Empathy, Justice, Truth, Character
I am feeling the pain of others this morning as a result of reading some recent blog entries. You won't necessarily understand everything I'm thinking or feeling without all of the background information. But I hope it will relate to your own life and experiences in some way.
Many of us know, at least to some degree, the pain of rejection. Hopefully, fewer of us know the pain of parental rejection and indifference. This is a wound I have experienced in my life and I can tell you that it is one of the most emotionally crippling wounds one can try to recover from. My dad and I have a good relationship today, but we haven't always. My wounds have healed and I am not holding onto any past hurts. But I remember the tears and the anguish resulting from his indifference toward me and his emotional rejection of me during turbulent times in our relationship. Those experiences will always be with me and they have helped to shape me into the person I am today. My fears of rejection, of being disposable, of being unlovable -- as well as my coping mechanisms -- have been formed in me through my life's experiences. (And, obviously, all my wounds did not come from my dad.)
A person who has not experienced the rejection of a parent cannot relate to my wounds. My brothers have the same dad, but they have not had the same relationship with our dad that I have had. For whatever reason, I have been (in the past) more easily discarded and I always felt that I had less value as a person because of my distinct personality traits. How unlovable do you think a person feels when they believe that they are not loved by their own parent: a person who should by nature, instinctively love them, even at their worst? I can tell you that this feels horrible. And it makes you feel like something is very wrong with you. I have felt, at times in my life, that God gave me this defective personality that not even a parent could really love or approve of. For many years of my life, I carried the weight of believing I was not the daughter that either of my parents would have picked out. And all of us have an inborn need for our parents' love, acceptance and approval. We can convince ourselves we don't, but we do and we always will -- no matter how old we get or what kind of people our parents are. It hurts even more when you have siblings who have the love you long for and who cannot understand the pain you feel -- or when they don't stand up for you because they are protecting their relationship with the same person who makes you feel so unlovable.
I do not share this to in any way reflect poorly on my dad. I love my dad very much. And I'm certain that I contributed in my own ways to the difficulties in our adult relationship. My point is that even though all feelings of anger and resentment have been put away years ago and forgiveness is not even an issue, all I have to do is think about certain situations, words and actions, and I remember the hurting like it happened last night. Even as I write this, certain experiences flood my mind and my heart feels that ache and painfully remembers because it has not been wiped out of my memory bank. As a human being, I do not possess the ability to erase my memories. And yet that is not a bad thing because the memory of my own pain enables me to feel empathy for others who experience this same pain of rejection.
It's difficult to feel genuine empathy for pain you know nothing of. It's possible to feel compassion, but empathy is more about the ability to relate to someone else and to feel what they are feeling. Getting outside ourselves and trying to imagine another person's pain first requires a desire to do so. If all that matters to me is how someone else's pain makes my life more difficult, I am not a person of empathy OR compassion.
Some people are, for whatever reason, severely lacking in their ability to feel empathy for others. People who don't feel empathy are usually very narcissistic. Everything that happens is primarily about them and how it affects them. They have a difficult time getting outside themselves enough to feel the pain of someone else. The desire to do so is often completely absent.
Where there is an absence of empathy, there is usually little conviction for justice. Where justice doesn't matter, the truth becomes something moldable and is often lost in translation. Conversely, where truth is an abstract, justice has little relevance.
I have witnessed people, whom I once had a tremendous amount of confidence in, blatantly attempt to rewrite history and distort truth for their own agendas. My sister-in-law was once told by a pastor, "You can believe whatever you want to believe."
No. Truth matters, justice matters, integrity matters to God. And these should matter to us as well. The past is not just something to "get over." The past is something we learn from. And we should examine our motives for yelling (or typing) words like "get over it" and "move on" to others who are in pain. Yes, we all need to forgive. But forgiveness is something to be demanded of ourselves, not others.
When we are demanding that someone else "get over it" for our benefit, so that our lives can be more comfortable, so that we don't have to look at the truth, that is self-serving and void of compassion. It's just wrong, pure and simple. And we need to ask the question, do we demand the same thing from ourselves that we are demanding of others? If we are nursing ANY wrong done to US at the same time as we are feeling frustrated at others for "hanging onto" their pain, we are hypocrites. This is especially true when the "others" are victims of extreme abuse, not just an unkind word or action.
Being built into a church instead of being built into Christ is a dangerous thing. It will cause you to give the glory for everything good in your life to your church instead of to God without even recognizing what you are doing. It will make you fiercely loyal to a group of people, but not necessarily to God.
"There are lots of nice things you can do with sand: but do not try building a house on it."
C.S. Lewis
Many of us know, at least to some degree, the pain of rejection. Hopefully, fewer of us know the pain of parental rejection and indifference. This is a wound I have experienced in my life and I can tell you that it is one of the most emotionally crippling wounds one can try to recover from. My dad and I have a good relationship today, but we haven't always. My wounds have healed and I am not holding onto any past hurts. But I remember the tears and the anguish resulting from his indifference toward me and his emotional rejection of me during turbulent times in our relationship. Those experiences will always be with me and they have helped to shape me into the person I am today. My fears of rejection, of being disposable, of being unlovable -- as well as my coping mechanisms -- have been formed in me through my life's experiences. (And, obviously, all my wounds did not come from my dad.)
A person who has not experienced the rejection of a parent cannot relate to my wounds. My brothers have the same dad, but they have not had the same relationship with our dad that I have had. For whatever reason, I have been (in the past) more easily discarded and I always felt that I had less value as a person because of my distinct personality traits. How unlovable do you think a person feels when they believe that they are not loved by their own parent: a person who should by nature, instinctively love them, even at their worst? I can tell you that this feels horrible. And it makes you feel like something is very wrong with you. I have felt, at times in my life, that God gave me this defective personality that not even a parent could really love or approve of. For many years of my life, I carried the weight of believing I was not the daughter that either of my parents would have picked out. And all of us have an inborn need for our parents' love, acceptance and approval. We can convince ourselves we don't, but we do and we always will -- no matter how old we get or what kind of people our parents are. It hurts even more when you have siblings who have the love you long for and who cannot understand the pain you feel -- or when they don't stand up for you because they are protecting their relationship with the same person who makes you feel so unlovable.
I do not share this to in any way reflect poorly on my dad. I love my dad very much. And I'm certain that I contributed in my own ways to the difficulties in our adult relationship. My point is that even though all feelings of anger and resentment have been put away years ago and forgiveness is not even an issue, all I have to do is think about certain situations, words and actions, and I remember the hurting like it happened last night. Even as I write this, certain experiences flood my mind and my heart feels that ache and painfully remembers because it has not been wiped out of my memory bank. As a human being, I do not possess the ability to erase my memories. And yet that is not a bad thing because the memory of my own pain enables me to feel empathy for others who experience this same pain of rejection.
It's difficult to feel genuine empathy for pain you know nothing of. It's possible to feel compassion, but empathy is more about the ability to relate to someone else and to feel what they are feeling. Getting outside ourselves and trying to imagine another person's pain first requires a desire to do so. If all that matters to me is how someone else's pain makes my life more difficult, I am not a person of empathy OR compassion.
Some people are, for whatever reason, severely lacking in their ability to feel empathy for others. People who don't feel empathy are usually very narcissistic. Everything that happens is primarily about them and how it affects them. They have a difficult time getting outside themselves enough to feel the pain of someone else. The desire to do so is often completely absent.
Where there is an absence of empathy, there is usually little conviction for justice. Where justice doesn't matter, the truth becomes something moldable and is often lost in translation. Conversely, where truth is an abstract, justice has little relevance.
I have witnessed people, whom I once had a tremendous amount of confidence in, blatantly attempt to rewrite history and distort truth for their own agendas. My sister-in-law was once told by a pastor, "You can believe whatever you want to believe."
No. Truth matters, justice matters, integrity matters to God. And these should matter to us as well. The past is not just something to "get over." The past is something we learn from. And we should examine our motives for yelling (or typing) words like "get over it" and "move on" to others who are in pain. Yes, we all need to forgive. But forgiveness is something to be demanded of ourselves, not others.
When we are demanding that someone else "get over it" for our benefit, so that our lives can be more comfortable, so that we don't have to look at the truth, that is self-serving and void of compassion. It's just wrong, pure and simple. And we need to ask the question, do we demand the same thing from ourselves that we are demanding of others? If we are nursing ANY wrong done to US at the same time as we are feeling frustrated at others for "hanging onto" their pain, we are hypocrites. This is especially true when the "others" are victims of extreme abuse, not just an unkind word or action.
Being built into a church instead of being built into Christ is a dangerous thing. It will cause you to give the glory for everything good in your life to your church instead of to God without even recognizing what you are doing. It will make you fiercely loyal to a group of people, but not necessarily to God.
"There are lots of nice things you can do with sand: but do not try building a house on it."
C.S. Lewis
Comments
that is one of my favorite things you've ever written.
Thank you for that.
Love,
Jennifer
My heart is very heavy for those who have been emotionally abandoned and abused by their parent(s). It's a pain, to a certain extent, I can relate to. And it's also a pain I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy (if there were such a person).