Empathy for Others

Friday 9/25/2015 5:51 AM

I listened to the U2 album Songs of Innocence as I ran this morning. Some of the lyrics of the song “Sleep Like a Baby Tonight” caught my attention. “Hope is where the door is when the church is where the war is, where no one can feel no one else’s pain. You’re gonna sleep like a baby tonight. In your dreams everything is alright. Tomorrow dawns like a suicide but you’re gonna sleep like a baby tonight.”

I have lived my entire life in the United States. Our independence is something in which we take great pride. We celebrate those who have risen from the depths of poverty to wealth and describe our country as the land of opportunity. We claim that hard work and perseverance will be rewarded.

The danger of this mindset is that we feel that those who do not rise from what we consider to be the lower rungs of society fail because of lack of effort. We complain about all the freeloaders in our society who are riding on the coattails of us hardworking people and our world gets divided into “us” and “them.” Unfortunately, this kind of attitude is especially prevalent in the Christian church. U2 would say, “no one can feel no one else’s pain.”

I like to insulate myself from the world around me. I encircle myself with people who look just like me, those with similar belief systems, values, and economic status. Within this little dream world construct everything is all right. I sleep like a baby, swaddled in the comfort of my self-made world.

God’s call to me is to feel the pain of others. Rather that insulating myself from the world around me I am called to enter into it and share the pain and heartache that is so prevalent. Instead of complaining about things, I am to show mercy to the oppressed and to seek justice on their behalf. I am to expend my energy and the resources God has given me on behalf of others, not solely for my own benefit. God calls me to live in community with those who are made in his image, not to live in comfortable isolation. I pray that God will help me to live in such a way.