The Power of Empathy

   This short, animated video helps illuminate the difference between an empathetic and sympathetic response to another person's angst. And, this is significant, because understanding this difference will often determine whether we aggravate or alleviate another person's pain. Empathy is more other-centered; sympathy is often self-centered. Hence, truly empathizing involves exiting and suspending one's own orbit of thoughts and feelings with a view to entering and dwelling within another person's orbit of perceptions and emotions (which is, by the way, a privileged entry into a very guarded, sacred place).
   Moreover, such patient listening should never be considered equal to acquiescing with the relativism of our day, wherein even legitimate, Biblical judging is strictly taboo. The patient (Scriptural) listener simply suspends judgment, understanding that it is God-like to lovingly enter into messy, human needs that are commonly buried under ugly, human sins (Rom 5:8).
   All that said, empathy isn't an easy gift to give, as, by nature, we are not other-centered, we are self-centered. Of course, Jesus Christ, in His incarnation, epitomized such self-forgetting love, so he is the ultimate model for His disciples to follow (Phil 2:3-8; Jn 13:34; Gal 6:1-2). Consequently, it seems to me that empathy should be the first gift we give to anyone we love that suffers, even if his or her unhealthy thinking and living needs some obvious re-alignment.

Link: The Power of Empathy