Tactic Of The Day: Overly Empathetic
We love because He first loved us. 1 John 4:19
Empathy, what an amazing emotion given to us by God. The ability to see that someone is struggling and to internalize that within ourselves and feel for the person we are seeing struggle. Empathy is an extension of love because it shows a part of our heart that we can understand and want someone to be helped. Is it possible to be too empathetic though? If so, where would this line be? Let’s break down biblically how to manage empathy while not being manipulated by the enemy and his army.
A core concept for empathy that the whole reason we would empathize is because someone is being treated outside the nature of God. Let me give you an example. If I am in the drive through at Mcdonalds and I see a homeless person on the coroner, it’s completely reasonable to be empathetic for that homeless person because they are outside of God’s nature, they are hungry and in hard times. Now picture you go and buy an extra meal for the person and when you take it over to the person they reject your offer because they really wanted cash or maybe even alcohol instead. How should someone emotionally manage this situation?
The tricky part about empathy is it can be manipulated by the army of evil in 2 ways. The army of evil can try and dull your empathetic nature so you don’t feel any empathy or they can try and make you feel so empathic it’s crippling. So how do we find the middle ground of what is healthy to feel?
The whole concept comes down to boundaries, let’s think back to our homeless person example. As you offered this food to the homeless man and he rejected the food because he wanted cash or something more nefarious this is where boundaries are needed. As that man used his free will to reject your offer of what is morally in line with God now he is in a position where you can not be of service any more. Why do I say this? Because biblically there are boundaries for love and how we manage relationships.
In John 15: 9-10 Jesus gives us a lesson on love. In verses 9-10 Jesus tells us “As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love.”
A key point to this passage is the fact that Jesus sets a standard for love. Jesus tells us to “abide in My love” and that if we keep his commandments we will do so. The definition of abide is to act or act in accordance with a rule. So we specifically have Jesus telling us that keeping His commandments will keep us in line with His love.
This is so critical for us to understand in our management of empathy because there are points in life where people start to go outside of our standards we need in relationships and if we keep being overly empathetic for people that were purposely hurting our relationship the enemy and army of evil can manipulate that emotion in your life.
As we look again back to the homeless man we have a standard for our love to help him. As we offer help there are things we can do and can not do to help. We can buy him food but we can not buy him alcohol. Now picture as the homeless man denied your food because he wanted money or alcohol and you were overly empathetic. It could lead to emotional turbulence for you or even for people they can break their standards to appease because they are fooled into being way too empathetic for a situation.
The enemy and his army will play with your empathy and try to get you to believe you’re the bad person because the homeless person wanted you to do something that was not in line with God’s moral standard. They will make you think and question your motives and try to get you to corrupt God’s standard for helping someone or ourselfs.
We should be able to say to the homeless man i will buy food but I will not buy you alcohol and that is the standard for our love. Now we have to stick by that standard and not waiver into something that could be potentially harmful to someone.
The biggest thing to watch when it comes to empathy is the fact that the enemy and army will try to get you to break the loving standard that you set. The enemy and his army want you to buy alcohol for the homeless man, the enemy and his army want the absolute worst for everyone involved and that is where we need to use Godly discernment through the written word to understand what God calls of us. John 15 gives us such an amazing layout of how to manage love and relationships and the most important thing is standards. If God loves us so much that our love is an outpouring of His love and God has standards we need to as well.
As you develop standards for empathic situations you now will understand when not to let your empathy take over for a fellow person but when to offer your help and what line to stop at. Learn these lines from the written word and you will have peace in your heart.