Most of us understand empathy to be something akin to a warm blanket; the idea that to be truly empathic we must be able to place ourselves in someone else’s shoes. It is important to note, however, that any exploration of empathy and its application in culture and society is insufficient if understood as an ability to know what another is thinking or feeling based solely on how we think or feel ourselves.

The evangelical church in America, especially over the past 75 years, has intentionally been built on homogenous growth principles. Popularized by the first wave of megachurch pastors and church growth experts, these principles encouraged churches to move out of urban centers into the suburbs, and to create cultures that were attractive to the growing middle class. Whatever the motives, the dominant form of evangelical church became large, majority white, and wealthy. There have been a host of unintended theological and missional consequences to this new reality. Some of these changes show up significantly and clearly when it comes to ethical questions around social issues that affect non-white populations in higher percentages.

The church’s life is to be one marked by sympathy and compassion, but more powerfully it is to be marked by an intentional and empathic understanding of the suffering and pain of others, and then living in active response to this knowledge. This is a calling to embrace, understand, and seek the blessing of all people. There are no barriers to this calling, just as the work of Christ had no barriers. Christ died for the sin of all, that all would be drawn to his kingdom. So too does the church engage in this work by being led along a path of  familial love that unifies us in our embrace of others. 

As an unworthy recipient of tremendous grace and mercy, I have sought to repay this gift by living a life of grace. There is no other response that has ever made sense to me. Humility overwhelms me when I consider the precious gift of grace that has marked my life. Thus, grace is my understood vocation, the purpose I carry with me in the world. Extending grace to others, especially working with those who have received anything but grace in their lives, is perhaps the greatest joy I have discovered. There is something I have observed about grace, however, as I have extended it to others. People who receive it are often ironically very slow to extend it. 

Let us not falsely assume that the times we find ourselves in is a first. We know that our nation has moved in and out of tragic periods throughout its history. You only have to pick up one of the latest bestsellers to learn about how whole generations of Americans were able to move the country from the brink of destruction before. We can do it again. Our future relies only on the will of the people who will create it, as well as those who will inhabit it.

On July 20th I received in an email a prayer by Elizabeth Behrens titled A Prayer of Acknowledgement & Lament. It was, for all intents and purposes, the groaning of a saint over the pain being witnessed here on earth. Though I didn’t know it at the time, this prayer would become an important answer to the questions I had long been asking…