Empathy and Evangelism

Author: Michael Gott

Look at Jesus and see the profound empathy He had for people.  He was a joyful man, but He wept!  Why?  Because of a consuming identification with people and their life situations.  He was deeply touched and filled with anguish and compassion at the sight of helpless, purposeless people.  They were lost and totally unaware of where they were headed.  The Bible literally says “He was moved in His guts.”  That’s how profoundly and deeply He felt, and that’s what Matthew 9:36 actually says.

Take the lepers who came to Him.  He did with them the incredible; He touched the untouchables!  He really loved Lazarus, and so He stood and openly wept at his tomb without embarrassment—we see His touch and His tears!

People saw this.  They saw that they as people mattered to Him, and they were attracted to Him because of what they knew about Him—He cared for them, He understood them, and nothing mattered more!  They felt of value and worth to Jesus.

And here we blush with remorse and bow in repentance.  The modern evangelist often is missing the mark.  It is hardly an exaggeration to say that often the evangelist of today is too preoccupied with his message, his delivery, and his persona to seriously bother too much about some insignificant individual.  And if he does give this person time, it will likely be short and perfunctory.
 
We must demand more of ourselves—let every evangelist feel the hurt and the heartbeat of common people.  We must bother about the feelings and the heart-cries of ordinary people on the fringe of the Faith.  We must never cease to care.

Empathy includes, as with Jesus, touch and tears.  God have mercy on evangelists who keep themselves in splendid separation from the common crowd.  Let us never display superiority and indicate in the arena of life that we talk so readily and respond from the heart so rarely.  Let there be nothing of insensitivity and of superiority.  Let us simply be incapable of snubbing people—let us get among them.

In a dull, gray world people long for sunshine, and in a cold, impersonal world people long for a person of warm and profound empathy, people like Jesus!

There are times when we must love people with an un-judging, accepting spirit.  We do not always have to preach first or give a gospel tract at first sight!  Why?  Because some people do not care what we believe until they believe we care!  People saw in Jesus a friendliness.  He really loved people.  They saw grace; He loved them in spite of the way they were.  He was unshockable.  His was a holiness that was both attractive and magnetic.

If the incarnation of Jesus (as you know, God becoming human flesh) means anything, it means passionate, heart-direct evangelism that stoops to conquer with evangelistic empathy and washes feet to demonstrate it.

We have boxed the living Jesus into the pulpit and restricted Him to the raised platform of the worship center.  We verbally throw the gospel at people.  We have succumbed to the image of the combative, confrontational evangelist rather than the weeping, blood-sweating, and caring soul winner.  We are wrong!
 
Here is the truth:  Millions around us have never experienced love without strong strings attached.  They have never been loved for themselves, warts and all—loved unconditionally.  If they were, from them would come a flood of gratitude.  There would be both a breakthrough and a breaking forth.  Swinging wide open would be the doors of their hearts.  Mignon McLaughlin felt the pulse of the human heart and said, “No one has ever loved anyone the way we ourselves want to be loved.”

If evangelists are the living proof of the resurrection of Jesus, we will never have to argue that He arose from the dead.  After all, we would be the evidence!  Is it not the dynamic partnership with the Lord Jesus, gloriously risen from the dead and alive, that answers questions before they are even asked?  So, the human touch becomes the heavenly touch.  One simple loving act and witness with that as the background is worth a thousand evangelistic sermons, especially sermons preached in an atmosphere of slurpy-sentimentalism, cold logic, and hot argument—but those are the only weapons we have if we have established no empathy!

Empathy and evangelism seen in Jesus transformed the household of Jairus, it revolutionized beggars like Bartimaeus as well as ruthless and crooked people like Zacchaeus and women who had spent a lifetime hopping from one man to another, like the woman at the well.

Each one of these people saw in Him an attractiveness.  He was God’s anointed, but He was a wonderful person to be around.  No wonder Jesus was surrounded by the dusty crowds with eyes that longed for living hope.  Empathy is always at the heart of effective evangelism.
 
Jesus touched the people with heartwarming empathy.  He found the torn places and the broken places in people’s lives.  He understood.  He cared, and He suffered with them.  It was that realization that brought the defeated, the dogged, and the downtrodden to Him.  Jesus, by His very person, said, “I take sinners and make saints.  I take life’s mistakes and make them God’s miracles.”

A great deal of our evangelism is a total failure because it lacks empathy, and therefore it does not touch the heart.  We can help change that, but to change , we will have to come to a place that we seek God’s face for it.  Seek for what?  The miracle of really caring—the Jesus kind of empathy:  holy, warm, friendly, joyful, compassionate.  Empathy, it is essential if we are to be effective as evangelists.

Jesus-style empathy produces kindness, the type of kindness that causes us to love people more than they deserve!  Jesus, may I remind us, always looked at the need and never at the cause of the problem.  You and I often fail miserably at that point.

Mother Teresa was right, “If you judge people, you have no time to love them.”

The Scottish Bible commentator William Barclay said, “In the time we have it is surely our duty to do all the good we can to all the people we can in all the ways we can.”

Thinking with compassion creates action.  Acting with compassion creates hope.  Hope in action creates love.  Love in action creates heaven!
 
Here is the point—if our lives do not attract people, our music or our message won’t either, no matter how skillful we present it.  If we are going to move out in effective evangelism, it really has to flow from the inner fountains of love and empathy.  All our evangelism must pass under the spotlight of that scrutiny.

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