There Is No Sin in Empathy

I understand that I’ve been gone a while.

Don’t worry. It’s not your fault.

Your kind responses and encouraging words have been just what I needed to help me get through some of the things that I’ve been dealing with.

I want this blog to be about more than theology. I love theology, and I love discussing and debating it, but what makes us human is more interesting and important to me than theology.

I am a human. I have faults. 

If you’ve spent any amount of time with me, you won’t be surprised to hear that.

But my faults don’t define me. They don’t make me who I am.

What I often notice is that we can get things right time after time, but the one time we make a mistake or let something slip through the cracks, we can quickly become identified with that one mistake.

But, my friend, you are more than one mistake. You are the sum of more than your faults. It’s a hard lesson to learn, especially to those of us who grew up in a high-control environment where we weren’t allowed to make mistakes.

But if you hear me say one thing and only one thing, let it be this: You are beautiful.

Your humanity does not make you beautiful. You are beautiful because you are human.

You will fail.

You will hurt people you care about.

You will end your day lying in bed, letting the tears fall that you were too embarrassed to set free during the daytime.

But despite all of that, you are beautiful.

Let yourself cry. Let yourself fail. But then pick yourself up and move on. Learn from your mistakes.

There is a beauty in brokenness and sorrow that can’t quite be captured in words. But the more we experience those things, the more empathetic we can be towards other beautiful humans who are struggling.

And there is no sin in empathy.

I’ll end with a quote from a song by one of my favourite bands, Switchfoot:

“Time to take my own advice: Love alone is worth the fight.”