Sympathetic Ears

Apathy is when a person has no feelings about what’s going on around them; not caring about the world situations, other people, or brothers and sisters in Christ. About 50 years ago while in college, I wrote an essay titled, “America: the Red, White, and Blah.” That assignment shared the sentiment of 1980’s. It was an era of “drop out” and “being free” without concern for things that were happening.

I recently listened to a radio sermon based on the question of is a Christian being sympathetic to others. The speaker first gave the definition to sympathy, “Sharing similar feelings. Having an agreement of emotions. The ability to enter into another person’s mental state. Having a kinship of passion.” In the rest of the sermon, he separated feelings by delineating emotions of joy and sadness by asking whether it is easier to share another person’s joy or weeping.

He felt it was easier to weep with a brother or sister because we can easily recall times of sadness in our own lives: the loss of a parent, child, or a close friend. Grief is often a barely healed wound in our lives that can be freshly reopened. It is an emotion that we tend to cover up without allowing that wound to heal properly.

Sharing the happiness of a friend, relative, workmate, teammate, or a neighbor’s accomplishment or having them attain a physical reward of a new home, a new car, or a financial bonus at a job is more difficult than sharing their pain. When blessings appear, too often jealousness, envy, and covetousness creeps in and spoils sympathetic feelings that we may have had. Luke 12:15 admonishes us, “Take heed, and beware of covetousness for a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he posesseth.”

When we cannot rejoice with another person, we are saying to God that the blessings He gives are not enough and somehow He has not met our needs. Our Father knows the beginning from the end and gives His blessings to all. Matthew 5:45, “That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.”