remembers. The call is practical—feed, clothe, welcome—and theological, because every act toward “the least of these” is rendered unto Christ. When we forget mercy, we forget the mercy shown to us, and God’s will not ignore such willing oversight.We are to empathize with refugees and immigrants because they rarely move for comfort; they flee harm and hope for dignity accompanied by a better life. Jesus sharpens the stakes with a parable (Matthew 25), where nations are weighed by hospitality’s ordinary actions—water, bread, a visit, a welcome. Neglect is not neutral; it is a verdict against love. The church cannot baptize indifference with rhetoric. A tree is known by its fruit borne, and empathy bears such that strangers can taste.With nothing new under the sun, history echoes GOD's warning to those who have ears to hear. Revisited is a nation born by protesting distant rule with their denied rights soon displacing Native peoples and enslaved Africans. And yet, the same cycle of oppression and enslavement is repeated. Yet, the one who loves with mercy and compassion remembers our own deliverance and relies upon the same God who feeds us in our desert wanderings.We are therefore challenged by the symbolic fork in the road to preach what pierces: Jesus crucified and risen, the only way to the Father, the model of mercy expected to be extended to neighbors and nations. Love because GOD first loved us. When we feed a family, when we visit the sick, when we welcome the stranger, we touch Christ. Does our gospel message (or platform) choose mercy, practice empathy, and  preach a gospel that brings strangers home or are we indifferent to the plight of those GOD loves and will execute judgment concerning?In lieu of eternity, sermons and musical artists are featured to extol JESUS CHRIST as the sole hope for the eternal souls of humanity.