Session 4 Empathy is the Key (notes from Desdiderio—Letting Go)
Start with the Lord’s Prayer
The key to forgiveness is empathy. Basic human connection to the person, connecting to some feeling or fact in his life that can help me understand from the other person’s point of view.
Empathy covers a whole range of responses.
I think I understand. Oh that poor thing, Oh, you poor person. I feel for them, I want to help them.
The most basic kind of empathy—
Understanding, our intellect is involved more than our emotions.
Pity—the beginning of emotional identification, some feeling for the other person
Sympathy—emotionally engaged with the other person, our heart goes out to them, not just our mind.
Compassion—I share your grief. You suffer with the other person, you’re in their skin.
Love—I want to help. Agape love. This is the love we are called to extend to others as Christians. (Eros—romantic love) Agape—we carry their best interests in our hearts.
A priest said, “There’s nothing I’ve heard in confession that I haven’t done myself or have thought of doing.” He felt empathy for those whose confessions he heard.
Prayer can be a gateway to empathy. We can pray for the gift of empathy. We find common ground of humanity with another comes from coming from the same Creator.
We need God’s help—I Peter, Chapter 3:8. “Do not repay evil with evil, repay with a blessing. It is for this that you are called—that you might inherit a blessing.”
If empathy for the other person is key, then the key to empathy is praying for the other person.
Praying is the best tool in forgiveness, we are assessing the power of prayer.
Benefits of prayer
First, we are accessing the power of prayer, asking God to intervene, ask God to be present to them. We offer our imperfect love, magnified by God’s perfect love
Second, It becomes harder and harder to hold hard feelings Our hearts soften and we open ourselves to empathy.
Relationship between size of the hurt and how long I have to pray for the other person—
Little hurts—feel better in the morning
Medium size hurts—1 to 3 weeks
Ongoing hurts—praying for the person every day, several times a day
Praying for the person is very practical advice that Jesus gave us.
Matthew 5:44 Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you
Praying for the other person is a way to be perfect as God is perfect, take our imperfect prayer and let the Holy Spirit pray through us a more perfect prayer.
Stages of praying for someone who has hurt you (imperfect to perfect prayer)
Admit that you don’t want to do it.
Pray anyway through gritted teeth.
Pray that they will get what they deserve. You’re asking for justice, asking God for what is just, acknowledging your anger. Don’t stop at this stage! Psalms of Lament, a way station along a path that leads to deeper prayer.
Pray that God will grant them what you want for yourself.
As that God will give the other person what they want to be happy
That God will bless them as God wants to bless them. I am letting God be God, thy will be done part of the “our father”
First five stops are just us telling God what to do
The last step is letting go of control, softening my hardened heart toward another person. Treating the other person as I want to be treated, following the Golden Rule.
Let’s go back to Number 3, praying that they get what they deserve.
We might have to pray against our enemies before we can pray for them.
The Israelites were adept at praying against their enemies.
There are 150 psalms in the Bible, and 67 of them are psalms of lament.
The lament is a prayer addressed to God that registers a complaint and asks God to do something about the complaint and ends with an expression of trust
The psalmist prays about a personal injustice or sadness, and appeals to God to correct the injustice. Victims may start to think that they deserve what has happened to them, and laments help us to regain our self worth.
In the lament psalms, the psalmists articulate the injustice and narrow the gap between what is and what should be. They release their anger using language of violence.
When we pray in this way, we ask God to exact vengeance, we release ourselves from having to do the violence, turn the vengeance over to God and leave it there.
By letting go of revenge, we can take the path that leads to higher human development, God bless my nemesis. We can choose to be creatures of blessings rather than curses.
When we pray that God will bless our enemies as God wants to bless them, we are hoping for them what is truly best for them.
We become open to God blessing our own lives and what is truly good for us.
Imprecatory psalms, that invoke a curse on the enemy
The psalmist makes a case, appeals to God’s justice and God’s abhorrence of evil.
Imprecations are also in the New Testament
- Matthew 23:13 But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in.
- Matthew 26:23-24 And he answered and said, He that dippeth his hand with me in the dish, the same shall betray me. 24 The Son of man goeth as it is written of him: but woe unto that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! it had been good for that man if he had not been born.
- 1 Corinthians 16:22 If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha.
- Galatians 1:8-9 But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. 9 As we said before, so say I now again, If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed.
- Galatians 5:12 I would they were even cut off which trouble you.
- 2 Timothy 4:14 Alexander the coppersmith did me much evil: the Lord reward him according to his works:
- Revelation 6:10 And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?
Read Psalm 58 and see verses 6-8 for the curses.
Read Psalm 140– Deliver me from evil doers
Psalmist is asking for God’s protection from violent and evil people
The psalmist makes the appeal more personal, describes his specific enemy, how much danger the psalmist is in, God, listen to me, expression of trust.
The psalmist is reminding God of God’s goodness, strength, and how God has protected P in the past
The psalmist asks God to punish and destroy the enemy.
Surely the righteous will give thanks Expresses faith in God’s goodness, and offers reward of thanks.
We can write our own psalms of lament, a good way to work on our own anger or unforgiveness toward someone else.
Desiderio’s prayer includes these lines—“Here, you hold my vengeance, I’ve got better things to do Hard to get the bloodstains out, vengeance is yours, my job is keeping my laundry clean.”
You can get on with your life by giving God the vengeance. Then you can focus on the good in your life. Would you rather be right,or happy?
Giving God the vengeance lets you relax into a freer life. We can let go and let God take care of these situations. We can surrender hurt feelings and ask God to help us.
Telling the story differently
Desiderio tells this story to illustrate this step in forgiveness—“Tell the story differently.”
The queen of Spain decreed that all of the Jews must leave the capital city within three days, but not one would leave. Such an outcry arose that she decided that a Spanish Jesuit and member of the Jewish community could have a theological debate, and the winning side would determine the fate of the Jews. The Jews picked Moshe, one of their elders. Since Moshe did not speak good Spanish, it was decided that the debate would be silent.
So the day comes, and Moshe and the Spanish Jesuit enter the room, sit down and face one another.
The Jesuit holds up three fingers. After a pause, Moshe holds up one finger. The Jesuit then waves three fingers over his head. Moshe points with one finger to the ground. Then the Jesuit pulls out a chalice and some bread. Moshe pulls out an apple.
The debate is over and the Jesuit declares defeat.
The Jesuits crowd around the one who has been in the debate and ask what has happened. The Jesuit says that Moshe put him in his place over and over by bringing up theological basics. First, said the Jesuit, I held up three fingers to represent the Trinity, and Moshe held up one finger to remind me that God is One. Then I waved my three fingers over my head to say that God is all around us, but by pointing to the ground, Moshe reminded me that God is right here with us. Then I pulled out the chalice and bread to say that God frees us from our sins. Moshe pulled out an apple to say that there is always original sin which makes God’s freeing us from our sins a necessity.
Meanwhile, the Jews crowded around Moshe to find out what had happened. Moshe said that first the Jesuit held up three fingers to say that the Jews had three days to get out. So Moshe held up one finger to say that not one Jew would leave the city. Then the Jesuit held waved three fingers over his head to show that yes, the Jews would have to go, but Moshe pointed to the ground to say that no, they would stay right here. “And then,” Moshe said, “he pulled out his lunch, and I pulled out mine.”
As you can see from this illustration, there are many different ways of telling any story.
When you’ve been hurt, it’s helpful to think about how to tell the story differently. Often, we keep the story to ourselves because we feel ashamed. More often, we want to tell, talk through the trauma. We want to share the pain in hope of finding sympathy. When we tell our story over and over, fueled by resentment, regret, revenge, we don’t escape pain, we just keep our revenge engine revved up.
Desiderio uses this idea to show what he’s talking about.
Tell the story over and over until we’ve dug a deep rut that looks like a narrow grave.
He says that at this point, we have to put down the shovel, and get out a ladder and climb out of the rut. We can do this by telling the story differently.
Venting anger helps us discover what makes us angry and helps us disclose our anger. By getting in touch with our emotions, we can at least get out of sad and into mad, and start to move on. The problem comes when we continue to vent and vent and vent.
Current thinking is that to tell this same story over and over, we become the victim in the story—we keep the stress response going, but what we have to do is keep moving through the feelings and to get the other side.
We can start by assuming good will on the part of the other person. (For situations in which evil was clearly intended, we can’t assume good will on the part of the other person, and so we have to move to what Desiderio calls unconditional forgiveness, which we’ll discuss a little later,)
But assuming this is just an ordinary hurt or disagreement, we can try to assume that the other person did what they did not out of malice but for some other reason.
By assuming good will, we can try to understand the person in some positive light, and then we are planting the seeds of empathy.
(Story of woman in nursing home)
A sure fire way to stoke the fire is to tell yourself you won’t think about it.
The more you try to stop, the more you think about it.
So the best thing you can do when you’ve been hurt is to bring thoughts into external world, and to think and talk about the story differently.
Tell story to a healer, an insightful supportive friend, someone who can help us reframe and get out of the rut we’re in
Desiderio says to give the story affectionate attention, archeologist’s attention, dust off the artifact and examine it, be your own kindly friend.
Empathy for others starts with compassion towards ourselves.
Some things fall into the category of “ life is too short to fight about some things.”
A good thing to ask yourself is “Is the thing that I am odds about worth the anguish that it is causing?”
Start to look back on pain and refocus from problem to resolution—have I learned anything?
Sometimes avoiding conflict is like not cleaning out a cut.
Example of problems that arise when conflict is avoided.
Small business—abusive employee to other employees, made excuses, yelled, I didn’t want to take bully on, office became unhappy, got angry with me for not confronting him
Placate, etc, things got worse. My personal flaw led to chaos and unhappiness for the business.
Lesson—I learned not to back away from conflict, because that hurts me and people around me.
Don’t back down from a bully.
Now it’s not just a story of a bad time, but story of how he has grown as a person, learned to tell the story differently
How have I grown? How is God at work in the situation?
Bring God into the story. Ask God to give us a new mind, God’s calm thought on the situation. Invite God in as a healer, to get beyond negative into a new place, neurologists tell us that we get neural pathways—rather than digging rut deeper, carve a new pathway.
God can turn tragic story into redemption
Seeing God in a situation makes all the difference in the world. The story of Joseph in Genesis (Chapter 50:15) is a great example of this statement. Instead of resenting his brothers for selling him into slavery and exacting revenge from his place of power, Joseph tells the brothers that God meant it all for good, and that Joseph would provide for his brothers and their children.
Joseph could have told the story as one of envy, sibling rivalry, and revenge.
But Joseph triumphed over adversity. He told the story differently, astory of salvation and reconciliation
We can see how tragic stories can turn into stories of redemption when we tell the story differently, and see the presence of God in our story.
The story of Jesus Christ’s crucifixion is the greatest tragedy in history.
In Luke, this tragedy becomes a story of forgiveness, when Jesus extends forgiveness to those who are torturing him to death,
Vs 39, the two criminals—another example of two different takes on the same story. One of the criminals is hurling abuse at Jesus. The other criminal rebukes him and asks, “Don’t you even fear God? We are suffering justly, this man has done nothing wrong” Jesus says to him, “ Truly I say to you, you will be with me in paradise.” The good thief looks at the truth of his situation and asks for help, and when we do this, God will be with us.
Chapter 20 in John.
This story gives all the other stories in the bible meaning.
Resurrection—what you believe makes all the difference in the world
Jesus appears to disciples The disciples told the story of the empty tomb as a resurrection story. Jesus overcame power of sin and death, so we can too.
But from the beginning, there’s a different version of the story.
Matt 28:11 a different version of the story—“You are to say that his disciples stole the body.
So the soldiers took the money and did as they were instructed, and this story is told to this day
Same story of empty tomb is told two different ways
Hope of life after death
Other way, Christianity is just a ruse
Death and deceit vs resurrection and redemption
Our story of tragedy can turn into redemption
Presence of God in our story makes the difference
God gives us the strength to find the redemption in the story.