Empathy: The psychological identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another.
If you never experience this – if you don’t have this ability, you may not be able to help it, but you are broken in a fairly significant way. In some, it can be a dangerous defect, freeing them to act in harmful ways towards others.
For the record, we’re all broken and “defective” in some way. Some are more broken than others. God loves all of us. He wants to heal and restore us. We can open ourselves to that or not. That’s kind of a choice to love. It’s a choice to be made into a loving person.
The first step, though, is to recognize your brokenness. You won’t open yourself to transformation unless you realize that you need it. You’ll stay the same and think it’s OK. Sometimes the same is fine. Many times, though, it’s far from fine. It’s not OK. I’ll slip this in here because I think it fits well – just because you are something or some way, doesn’t mean God made you that way, that He intended you to be that way.
Some of our ways (thoughts, desires, feelings, actions) need to change in a big way, and we need to put ourselves in a position for that to happen. Mostly we don’t. Mostly we just make up reasons why we’re fine the way we are. We’re not. And that’s not OK.
Grace, Peace, and Healing to all of us.
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