Enlarging the Boundaries of Our Hearts

Without empathy we are not human.

My hands shook as I dialed the number to the FBI. Doubts niggled at my weary mind. Was this necessary? Perhaps I was overreacting? Being too hasty? Would federal agents take me seriously or write me off as an emotionally overwrought woman? Lord knows I had plenty of reasons to think they might.

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My sister died in 2016, and my husband and I had been fighting the State of Louisiana’s Child Protective Services for months to get custody of her children before they were separated in foster care. After all, we were familiar family. They’d spent summers with us, vacationed with us, and been interwoven in our hearts since they were born. It made perfect sense to unite them with us. But there was one problem – we lived in New York which meant an interstate compact would be required and would create more labor for the social workers assigned to the kids’ cases.

The social workers had been neglectful, threatening, and antagonistic to the kids and to us from the beginning. Every meeting, every phone call, and every court date revealed a disturbing lack of empathy for all that these kids had been through and the precariousness of their situation. It eventually became apparent that they had no intention of working with us through an interstate compact and that they were biding time, allowing the kids to languish in limbo until they got in enough trouble to warrant juvenile incarceration or being split up into foster care.

These were among the most harrowing months of my life. I was in grief over the loss of my little sister, traumatized by the horrific nature of her death, and traveling back and forth between Louisiana and New York to keep her children together and free from further harm. It was during this time that one of her children, wounded and confused by all that had happened, ran away. This precious child, who I had loved since the day they were born, disappeared in the night.

I expected law enforcement to come to the rescue, to put all their efforts into finding this traumatized child who was in grave danger. In my naivety, I thought I’d find compassion from investigators who had a sworn duty to help in just such a time. Tragically, what I found instead was cold, calloused, passive aggressive resistance. Because this child had gotten into quite a bit of trouble in the months following my sister’s death, and because this child behaved disrespectfully, law enforcement was largely indifferent to their fate. They filed the report, put out information to the media, and asked around a bit and then they dropped the matter. I called and emailed the police and social workers constantly, but my sister’s missing child was soon old news.

Photo by nikko macaspac on Unsplash

Their cruel indifference ate at my soul. During my sister’s long death, I developed a habit of walking and praying at night, cloaked in darkness both inside and out. I continued this mournful habit while her beloved child was missing, crying out for mercy and for someone to help us. Months went by and my heart grew sicker with each passing day. I mourned not only the loss of my sister, but the loss of her child who I could not protect.

Some other malignance was growing in my heart too.

It was the terrorizing realization that people who were supposed to be the helpers, the good guys, even the heroes of the story were often monstrously cruel and indifferent.

I had forgotten this lesson that I’d learned well in my childhood. I’d fled this truth in my adulthood by constructing a sweet, all-American, upper-middle class life for myself, insulated for a while from the reality of human cruelty. But my sister, who never had the opportunity to flee, lived a life on the thin margins. And being in relationship with her as she died reminded me of things I’d tried so hard to forget.

I couldn’t get a minister to come baptize her on her deathbed, at her request, because she wasn’t affiliated with a church. Cold indifference in the name of Christ.

One of her children was nearly incarcerated due to a misunderstanding combined with my dying sister’s inability to advocate for them. If I hadn’t arrived, by God’s grace, in the exact nick of time, their life would have been irrevocably altered for the worse. Her children had been neglected and threatened by agents of the system that was supposed to help them. They were languishing in limbo with no end in sight. Lack of empathy from law enforcement and social services meant to protect children.

And now another of her children was missing – a thirteen-year-old child – and no one with the power to do anything about it gave a damn.

I’ll be honest with you and admit that cynicism and rage grew within me by the day. Unless you’ve ever faced cold indifference disguised in people who pretend to be good, you can’t understand the impact on a person – the powerlessness, helplessness, and hopelessness are all-consuming.

I’ve been reminded recently of the dangers of people who masquerade as pious – even as followers of Christ who is Love Incarnate – but who are indeed cold, calloused, and uncompassionate toward those who are suffering and vulnerable. These people are particularly dangerous because they stand as beacons of hope in our world but are merely whitewashed tombs, to borrow a phrase provided by Christ. People come to them for help only to find cruelty. They add to the suffering in the world because they falsely advertise hope only to turn around and rip it from the hands of those who need it most.

And, honestly, we have all been cold and calloused at some point in our lives. We all understand how difficult it is to care about what happens to others in a world where we are frantic about survival and security ourselves. Yet, we have an antidote for this lack of love, and it’s called many names: empathy, compassion, and mercy to name a few. Jesus summed this antidote up powerfully in this Rule of Life:

“In everything do to others as you would have them do to you, for this is the Law and the Prophets.” – Matthew 7:12

I have no patience with this talk of “toxic empathy,” “dangerous emotionalism,” and “misguided mercy” that we’ve heard making the rounds in the public square recently, especially among Christian folk. That sentiment has the same pitch and timbre as the Nazified German Christians whose writings I’ve been pouring over this Lenten season. The notion that one cannot be logical and empathetic at the same time is absurd. If we listen closely to the argumentation behind this sentiment what’s really at the bottom is this:

I cannot act in my own self-interest and be empathetic at the same time; therefore, empathy threatens what I want for myself and must be rejected. Furthermore, those holding up mirrors that show me what I’ve become since divorcing empathy from my life must be ridiculed and shunned so that I can maintain the illusion of being a loving person.

Here’s the bottom line – a loving person is as a loving person does. We can gather in our likeminded groups and bolster one another’s self-images amid cruelty with memes, podcasts, and rallies all we’d like but that won’t change the fact that if we lack empathy, refuse to extend mercy, mock and dismiss the vulnerable and weak, and withhold help when we had the power to give it, we are not loving people.

Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash

With shaking hands, I dialed the number to the FBI. Before I could talk myself out of this plan, a strong voice answered on the other side. It was a woman, and she was filled with compassion for me as she listened to my story, which I recalled through hot tears. She had a child in her life about the same age as mine who she loved very much, she said. Her empathy washed over me like baptismal waters.

“I’m going to find her,” she assured me. Her promise to act on my behalf was like a balm to my wounded heart.

And she did find my sister’s beloved child within a matter of hours. Her empathy for us led her to act and her actions on our behalf made her a hero.

Eventually, through a series of encounters with empathetic people who saw that our family needed help, I was able to deliver an envelope stuffed with evidence of our family’s plight to the presiding judge over the kids’ case. This judge convened court, chastised the social workers for their negligence and cruelty, and ordered them to deliver the children to us immediately or face contempt of court charges. His empathy moved him to act, just like it did Jesus.

“When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them and healed their sick.” – Matthew 14:13-14

Elon Musk recently said: “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy, the empathy exploit. They’re exploiting a bug in Western civilization, which is the empathy response.”

This seems to be the prevailing sentiment of our time, on both the extreme right and the extreme left and it’s against this sentiment that we must push back with all our might. Elon Musk wants to “save humanity” he says. But what he fails to realize is that there is no humanity without empathy. It is in fact our ability to be moved with compassion, even against our own best interests, that makes us human and not animals. Jesus demonstrated for us the best way to be human and he was empathetic to His core, even when it cost him everything.

He prayed from the cross: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” – Luke 23:34.

Yes, empathy is risky. Once we put ourselves in someone else’s shoes and we feel not only for them but with them, it draws us into a story not entirely our own. It may alter our lives in ways we wouldn’t have wanted, even. But what’s the alternative? We have a choice before us. We can be moved with compassion for the sake of others and leverage ourselves for the greater good of all (and not just ourselves). In this way we become a true beacon of hope for someone in need of help.

Or we can join ranks with those who have lost the plot when it comes to the purpose of humanity and withdraw our empathy from the weak and vulnerable. In this way we become a desert mirage for someone in need of help.

If you’re weary with all that is going on in the world and unsure of how to develop empathy when so many are condemning it, I leave you to meditate with me on these words from the great theologian Howard Thurman:

“God is making room in my heart for compassion: the awareness that where my life begins is where your life begins; the awareness that … your needs cannot be separated from … my needs; the awareness that the joys of my heart are never mine alone—nor are my sorrows. I struggle against the work of God in my heart; I want to be let alone. I want my boundaries to remain fixed, that I may be at rest. But even now, as I turn to [God] in the quietness, [God’s] work in me is ever the same. God is at work enlarging the boundaries of my heart.”

— Meditations of the Heart