Dear friends,
We carry on with our thinking on Christian character. This week’s post also shares bits and pieces on
character in general that I’ve encountered that help to illustrate an aspect.
Empathy.
What is empathy?
One day Mr. Gumpy went out in his
boat... ‘can I come along, Mr. Gumpy?’ said the rabbit. ‘Yes, but don’t hop
about.’ A little story about Mr. Gumpy’s outing, where lots of animals want to
come along. He lets them all come, but…he tells the cat not to chase the
rabbit, the dog not to chase the cat, the pig not to muck about, and the sheep
not to bleat. In short, they can come as long as they don’t be themselves! Mr.
Gumpy is not empathetic – he does not allow them to be themselves. And he is
unable to accept them as they are. He is unable to empathize.
Empathy happens when you understand and share another
person’s experiences and emotions – their feelings. It’s not pity. And it’s not
sympathy either. It’s feeling with, not feeling for. There is affective empathy
– the sensations and feelings we get in response to other people’s emotions,
and cognitive empathy – our ability to identify and understand other people’s
emotions. For folk to follow the golden rule, it really helps if you can put
yourself in someone else’s shoes and then walk a mile. Best way to do this is
to share the experience. Then you get a sense of what the other is going
through. It is a key ingredient to successful relationships, and it helps us
understand the perspectives, needs and intentions of others.
Even so, there are
times when the limits set by the differences in people’s lives run so deep that
even the strongest personal connections will be frustrated. Take the case of 2
loving and well-meaning children in this excerpt, which is particular sad today
as we struggle through stuff and collateral damage into a time where John
Lennon’s “So This Is Christmas…” once again reminds us of our shared humanity
and its seemingly inherent divisiveness…cultural, religious etc; most of which
we have carelessly allowed; the following excerpt is from Lynn Reid Banks, One
More River:
‘Shalom.’
‘Salaam.’ They looked at each other, awakened, happy, embarrassed. Then she put
out her right hand and he took it and shook it and they half laughed. Her hand
was not soft like a little girl’s nor hard like a woman’s (all the grown girls
and women he knew had hard, callused hands) but felt somewhat too cool and
limp, and she gripped harder than she usually did to encourage him to grip
back, for she sensed his shyness and uncertainty. The strength in her hand
challenged the man in him, and he suddenly pressed hers almost convulsively
before letting go.
‘How is
your peace?’ she asked in Hebrew, and he replied: ‘My peace is good. And
yours?’ ‘Also good.’ They spoke stiffly, but their eyes were shining. They were
each strangely thrilled to see the other. Their meeting seemed to both uncanny,
an event not to be dreamed of, not really part of normality. ‘What are you
doing here?’ asked Lesley. The boy shrugged and indicated the tray with hidden
shame. ‘What you see – selling. You want nuts? ‘He took a bag and offered it to
her. ‘Without money. I give you. Take.’
She took
them and thanked him and ate one, and offered one to him. ‘Are they yours?’ ‘My
uncle’s.’ ‘Won’t he care?’ ‘He not know.’ They grinned. Then he asked her what
she was doing in Tubas. ‘I’m on a trip with my class.’ ‘You like our country?’
he asked, with just a hint of irony. She flushed and said, ‘Yes, very much. I
like the villages. Why did you leave your village?’ She at once noticed his
withdrawn expression and knew she had touched him on the raw. He answered with
his old roughness: ‘That is my business.’ ‘I’m sorry.’ After a moment, feeling
ashamed, he added, ‘It was the war.’ ‘I understand.’ ‘I live now with my father
and my uncle in this town.’ He didn’t consider his sister worth mentioning.
‘It goes
well with you?’ ‘Not bad.’ ‘And Eeyore?’ she asked eagerly, without thinking.
‘What?’ ‘Oh…She giggled, and a smile twitched his tough mouth at the sight.
‘Eeyore—that’s what I used to call your donkey. Hee-haw—Eeyore—it’s a donkey’s
name from a book.’ ‘He’s okay.’ ‘Did you keep your promise?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘You don’t
beat him, ever?’ ‘Only when he is bad,’ he said, to keep his pride, for he
couldn’t let her know how completely he had obeyed her. ‘You shouldn’t beat him
at all! He doesn’t mean to be bad.’ ‘He is lazy and no good,’ he said sternly,
but then he smiled. ‘But I like him—sometimes.’
‘You have
him here with you?’ ‘Yes, of course.’ ‘But this is your work now—the nuts?’ He
nodded. ‘So why do you need him?’ ‘He carries things. He carries us. We would
be nothings without a donkey’ he said. ‘My father rode him here, all the way
from our village, with all our stuff on his back too. He never gets tired.’ ‘I
thought you said he was lazy and no good.’ ‘Oh, that is only sometimes.’ ‘I
think you love him now.’ ‘Of course not, He’s just an animal.’ They stood for a
while saying nothing. Lesley waved lightly to Ofer, who was craning his neck to
watch her. ‘You can’t go back to your village now?’ Lesley asked suddenly.
‘No.’ ‘Would you like—‘she began, then hesitated. The war was over. Surely
there would be proper peace soon, and yet…Would the kibbutz allow…? What would
her friends think of her? But she finished her sentence. ‘Would you like to
visit the kibbutz?’
‘What?’
‘My—village. Where I live. You can see your village from there.’ He stared at
her. He was trying to come to grips with the idea of seeing the village like
that, from the Jewish side of the river. To visiting that hated place which,
had it not been for Lesley, he would long have dreamt of destroying. He
wouldn’t mind destroying it anyway, if he could just be sure she wouldn’t be
there at the time. ‘No.’ ‘Why not? Why are you angry?’ He turned his head away.
His eyes had a curious burning in them. ‘Mustapha…I understand how you feel
about—us. About the war and everything, but—‘
‘No, you
don’t. You can’t understand.’ ‘But we’re not enemies, are we? You and I?’ He looked round at her slowly. His eyes were
lustrous like black olives, and just as bitter, but they softened as they
looked at her. ‘Perhaps no. But I am enemy to all your people, except only
you.’ ‘Don’t talk like that!’ ‘You want lies? That is the truth. You must know
it.’ ‘But the war’s over!’ ‘It is not over. It is not begun.’ She gazed at him
with a deep sensation of horror swelling inside her.
‘But
Mustapha, it can’t be like that! Don’t you see that it can’t go on and on?
There’s been so much fighting, so many people are dead. How can you want to go
on? Let it stop, let it stop and let’s have peace!’ ‘You can say that. You can talk of peace. You—won,’ he said with
great difficulty. ‘But when you lose, it is different. Then you can’t talk
about stopping. You must talk about fighting and you must fight, until you lose
your ‘He groped desperately for the English word. ‘Till you lose your life?’
Lesley cried. ‘No, no. Till you don’t have to feel ‘He curled his hand into a
hard claw and made a savage gesture towards his chest as if some beast were
tearing at him. And Lesley understood. ‘Ashamed.’ ‘Yes, yes! Till you are not ashamed—anymore.’ ‘Oh Mustapha! Then there’ll
be no end to it—ever. Because someone must always lose.’
Compassion
Compassion is a sense of identifying with all
of life. It arises out of a sense of reverence for life i.e. all life is
precious - and encourages us to engage the reality of our interactive and
shared existence. Compassion is a core value for human society, and enables us
to reach out to help others, but also to feel comfortable enough to accept help
and assistance when we ourselves are in need. Without compassion, we can easily
turn away from other people’s pain, even with impunity, and ignore things that
do not directly affect us. We can also become hard within and forget that our
compassionate embrace of the world includes us in it as well and is a central
source of mutual care and respect.
It continues to be important that young people see and experience the
power of compassionate caring - and how it can change lives. They need to feel
free enough to be able to show such compassion for the lives of others, and to
receive it as and when needed in their own lives. Sometimes it almost comes
down to being able to accept help when you need it…and being willing to take
that extra step to go out of your way to help someone who is in need.
Compassion involves recognizing the humanity in others. It often
consists of reaching out to people rather than waiting for them to come to you.
Expanding the circle of one’s acquaintances is a way of becoming larger than
oneself and contributing to the cohesion of our common social life.
Compassion implies solidarity, which consists of standing with others
who are in pain or are less fortunate than you are. It means accepting their
struggles as part of your struggles and implies making conscious sacrifices in
their service. From such a perspective, it becomes important to reflect on how
much of your life is given over to serving yourself and how much to serving
others.
Sometimes people act cruelly and hurt others. Occasionally, one can fix
it, and through acts of compassion and love, bring things together again. At
other times, it is too late, and the best you can do is to remember that your
actions can have serious consequences in other people’s lives. A lack of
compassion can lead to horrible behavior. Compassion checks the worst in us;
without it people become a menace to themselves and to others…and when
compassion is lacking, it is easy to divide the world into those with you and
those against you, the former being good and the latter being bad.
Robert Cormier, I Have Words
To Spend (Or, a game of Us and Them…)
The world is made up of two kinds of people – Us and them. Oh, I’m not
talking about friends versus enemies or
the Western nations against the rest of the world or of the North against the
South. Nothing like that. I mean those of us who share common things, who are
loyal to each other, and those who aren’t.
And with people who are with US, we have special rules and very special
ways of looking at THEM versus US.
For instance:
We are always Cautious, but They are always
Chicken.
When We lose a football game by a 7 to 6
score, We achieve a Moral Victory. But when They lose a football game to Us by
a 7 to 6 score, We say it’s the score that counts.
When We don’t dress up, we go Casual. But when
They don’t dress, They’re slobs.
Our house has Character. Their house is
rundown. Or, Our house has a lived-in look. Theirs looks worn out.
A friend of Ours is colorful, but that same
friend of Theirs is nutty.
Our friend has an even disposition and never
loses his cool, while Their friend is dull, dull, dull.
Our friend is the life of the party. Their
friend always makes a fool of himself after a few drinks.
See how it works?
We are slender, but they are skinny; we have
been putting on a little weight lately, but they are getting fat; we are
contemplative, they are lazy; we are daredevils – they are reckless!
Sad thing is- we are all in it together, and
so us versus them don’t get any of us nowhere!
And lastly for this week –
Forgiveness
Is there only one test of true
forgiveness - that of being able to
forget? Is it possible that as long as we remember an event it has not really
been forgiven? We might like to think that it has. But then, why does it still
exist within us? Inside of us. Part of our persona. Part of our ongoing defense
mechanism? (I am not gonna let that happen to me again!) Perhaps such a reality
demands that we distinguish carefully about that which can realistically be
forgiven and that which is retained in some way, shape or form as part of our
ongoing self- preservation! Perhaps that is the way we have been wired? We
cannot, for example, keep on forgiving someone who keeps on showing total
disregard for human life! Or bring it down a notch - are you supposed to be forgiving when someone
is abusive to you? Of course not! As Sting once sang (paraphrased) I cannot
turn the other cheek, its black and blue and bruised (!) You get the idea....so
it seems to me this business of forgiveness cannot be oversimplified. To do so
would be exceedingly dangerous!
So, we must consider intention vs accident. Whether we like it or not,
we are called upon to make a judgment on such issues that happen. Was it an
accident? Unpremeditated? Or was it intentional? Great care must be taken. What
was the context? What were the circumstances? Are there mitigating factors? If
we think, well it was an accident, and accidents will happen (that’s why
they’re called accidents!) then we need to be forgiving and put it out of our
minds (forgetting) so that the other person has a shot at full rehabilitation.
No one can overcome an issue if they keep on being reminded of it. And that
works both ways!
And if it wasn’t, then what? Then we have to conclude that we cannot
cast pearls before swine! How wise is the wisdom of Proverbs! The worst thing
that can happen to you is when you forgive someone and they say they appreciate
it but don’t really give a damn and then go out and smash you again! In such a
case, forgiving seventy times seven certainly does not apply! Probably by the 7th
time, much less the 70th, there won’t be any part of you left! And
you are called to be such a sacrifice? No! We are not little Jesus people who
go off to die on little crosses for the sins of the world. There is only one
Jesus, and he already did that! People
talk of not having to reinvent the wheel...this is something like that!
Take another perspective on this...why did Jesus not choose to forgive
the moneylenders in the temple and practice a forgive 70 x 7 ethic in their favor? You know, go and sin
no more; actually, he did this, but just not in the way we might expect him to!
So, in all of the business of forgiveness, there is a clear element of
accountability that needs to be resolved. I am willing, able and ready to
forgive you. And I do so. Now, what is your response? How do you respond? Can
you and will you then demonstrate that, yes, such actions are a thing of the
past for you and you take no satisfaction from them (never did) but they
constitute a weakness on your part, and you have a plan to rehabilitate yourself
from such things that seem to have a hold on you. And this is where the
encouragement of forgiveness is so critical. It encourages and supports
repentance!
This is why Jesus uses the 70 x 7 template! In the business of
forgiveness you are encouraging new life, new strength, new growth! And you
forgive, just as God has forgiven you! Random bits and pieces in all we cover
will reach out to us, as all come together into the actual difference Jesus
brings with power into our lives. Good practice is to think of the aspects we
do well in, and the ones we need to grow on.
Stay well and be safe. Next week we look at honesty and integrity…May
the peace that passes all understanding be yours, now and always, in Jesus. G.
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