3 Empathy Questions | Greg & Shaylyn Ford | One Church
ICEBREAKER
What prayer have you been praying the longest? Alternately, what prayer has been answered for you recently?
MESSAGE NOTES
[Romans 12:16]
Live in harmony with each other…
[Romans 12:16-18]
…don’t think you know it all! 17 Never pay back evil with more evil. Do things in such a way that everyone can see you are honorable. 18 Do all that you can to live in peace with everyone.
Empathy: the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.
- if I fight to put myself there I can gain some empathy
- a common experience or a common feeling
Empathy is not a touchy feely word. The amount of toughness and discipline it takes to develop true empathy is the reason most people never achieve it. Let’s learn from Jesus…
[Luke 14:1-6]
One Sabbath day Jesus went to eat dinner in the home of a leader of the Pharisees, and the people were watching him closely. 2 There was a man there whose arms and legs were swollen. 3 Jesus asked the Pharisees and experts in religious law, “Is it permitted in the law to heal people on the Sabbath day, or not?” 4 When they refused to answer, Jesus touched the sick man and healed him and sent him away. 5 Then he turned to them and said, “Which of you doesn’t work on the Sabbath? If your son or your cow falls into a pit, don’t you rush to get him out?” 6 Again they could not answer.
The man was afflicted with dropsy, which is an “abnormal accumulation of serous fluid in the tissues of the body.” The word for dropsy here comes from the Greek words for “water” and “face” or “countenance” because the disease often made a person look bloated in their face.
Pharisees added rings to the law…issues to people
3 Empathy Questions
1. Do I actually WANT to see their perspective?
(If you don’t want to see their perspective you won’t.)
[Luke 14:4]
…they refused to answer…
It’s amazing the things that you don’t see when you don’t want to.
[Luke 14:6]
Again they could not answer.
It starts with the desire to see the other perspective.
If you never desire to see - the whole thing dies right there.
You can be as blind as you want to be
3 Empathy Questions
2. Do I see their perspective fully enough to argue FOR it?
(If you can’t argue their case you don’t understand it well enough.)
Imagine having the discipline as you are beginning to rant, and power up, and go off you could somehow press a button and jump over the exact opposite side of the argument and argue their case. Imagine, you are their lawyer…even if you fully disagree with their view point you would understand it better.
If you do call a timeout…What do you do in the timeout?
3 Empathy Questions
3. Am I focused on our differences or what we have in common?
(Behind every behavior you don’t agree with there is a feeling that you can relate to.)
What is the same vs what is different?
Often that “sameness” is a value or even a feeling.
- finding the common ground by finding the common feeling
Empathy allows me to find unity in what we have in common, and finding common ground in the feelings we shared in our diverse experiences…we can disagree on viewpoints or solutions and not live dissonant with people anymore than we need to.
Empathy takes people from 2 dimensional to 3 dimensional
BLM…imagine if Christians were being targeted…you’d be in the streets, you would be talking about “by any means necessary”
Sameness: George Floyd calling for his mother
This is exactly Jesus does with this room of Pharisees in Luke 14…look at verse 5…
[Luke 14:5]
Then he turned to them and said, “Which of you doesn’t work on the Sabbath? If your son or your cow falls into a pit, don’t you rush to get him out?”
He is offering them the tool of empathy. He is saying…take a few moments to think a little deeper about the swollen person in front of you. Have the discipline to imagine if he was your son. If the issue hit close to home…when you willfully choose to fight for empathy you are bringing the issue close to home.
Often “how I was raised” becomes an wall that divides.
Conclusion:
Genuine empathy often makes solutions common sense
- Sometimes solutions aren’t that hard when we meet in the middle
[Luke 14:5-6]
If your son or your cow falls into a pit, don’t you rush to get him out?” 6 Again they could not answer.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Is there a relationship in your life that would benefit from more empathy?
What are some customs or traditions you learned in your family that are not beneficial to you or others?
Do you have a relationship in your life that has been damaged because you or the other person had to be right?
Is being right more important than mending the relationship?
Have you ever looked at someone and saw what you thought was wrong, or different rather than seeing them the way God sees them? Share