Why can’t Christians feel empathy instead of hatred? Could Jesus, Mary, and Joseph enter America today?

"I don't care, do you?"

… understanding the pain of others is beyond religious and political leaders

Empathy is understanding the feelings and emotions that others are feeling, particularly during times of hardship. The ability to think about people who are suffering and try and make things better for them is a key for those in so many fields, particularly in the field of medicine. 

I talked before about the parable of the Good Samaritan, but there are so few people today who practice that. How many would stop and help someone in need, particularly if that person looks to be poor or of another race of ethnicity?

So many people today need help, they need someone to listen to their problems and give them advice. Much of this has to do with the pandemic and the associated problems that it has wrought on society. 

However, instead of feeling for the others and trying to help them through this, so many are just angry and resentful. How can we get over this?

The New Testament does give us some direction in that area.

Callousness of people: I really don’t care

Perhaps the most callous, un-Christian part of this that I saw was when a woman who was supposed to be a first lady and demonstrate care for people instead wore a coat that said about children in cages at the border,

I really don’t care, do you?

Perhaps nothing demonstrates lack of empathy than that. 

The New Testament and Empathy

I looking at the ancient Greeks and how they approached empathy, an author attempted to demonstrate how Jesus Christ felt about empathy even if he never used the word,

It is against the backdrop of such a widely-held views that we may approach the question of “Empathy and the New Testament.”  When I speak of empathy in the New Testament, I am referring to the capacity and activity of understanding the experience of the other.  When I speak of “capacity,” I am speaking of the ability to comprehend or enter into the experience of another.  When I speak of “activity” I am, of course, referring to actually entering into another’s story. 

Obviously enough, empathy involves listening.  But it is a certain kind of listening.  It is a kind of listening which is not defensive, not critical, not suspicious.  It is the opposite of the kind of listening that a jury does when listening to witnesses.  The kind of listening which is necessary for empathy is sympathetic listening – believing the story of the other. 

Empathy connotes not just listening to another’s story but also participating in the other’s story, so that the listener not only hears and believes the facts of another’s experience, but actually feels the experience at some level.  To have empathy with another is not simply to believe what that person says but to feel along with that person, to participate in that person’s experience.

Thus to take an empathetic stance towards another means that I am able to transcend myself and my own experience in order to enter into the experience of another.  Those who have received such empathy from another will know that there is nothing more healing or more validating than this.

L. Ann Jervis, “Empathy and the New Testament,” McMaster

Jesus, Mary and Joseph 

After the birth of Jesus, Mary and Joseph were forced to flee Bethlehem to go to Egypt with Jesus. Were they refugees?

A Jesuit priest says that they definitely were,

With refugees and migrants in the news, some commentators have sought to draw parallels between their plight and that of the Holy Family—Jesus, Mary and Joseph. How accurate are these comparisons? Were Jesus, Mary and Joseph what we would consider today “refugees”?

Yes.

In the second chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, we read the story of the “Flight into Egypt” in which, after the birth of Jesus and the visit from the Magi, an “angel of the Lord” comes to Joseph in a dream and warns him to leave Bethlehem for Egypt (Mt 2:12-15). Why? Because King Herod was planning to “seek out the child to destroy him.” Mary and Joseph do leave, along with Jesus, and, according to Matthew, make their way into Egypt. Afterward, King Herod slaughters all the male children in Bethlehem under two years of age. This dramatic episode is part of the Gospel reading for the “Feast of the Holy Innocents,” celebrated on Dec. 28.

A family is forced to flee their homeland for fear of persecution. This is the classic modern-day definition of a refugee.

James Martin, S.J., “Were Jesus, Mary and Joseph refugees? Yes,” America, December 27, 2017

Could these refugees enter America today? They were Jewish from Nazareth in the Middle East — and they were brown-skinned. Under the Trump immigrant rules, Joseph could never be allowed to enter because he did not have a marketable skill and was poor. Yes, Joseph was a carpenter, but they are a dime a dozen in America. They could not qualify. 

That is how far the lack of empathy has taken us today. 

How does God demonstrate empathy?

Jesus does not talk of empathy directly, but the Sermon on the Mount and the entire book demonstrate that he feels for those who are suffering and that God will reward them in heaven,

For the writers of the New Testament, then, God concretely and completely empathizes with human experience.  In the person of God’s son, God enters human experience. 

What is remarkable about God’s Son is that he empathizes not only with humanity but also with God in the world.  That is, it is not simply that Jesus is Son of God who empathizes with human experience.  He is that.  But he is also Son of God who empathizes with God’s experience of seeking to be heard by human beings.

L. Ann Jervis, “Empathy and the New Testament,” McMaster

Callousness in religion today

I read something recently about a bishop in the Catholic Church who said that he did not look for priests who were committing child sexual abuse in the diocese of Pittsburgh because “it was not my job.” The attorney general found systemic abuse throughout Pennsylvania and particularly in Pittsburgh during this time. Yet, knowing that children were being abused was “not his job.”

You cannot empathize if your heart is not open to goodness. This man lacks Jesus’ compassion — and appears to have never understood the meaning of the Beatitudes. 

This happens in all religions today. I hear so much hatred emanating from people who use Jesus Christ’s name but do not practice what he tells us he must. 

That is why a woman who wore a jacket when she was going to visit children at the border who were place in cages by her husband so horribly callous.

Jesus would say that we have to pray for such people, but that is very difficult. 

Conclusion

All of us can practice empathy on a number of levels. The first thing we have to do is to attempt to listen to them, to discover what it is that is hurting them. 

Today, it could be emotional, financial, personal, or physical. In any case, we should try to listen. 

The second, is that we should try to find out what Jesus would do in such a situation. When Jesus saw the leper, he cured him. When he saw a blind man, he cured him. We cannot do that, but we can follow his example. 

What we should not do is wear a jacket making fun of the fact that people are hurting. That is the sad part of America today, a country of callousness. 

And if we see people like Jesus, Mary, and Joseph are our doors, we should not turn them away.