Empathy, compassion beyond judgement

Many people struggle to understand how or why people do certain things.  Beside the intention of evil residing in some that would do the unthinkable, nobody is beyond making a significant error of judgement.  Nobody is beyond temptation.  Nobody is protected from the folly of human weakness.

Empathy for those who have made a mistake should not be hard.  It’s a kindness that may not make their situation better, but at least cruelty isn’t an added burden.

Empathy is a gift to both the one
receiving it and to the giver. 

Nobody likes to suffer, but there are lessons in it.  There are none more so apt here than what happens in a person who suffers for having made their own mistake.  To be kept in that place of suffering for the shame of having made a significant error of judgement seems cruel when we are there.  But it teaches us something far deeper than we can learn any other way.  It teaches us a vital lesson.  

We learn empathy deeply
through our own need of it.

There is a love of kindness and compassion that should rule all our hearts, but many have not yet learned such an empathy that exemplifies understanding. 

When we experience the deeper compassion of empathy when we feel we ought to be judged, it may be that the person who empathises has suffered and been taught deeply a love that is beyond judgement.

Judgement can be a sign
of a lack of understanding.

We must always ask ourselves when we are judging another person, “Have I never made an error worthy of judgement?”  Or, “Is there any chance I could make an error of judgement in the future?”  “Would I appreciate being judged?”  And, “What would I prefer to experience from others, empathy or judgement?”  

Empathy does not save a person from the consequences of their actions, but it does convey to a person that they are more valuable than what they do.  

The truth is we are all more valuable
than what we do or what we have.

Judgement is an error in itself. 
It reveals a lack of empathy. 

Those lonely nights lost to God saved me

In a season God found me, 

I felt incredibly lost to God. 

What seems a contradiction is actually a fact for so many I have had the privilege of journeying with.  As a pastor and counsellor, I’ve heard many recount exactly the same story.

What follows is an account of how God was found even in the plot of feeling utterly lost to God; 

… like God was completely silent.

I recall it like yesterday, whether in my dingy flat or in the slightly more well-appointed townhouse I subsequently moved into.  

Myriad experiences of feeling utterly alone,
zero Presence of the Lord with me. 

Yet in that dusky time, even as I questioned the very existence of God as far as I was concerned, there was something in me that could not let go.  Part of me had to believe in faith.

The more God seemed absent,

the more I sought His Presence.

Of course, what I describe here is much like the dark night of the soul, as St John of the Cross put it.

There was about this time a kind of non-living experience that forced me into the ethereal. 

Even as God’s Presence was void in my life on many such occasions, lonely nights where there was just me and my tears, there, in fact, in those moments, was the Presence of God.

I just could not see it at the time, and because I could not bear the idea that God was not present, I imagined He WAS present, praying as if He was, even though I could not feel His Presence. 

You may be forgiven for needing to reread this a few times.  It may make no sense to you.  But it makes all the sense in the world to me.

In those times when my soul was vanquished, and my spirit was tested beyond its apparent pathetic strength — because when it was tested, I really had nothing of my own — even as I had nothing left, God proved His Presence with me, even as He was absent to me. 

You may need to be in that position to understand what I’m saying.  And I trust that if you ever are in such a position you don’t run from being completely lost.  Refuse to let go of the hope that God is WITH you.

I found I needed to be completely lost

before I would truly need God to save me.

Amid the moment of our personal Gethsemane, we’re blessed in being reminded of this: just when the Father seemed to turn His face from Jesus, we cannot reconcile that reality without contrasting with it the reality of the resurrection. 

That’s right, we cannot contemplate the truth of Gethsemane and the Cross without also contemplating the Resurrection just a few days later.

Likewise, when God seems to turn His face from us, as He did with Jesus, He still has us (we just don’t know it at the time), and His pervasive resurrection plan is in full roll-out mode.

In these moments of absence,

the bridge of faith is absolutely vital.

No life comes without faith.

How do we hold on in times of God’s absence?

We hold onto a faith that says He is present.

We ignore every screaming distraction pushing us away from our pain, and we enter the journey of being in the lostness, for that is where God will surely meet us. 

We should not expect this 

will be a lovely experience. 

It’s the worst experience of our lives — levels deeper than we could ever previously conceive or imagine.

But that is where the true God meets us;

in the hell of our private Gethsemane.

But we don’t feel met at all. We just feel lonely and abandoned. That’s the paradox in being truly saved. We need to feel truly lost first.

God saves the desperate soul 

who is so lost only He can help them.

This is an article for you to save for when war breaks out — the war against the soul whose life has departed into the ether.  When your life as it was is lost.  As it was when it ceases to be.

You will know it when you land there. 

A living hell descends in grief outbound of loss.

Nothing will make sense. And nobody will seem to understand, but, praise God, some will try.  Humour them.  Trust them.  God will use them.  There is a ministry of God in the space where human help is benign. 

Trust those who have such humility 

to feel hopeless and helpless WITH you.

Yes, when you’re in these lost places,

it’s only those who cannot help you who do help you!

Fixed mindset versus Growth mindset

One thing my colleagues and I talk a lot about in our work is a fixed mindset versus a growth mindset.  It’s vital in the work we do in supporting the wellness of fire and emergency services workers.  We all have our battles, but when your role immerses you in trauma and stress it’s doubly necessary to build a bigger frame for recovery.  

Growth mindset principles work in all our lives.  Most lives involve trauma and stress.  Growth mindset principles are therefore vitalising in the quest for hope-filled recovery.  

But a growth mindset delivers 
a life of blessing in any context.

The simplest premise is this:

An empowered life is a life 
motivated to look within and learn. 

It is a GROWTH mindset. 

But a life that externalises everything—
blaming others, resisting ownership and agency— 
loses the only power available to them. 

A life capable of learning 
and turning from wrongdoing 
is a powerful life for itself 
and for the others 
who love and care for that life.

Ultimately, the happiest life 
is a life that considers others’ lives.

Selfish lives are confined to unhappiness.  Kicking against the goads of life isn’t enough.  They keep doing it.  And their misery is always extended to those who love and care for them.  Misery for one is misery for all.  

Such a fixed mindset won’t allow the person even the awareness to SEE let alone the insight to motivate the action implicit in a growth mindset.  The fixed mindset is a prison for those blind to life.

LIFE – ADVENTURE OR NOTHING

Helen Keller famously said, “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.  Security does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it.  Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than exposure.”

We are better off waking to the challenges 
the day ahead presents rather than bingeing Netflix.

Those with a growth mindset don’t resent or spurn the challenges—they see them and take them on.  Those with a fixed mindset either cannot see the challenges to be faced or they lazily avoid them or fearfully refuse to take them on. 

The only difference between both perceptions is perception itself—honestly, heaven or hell.  Seriously, for simply a shift in core attitude YOU and I CHOOSE whether we will live a life of heaven or hell.

Those with a fixed mindset will see that a growth mindset requires continuous ‘work’, and it does.  But that’s all it requires—a work ethic.  Those with a growth mindset look at those with a fixed mindset and say to themselves, “This isn’t hard, all I choose to do is face reality and work the challenges, all in the knowledge that every challenge is designed to be overcome.”

To those with a fixed mindset, challenges are a lamentable and despicable part of life that make life out as a painful, terrible existence, at times not worth living.  But those of the growth mindset have joy in ALL their work—they’ve transcended all fear of work.  

When work is a joy, rest is bliss.
Life for the worker is all upside.

CHANGING WHAT CAN BE CHANGED, ACCEPTING WHAT CAN’T

The only challenge that is insurmountable for those with a growth mindset is the existence of people with the fixed mindset who refuse to grow.  

Those with a growth mindset are daunted by many things without being resigned to despair, but those fixed in a fixed mindset are beyond them.

The only resolution for such situations where horses are led to water but refuse to drink is the common acceptance that we all reap what we sow.  Justice flows down as we all end up accounting for our overall behaviour in the final analysis.

Nobody gets away with reprehensible behaviour.
But a good life lived delivers an eternal legacy.

The growth mindset delivers to the person enrolled 
in its wisdom a peace that is personal and communal.

Everyone benefits when a life is turned toward learning, 
for those who continue to turn and learn are a blessing.

Why would we not want to be a blessing in our life?
The power to bless lives and be blessed because of it.