Through their eyes

Empathy has a bad name in some churches, because it gets confused with approval. So let us settle that in one line before anything else.

Empathy is not agreement. It is understanding.

You concede nothing about what is true by understanding how somebody came to stand where they stand. Jesus sympathizes with our weaknesses without ever having sinned:

For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathise with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are, yet without sin. — Hebrews 4:15 (OTB)

Perfect understanding, zero compromise. That combination is possible, because he is the proof of it.

The discipline

Empathy is not a feeling you wait to have. It is an exercise you can do deliberately, on purpose, about a specific person, in about fifteen minutes.

Pick one real person off the list you made in chapter one. Not a type — a name. Then work through five questions honestly, in writing.

What are their hopes? What do they actually want their life to look like in ten years?

What are their fears? What keeps them up? What are they afraid is true about themselves?

What have their actual experiences with church and Christians been? Not what you assume. What you know, and where the gaps are.

What do they wish Christians understood about them? This one is the hinge, and answering it usually requires admitting you are guessing.

What would help them feel safe enough to open up? Be specific. What would have to be true of you?

What the exercise does

Most believers have never once done this for a non-religious friend, and it reliably changes the person doing it more than anything else in this class.

The “hostile atheist” turns out to be a grieving son whose church had no room for his questions when his father died. The “worldly” coworker turns out to be supporting two households and terrified of failing both. The relative who “doesn’t care about God” turns out to have cared enormously, once, and been humiliated for it.

And the moment you can see that, you stop needing a strategy. You know how to love him, because you finally know something about him.

Close it in prayer

End by praying for that person by name. Not for their conversion as an outcome you are managing — for the specific fear you just wrote down.

That prayer tends to finish the work the writing started.

Recite this

Empathy is not agreement. It is understanding — and it can be practiced.

Try it this week

Pick one name and work all five questions in writing. Where you are guessing, mark it as a guess. Then pray for that person by name, about the specific thing you wrote in the fears line.

I will map ________________ and pray for them by name, on ________________.