WEEKLY COMMENTARY: The Building of Empathy

I met a new neighbor the other day.  He was walking his dog, and the friendly dog initiated a conversation between me and my new neighbor.  He, his wife and their two kids were from Ohio, and he has a new job in New York City.

We seemed to have a few things in common, and then he asked me if there might be a Presbyterian Church in Summit.  I did not need to think twice ---- I told him I am a member of the Central Presbyterian Church.  It turned out that CPC is about a 10-minute walk from his house.  I told him we have an active Sunday School and we would welcome him, his wife and their two kids.

Unexpectedly, he asked me to say more about the Sunday School.  His children are ages 10 and 13, so he was looking for more than just the memorization of some Bible stories.  I knew that was a good question, but I didn't really know the answer.  I said I would get more information and report back.

Several days later, I had a chance to visit with Rev. Deborah Huggins, Associate Pastor at Central Church, who directs the church programs for our youth.  Pastor Deborah confirmed that the Parables of Jesus and Bible stories are used in teaching our younger grades, but that our church Sunday School has an equally important second dimension, especially for older children.

"We are trying to develop a keen sense of empathy in each child," she said. "While the word 'empathy' is not to be found in the Bible, the thought was expressed repeatedly by Jesus and his Disciples ---- it is all about our concern for others.  Our Sunday School programs nurture kids in the importance of caring about other people.  We believe that healthy empathy is when we give of ourselves to others, and  do it from the heart."

I realized I did not know much about empathy, so I did a little research.  I learned that people who seem deficient in empathy, are apt to be aggressive, self-focused, narcissistic, always thinking about what's in it for them and never responding to the needs of others.  The research I read told me that we are each born with a given number of neurons that participate in an empathetic response.  But, whether this potential to care appropriately for others is realized or is undermined, largely will be molded by early-life experiences, starting at birth and continuing throughout childhood.

I asked Pastor Deborah, how  a healthy degree of empathy can be instilled in a child?  "Empathy is a mutable trait," she said, "so it can be taught.  We're all born with a certain potential, but it can be dramatically upgraded or downgraded depending upon environmental factors, especially by the examples set by a child's caregivers."  Pastor Deborah said she has vivid memories of her parents taking turkeys before Thanksgiving to the homes of people who had almost nothing.  Or, a parent might say to the family, "Mrs. Jones just came home from the hospital.  Let's take her some soup."  "Our kids tend to focus on what they don't have," she said, "witnessing such acts of care  exposes children to people who have so much less, and it gives the gift of being a giver." 

Pastor Deborah had another important thought.  Our Sunday School teachers know that classroom behavior like sharing, helping and comforting others, builds empathetic behavior in children.  It guides them into the inner world of feelings ---- their own and those of others.

I did some further research on the Sunday School projects of our church, aimed at teaching empathy.  Here are a few examples of our empathy-building youth projects. Two weeks before Christmas, very young Sunday School students wrapped simple gifts and colored-in greeting cards for 50 residents of an old folks home. On other occasions, some of our teenage youth go on inner-city"Mid-Night Runs" several times,,having earlier prepared sandwiches and other food snacks for distribution on particular urban street sidewalks.  College-age students join in an annual one-week Mission Trip to an impoverished or storm-damaged location to help restore daily life for the residents by providing home repairs and encouragement.  Sometimes, the project is merely to make sandwiches for a subsequent adult distribution run to an impoverished urban area, like places in Newark or New York City ---- but the youths will have joined together to make several hundred sandwiches each time. 

I was glad to be able to return to my new neighbor and report the organized effort to build empathy in our Sunday School classes, as reported to me by Pastor Deborah.  Best of all, it reminded me of the many ways our church reinforces empathy in its adult members, with many programs of outreach to the homeless and the hungry in the Summit community and beyond.

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These thoughts are brought to you by CPC's Adult Spiritual Development Team, hoping to encourage some spiritual growth for you this Spring.

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WEEKLY COMMENTARY: When God Seems to Not Answer Our Prayers ----- Do We Stop Praying?

Many people agonize over the issue of unanswered prayers.  I know that for some people, past prayers unanswered form a barrier that blocks any desire to keep company with God.  What kind of companion, who has the power to save a life or heal a disease, would sit on the sidelines despite urgent pleas for help?  In a sense, every war, every epidemic or drought, every premature death, each birth defect, seems to contradict the teasing sense that prayer can resolve it.

I had reason to really think about this a while back when a neighborhood family was in crisis.  Their 14-year-old daughter had been diagnosed with a brain tumor.  We all prayed for the child's recovery, or at least for some kind of remission.  It was not to be.  In two short months the child was gone.  Her mother, Kate, was particularly swept up in grief, and I attempted to help her work through it.  She wanted to understand why her fervent prayers had gone unanswered.

I told Kate that even after confessing in our prayers things we have done wrong and feel guilty about, and asking God's forgiveness, our prayers do not work according to a fixed formula.  It is not ---- get your life in order, then say the right words, and the desired result will come.  If that were true, Jesus would never gone to Golgotha and the Cross.  Between the two questions: "Does God answer prayers?" and "Will God grant my specific prayer for this sick child or for this particular injustice?" lies a great deal of mystery.

I said to Kate that God is not a jolly grandfather who satisfies our every desire.  Certainly for the parents who have lost a child, their wish would have been for the child to live.  They would have pleaded with God, but seemingly the request was denied.

Nor is God, I told Kate, a calculating merchant who withholds his goods until we produce enough good works or faith, to buy His help.  God does not hand out merit pay.

Then I suggested to Kate that Pastor David Mains had a handy checklist for making sure our prayers initially are on target:

          1.) What do I really want?  Am I being specific, or am I just rambling about nothing in

                    particular?

          2.) Can God grant this request?  Or, is it against God's nature to do so?  (Like a

                    prayer that I will win the lottery.)

          3.) Have I done my part?  Or, am I praying to lose weight when I haven't dieted?

          4.) How good is my relationship with God?  Are we on speaking terms?

          5.) Do I really want my prayer answered?  What would happen if I actually got that

                    girlfriend back? 

Remember, I said to Kate, we have been taught a human's rationale for successful prayer, and God may have His own ideas.

I pointed out to Kate that some prayers go unanswered because they are simply frivolous.  But that clearly her prayers had not been of this type.  I was talking about a prayer like: "Lord, please give us a sunny day for the soccer match."  This trivializes prayer, especially when local farmers may at the same time be prying for rain.  A last-ditch plea: "Help me get an 'A' on the next test," will likely not succeed if the pray-er has not studied.  Likewise, a chain-smoker has no right to pray, "Protect me from lung cancer."

Kate agreed that my examples of  frivolous unanswered prayers were actually self-serving and not in accordance with God's nature.  That they put the focus on our things, not of the things of God.

We talked about some prayers being really impossible to answer, although prayers for Kate's daughter did not seem to fit here.  If a dozen people pray to get the same job, eleven must ultimately come to terms with their unanswered prayer.  And if two "Christian" nations wage war against each other, citizen prayers on the losing side would not have been answered to the satisfaction of the person praying.

What would happen if God granted the wish in EVERY prayer?  If you think about it, in effect God would be abdicating.  He would be turning over to us all the world's problems to solve.  History shows how we have handled the limited power already granted to us.  We have fought wars, committed genocide, fouled the air, destroyed the forests, established unjust political systems, allowed concentrated pockets of superfluous wealth and grinding poverty.  What if God gave us automatic access to supernatural power by granting all of our prayers?  What further havoc might we produce?

But often there is no logical explanation of unanswered prayer.  Author Philip Yancey has given much thought and writing to the nature of prayer.  He says we must place our faith in a God who has yet to fulfill the promise that good will overcome evil, and that God's purposes will, in the end, prevail.  To cling to that belief, he says, may represent the ultimate rationalization ------ or the ultimate act of faith.

Yancey also says that often we may be looking in the wrong places for answers to our prayers.  Yancey suggests that perhaps the real purpose of prayer is to change US ----- change how we see our lives, how we relate to others, and how we see our future.  And, importantly, that this occurs gradually and without much drama.  He believes that the catalyst for our spiritual growth is our prayer journey, not merely whether we receive from God what is asked for in each of our prayers.

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These thoughts are brought to you by CPC's Adult Spiritual Development Team, hoping to encourage you to pursue some personal spiritual growth this Spring at CPC.

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WEEKLY COMMENTARY: How Much Pride Is Too Much Pride?

When I was a young boy, my dad often told me always to do things well --- in the classroom, on the sports field, and among my friends.

Time passed, and I realized that there were certain specific activities and classroom subjects where I did excel, at least somewhat.  Perhaps most of us have had that experience.

At some point, someone asked me if I was not proud of what I could do well.   I had not thought about that.  But. YES, I was proud of myself for exceeding my previous level of achievement, and for doing a few things better than my peers.  Now, the notion of PRIDE had been brought into my awareness without any explanation of what it involved.

Being PROUD of myself gave me a warm feeling of success, and the desire to work harder to perfect whatever task I had undertaken.  It did not seem to have any limits ---- it appeared to depend only on what   I  could achieve if I put my mind to it.

Years later, I noticed that there were others around me who were PROUD ---- proud of what they had accomplished, or were then accomplishing.  But I also saw that many of them seemed arrogant and conceited.  I realized that this virtue called "PRIDE" had a down-side if carried too far.

Why hadn't Dad warned me about this?!!

I puzzled over how to find the right balance for my PRIDE.  Some  degree of PRIDE certainly gives us a motivation to excel.  How much PRIDE is too much pride?  I finally decided that PRIDE-under-control might have some net value.

Apparently, people get into difficulty with their PRIDE if they let it excessively inflate the sense of their own value.  In other words, as St. Augustine put it: "The love of one's own excellence."  Thus, the opposite of PRIDE would be either humility or guilt.  If we have a healthy sense of PRIDE, it seems to rest somewhere between humility and our unquestioned love of our own excellence.

The Bible says God has made us capable of achievement, but that there is an attitude that arises naturally with achievement "that is not of the Father, but of the world."  To have victory over PRIDE when we excel, but not give a place to the sinful worldly attitude of PRIDE,  suggests the Bible, is helped if we think of ourselves as being STEWARDs of gifts given to us by God.  In our search for "success," the Bible seems to say, it is our mental attitude in the eyes of others that counts.  Rather than merely the attainment of "success" itself, it is the attitude of our heart toward that acquisition that matters.  Can we avoid the PRIDE of the secular life and live in a more humble reliance on God, with more thankfulness to God, for His many gifts to us, which we simply use to achieve our "success".

But, if we were to suppress some of our PRIDE as being too much of a good thing, would we lose too much of the emotional drive that would have facilitated our attaining "success"?  Would we lose at least some of the pleasant, exhilarating emotion that energizes us positively in meeting personal goals?

The awful irony is that the very vigor with which we suppress PRIDE in ourselves will induce a hidden PRIDE in that very effort.  Will we not be proud of our attempts to get rid of PRIDE?  Is it ever possible to fully escape the "PRIDES of life"?

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These thoughts are brought to you by CPC's Adult Spiritual Development Team, hoping to encourage some spiritual growth in you this Spring.

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WEEKLY COMMENTARY: The Rich Young Man

As we progress from childhood through adulthood, we may see conflicts between the values our culture has taught us as being "good", and the values required by Jesus.  Here is a Bible parable (Mark 10: 17 - 26) which dramatizes that dilemma.

          "As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his

           knees before him.  "Good teacher," he asked, "what must I do to

           inherit eternal life?"

          "Why do you call me good?" Jesus answered.  "No one is good ---- 

           except God alone.  You know the commandments: 'Do not murder,

           do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false testimony, do

           not defraud, honor your father and mother.' "

          "Teacher," he declared, "all these I have kept since I was a boy."

          "Jesus looked at him and loved him.  "One thing you lack," he said.

            "Go, sell everything you have and give it to the poor, and you will have

            treasure in heaven.  Then come, follow me."

            At this the man's face fell.  He went away sad, because he had great

            wealth.

             Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, "How hard it is for the 

             rich to enter the kingdom of God!"

             The disciples were amazed at his words.  But Jesus said again, 

             "Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God!  It is easier for a 

              camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter

              the kingdom of God."

              The disciples were even more amazed, and said to each other, "Who

              then can be saved?" 

How do you feel about the rich young man?

    ---- sorry for him --- he couldn't help it that he was rich.

    ---- disappointed in him --- he walked away from God.

    ---- upset --- Jesus shouldn't have been so hard on him.

    ---- frustrated --- do I have to give up everything I have, too?

Was the rich young man's reluctance to surrender his wealth, simply blind selfishness on his part?  Or, was it that his wealth was a key part of his identity as a person?  Had the rich young man's secular culture taught him from his earliest days that competition is to be extolled, that life is a place where male warriors and traders go out and compete for wealth and power?  Had the culture not taught him that those who end up with the most wealth and/or power are the "best"?  

The rich young man may have adopted the latter model, and he seems to have reaped its monetary rewards, wherein self-interest and independence are celebrated.  Probably, he did not expect Jesus to tell him the opposite of the values his cultural upbringing had taught him.

Suppose I have a financially-dependent wife and children, elderly parents or other dependents ------- does Jesus want me to disregard their future by no longer being able to support them?  Or, somewhere between giving away my last cent, and keeping all my wealth ---- is there a "Sweet Spot" that satisfies Jesus' desire to totally obstruct my natural selfish instincts that cause me to want to use my wealth only as it pleases my ego?

              (Parable continued:  Mark 17 - 31)

              "Jesus looked at them and said, "With man this is impossible, but 

               not with God; all things are possible with God."

               "Peter said to him, "We have  left everything to follow you!"

               "I tell you the truth," Jesus replied, "no one who has left home or

                brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me

                and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this

                present age (homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields

                ----- and with them, persecutions) and in the age to come, eternal

                life.  But many who are first will be last, and the last first."

What would you do if Jesus asked you to sell everything you have and give the proceeds to the poor?

        --- Have my hearing checked

        --- Compute my net worth and think about it

        --- Hold a garage sale

        --- Give more to church

        --- Other: ______________________

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These thoughts are brought to you by CPC's Adult Spiritual Development Team, hoping to encourage in you some spiritual growth this winter. 

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