There are various degrees of care.
Think of it like a ladder. The bottom step is apathy, which is a lack of care. Apathy doesn’t care or feel sorry for what someone else is going through. The next step up is sympathy. Sympathy feels bad for another’s suffering. Sympathy is recognition, acknowledgement, and understanding of someone’s grief, frustration, and suffering. Empathy is the next highest step. This is when there is a visceral emotional response to the suffering of others. You don’t just acknowledge it, you feel it. Empathy goes beyond simple recognition of feelings but actually shares those same feelings. It is what Romans 12:15 references: “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.”
The final step in the ladder of care is compassion. Compassion literally means “to suffer with”. This takes empathy and embodies it. Compassion is empathy put into action. To be compassionate you must do three things: see another’s suffering (sympathy), feel another’s suffering (empathy), and then enter another’s suffering through action (compassion).
We can see how compassion builds up through this process. Suffering starts on the outside, where we see it. Then it comes inside, where we feel it in our own sphere. Then we go face it, again on the outside, through compassionate action.
Effective care often doesn’t make it to compassion. This progression is really important. Oftentimes, this progression is disrupted or rearranged.
For example, some people see suffering and immediately seek to act, without first incarnating with the sufferer and feeling with them. This leads to a habit of throwing money or resources at a problem rather than entering into the problem and facing it alongside people. Compassion done without a heart of empathy is little more than problem management. In Colossians 3:12, Paul tells his readers to “put on…compassionate hearts”. This phrase might be translated “bowels”. It is a phrase that refers to deep emotion. In today’s vernacular, perhaps it would be appropriate to say that Paul is telling his readers to feel compassion “in their gut”.
On the other hand, some others stop at feeling for someone and never take the action necessary to enter suffering and relieve it. It is one thing to feel bad for the stranger on the side of the road. It is an entirely different thing to actually pull over and help them out! Compassion requires both emotion and action. Without emotion it is self-serving and condescending. Without action it is empty.
Empathy is an interesting thing. It doesn’t quite go as far as compassion but there are certain situations where compassionate action isn’t always straightforward. When grieving a loss, sometimes empathy is compassion. When facing a consequence for sin or crime, empathy may be called for, while action isn’t taken to immediately relieve the suffering experienced.
The idea of empathy is perfectly summed up in Romans 12:15 (quoted above). The idea of weeping with those who weep and rejoicing with those who rejoice seems simple enough.
We must view the call to empathy in the light of personal responsibility. We are responsible for our own obedience to this command. Notice that the text doesn’t say “if you’re weeping, make sure others are weeping with you!” I have missed this crucial element in the past. It is easy to see this command in Scripture and demand that other people weep or rejoice with you in your circumstances. But we can’t force empathy. We can only be responsible for developing it in our own hearts for others.
There will be moments in our lives when something positive happening to us equals a negative for someone else. Consider a job promotion. If I am promoted, my rival is disappointed and vice versa. Christian empathy in this case doesn’t require me to deny my own excitement but rather to incarnate into my rival’s world and feel his suffering as I would want him to do for me if our places were switched.
Empathy doesn’t deny us the ability to have our own feelings about a matter. It empowers us to share in the feelings of another.
We have a great example to follow in empathy and compassion: Jesus Christ. Matthew 20:34 is just one instance of Jesus having empathy for those suffering and then acting in compassion to relieve that suffering: “And Jesus in pity touched [the blind men’s] eyes, and immediately they recovered their sight and followed him.“
Chances are, the people around you are suffering. Compassion starts with seeing and recognizing that. It moves into an emotional sharing of that suffering. Finally, it concludes with an action taken. See the suffering around, take the time to feel it, and then act.