Empathy and Compassion

Scripture — Colossians 3:12 (NRSV)

As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.

Devotion

I am wrapping up my 36th year as a college professor. As the senior member of my department, I’ve served several terms as chairperson with leadership responsibilities including setting teaching schedules, mentoring younger colleagues, and overseeing promotion reviews. Being a professor also puts me in a position of authority over students as I decide what is taught each day and what grades to assign. Leadership also means responding when colleagues or students come to me with difficult circumstances. One question I need to ask is: What does it mean in this situation to be compassionate? But before attempting to answer the question, however, it’s worth pointing out that it is actually one of the right questions to ask—especially in a cultural climate in which sympathy, empathy, and compassion are under attack.

Roughly speaking, sympathy is an understanding of the difficulties experienced by somebody who walks in different shoes than our own: the struggles that person is going through or the sorrows they have experienced. Sympathy is, in a way, a first step toward caring. Empathy can be understood as an even further step. Empathy is when we not only try to understand what somebody else is experiencing, but we actually work to feel what they are feeling. Whereas sympathy might be a mere intellectual exercise, empathy is personal and risky, involving a vulnerability to let ourselves invest emotionally in what somebody else is going through. Empathy is a step of love. It is also an imitation of what Jesus did through the incarnation: choosing to enter into our world in human form, in all its vulnerability and risk, fully experiencing all the temptations and sufferings of our human condition. (See, for example, Hebrews 4:14-16).

And compassion is a further step still. Compassion is when empathy moves us to action. One of the New Testament Greek words translated as “compassion” is splanchnizomai. This is the word used to describe the response of the father in Luke 15:20 in the parable of Jesus that later came to be referred to as “The Prodigal Son”, but which might better be titled “The Compassionate Father.” The word comes from a root splanchna which refers to our internal organs. To have splanchnizomai means to be moved in our innermost self, the deepest part of our being. Imitating the father in this parable means both that compassion should be a core part of our identity, and also that it is more than a feeling; it is an empathy that shapes how we live and what we do.

Compassion is very close to the heart of God, the example of Jesus, and the teachings of Jesus and the apostles. David, in Psalm 145:9, tells us, “The Lord is good to all, and his compassion is over all that he has made.” Note the all-encompassing extent of God’s compassion. Likewise, Jesus is repeatedly described in the Gospels as compassionate. Matthew 14:14 tells us he had compassion for the crowds and the sick, which moved him to healing. Matthew 15:32 and Mark 8:2 point out that he had compassion for the hungry, which moved him to feed them. Matthew 9:36 and Mark 6:34 speak of Jesus having compassion on those who were leaderless and oppressed—“harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” We also see Jesus’ compassion expressed directly to grieving individuals, like the widow whose son had died (Luke 7:13).

Jesus’ parable of the good Samaritan (presented as an example of how we ought to live) is about a man whose compassion for a stranger (Luke 10:33) moves him to caring action. His parable of the two sons and a compassionate father (Luke 15:11-32) —a parable we will return to in tomorrow’s devotion—reveals a loving God who is “filled with compassion.” Likewise, Paul in his letters to various churches urges God’s people to live with compassion. In the passage for today, Paul writes to Colossians believers: “As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience” (Colossians 3:12). Although Paul uses a different word for compassion, oiktirmos, he puts it in the phrase splanchnon oiktirmos connecting it again to our “inward parts”. Thus, some translations like the NASB render this as “put on a heart of compassion.” It is more than just a feeling or thought, but a way we are to act, precisely because we are called to imitate a God who is compassionate.

Compassion is difficult, of course. It requires both emotional vulnerability and often personal self-sacrifice. My devotions this year have been motivated by 2 Timothy 4:2-5 and by the Beatitudes in Matthew 5:1-2, and the temptations among religious people to look for false teachers who will provide comfortable teaching rather than the more challenging work of real discipleship. Compassion can be uncomfortable. Jesus’ compassion was certainly costly. But it is what we are called to.

Find all Life for Leaders devotions here. Explore what the Bible has to say about work at the unique website of our partners, the Theology of Work Project. Reflection on today’s Life for Leaders theme can be found here: Set Your Mind on Things Above: Heavenly Living for Earthly Good (Colossians 3:1–16).