Thriving in God’s FamilyNäide

Seeing With Empathy’s Eyes

Joining a community has many benefits, but one of the potential dangers is that it becomes easier to label people as “us” and “them”—who’s in and who’s out. From the time we’re young children, we make sense of the world by putting people into groups: who’s in our family, and who’s in theirs; who lives in my neighborhood, and who doesn’t. But we don’t stop there.

Often, our understanding of groups we’re not part of is based on assumptions we’ve inherited or created for ourselves. Neuroscience suggests that our brains naturally take these “shortcuts” to keep us safe until we get to know people as individuals.

Of course, many people never get beyond this stage of using shortcuts, and their wrong assumptions harden into rules. Prejudice is an assumption or an opinion about someone, based on his or her membership in a particular group. Prejudices can be formed on the basis of religion, race, gender, geography, education, language, and more.

Just because our brains naturally make these judgments about people, it doesn’t mean we can’t or shouldn’t “override” them. The key is empathy, or the ability to understand and share the feelings of others. Sometimes it takes imagination to achieve this kind of understanding, especially with people we might otherwise label as “other.”

In 2 Corinthians 5, Paul issues his own invitation into this kind of deeper vision of others—one that aspires to reconciliation instead of dealing in prejudices. This way of seeing people requires imagination to look beyond what seems to be to what could be.

Paul says, “From now on we recognize no one by the flesh” (v. 16 NASB). Another translation reads, “We regard no one from a worldly point of view” (v. 16 NIV). Instead, we see everyone as Christ does—in His eyes, there is no misfit or “in crowd.” We don’t ignore our differences but learn how to see beyond them to who we’re becoming in Christ: “If anyone is in Christ, this person is a new creation; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come” (v. 17 NASB).

Reflect:

What groups or communities do you belong to? What kinds of prejudices have you encountered or witnessed in your community?

What kinds of prejudices have you witnessed in yourself?

Do you tend to regard other people as “new creations” in Christ (v. 17)? Do you look for what Jesus is doing in their lives now?

Try This:
The next time you are struggling with someone you think of as “other,” ask yourself:

• Who is this person? What history does this individual bring to your relationship or interaction?
• What might this person be going through at the current time? Imagine what it’s like to be him or her.
• What if the other person’s intentions are good? Consider the possibility that you both want what’s best.
• What is the Lord doing in both our lives that we could share with one another?