by Kamil Malak

My nephew, who is one and a half years old, has outstanding joy in wearing the shoes of any older member of the family. It’s so funny to watch him face the challenge of walking steadily while wearing boat-like footwear around his tiny feet, without falling. At the same time, it’s sad to observe how many grown-ups don’t know – or more accurately, don’t want to know – how to place themselves in other people’s shoes!

During the past couple of years, I faced a harsh situation of injustice towards me, but I thought to myself that this is life and I must move forward, and I did. However, this wasn’t the most difficult part of the story; I also came to realize that some people, who I thought were friends, weren’t able to feel the pain I was going through. They struggled to recognize the depth of the hurt I was experiencing, and this wounded me more than the injustice itself.  People around me would ask me to get over it, trust God, and let go. I did want to do all that to feel better; but not being seen by others was hard.

Recently, we’ve heard a lot about emotional intelligence (EQ), and one of its most important factors is empathy. I have struggled to understand how people can better show empathy to each other. Many think that they can show empathy simply by feeling sad or sorry for others. However, empathy is the ability to put oneself in the shoes of another, meaning the willingness to see the world from another person’s perspective and respond with understanding and compassion. From experience, I have learned that not sharing your feeling of empathy with others is equivalent to not being empathetic at all, because the other person needs to know that someone is feeling with him/her. It’s probably the easiest to show empathy when you’ve passed through a similar situation as the other, but real empathy (and high EQ) is the ability to feel the hurt, pain, joy, or injustice of others even without having passed through similar experiences.

As I was thinking and praying about this topic, a specific story from the Bible kept on coming up, and I felt that I could learn a lot from how Jesus shows empathy towards others. It is the story of how Jesus dealt with the woman who had a discharge of blood for twelve years (Mark 5). I’ve known the story my whole life, but something struck me different this time. This woman, who was unseen and considered unclean, was healed immediately just by touching Jesus’ garment. The story could have ended here, but it didn’t. The woman could have gone home excited and happy that she was no longer bleeding due to an extraordinary miracle, but that wasn’t the first thing that happened. Although Jesus was heading to heal Jairus’ daughter, and that was urgent enough, he stopped, turned around, and showed the woman that he cared. Again, keep in mind that he did all that AFTER the miracle had already happened! He showed her empathy: he knew exactly what she was feeling and that it was more than just a need to be healed; it was a need to be seen and have peace.

Nowadays, we are all so busy and overwhelmed with superfluous deadlines that sometimes we feel we don’t have time to care for and feel with others; in other words, we don’t have time to put ourselves in other people’s shoes. As I reflected on these lessons from Jesus, I began to think about my own vocation as an educator. Classrooms are filled with people carrying unseen burdens, and we get a lot of valid excuses from students to submit late assignments, but most of the time, our “professionalism” and work “protocols” don’t give us the luxury of feeling for the students and listening to their hurt…showing them that we care. I believe that humans and their feelings are more important than deadlines, and that’s why I thought of a heart-centered approach in education that focuses on being emotionally intelligent while maintaining professionalism. This approach can be summarized using the acronym ABTS, reminding us of what we should do whenever we are faced with a situation that must deal with the feelings/emotions of others:

A → Reminds us to Ask for Wisdom! It is very important to remember that we should seek the Lord in prayer and ask him for wisdom in dealing with and responding to others, in order to discern the core underlying issues, because God “gives to all generously and without reproach” (James 1:5). However, it is important to mention that wisdom in this case is inseparable from justice. An educator has to be wise, but at the same time just, to maintain academic integrity while extending grace.

B  → Tells us that we should sometimes give the Benefit of the Doubt to those around us and assume the best about their intentions. This alone is not enough without the wisdom that we asked from the Lord first. Knowing that we are to love our neighbors, how much more are we to love our students, and Paul’s words about love echo in our ears again that love “always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres …” (1 Corinthians 13).

T → Trust God, the Trinity! It’s important in such situations not to “lean on (our) own understanding”, but to trust God that he will provide the thoughts, feelings, and words we need when listening and deciding how to reply to others, because “he will make (our) paths straight” (Proverbs 3:5-6).

S → Show Empathy! Being empathetic and feeling for others is one thing but showing that empathy to them is another thing. It’s not enough to “talk the talk”; we should also “walk the walk.” In his letter to Romans, Paul urges believers to “rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.” (Romans 12:15).

In conclusion, and just as Jesus stopped for a woman whom everyone else overlooked, may we learn to slow down, notice those around us, and show them that they are seen, valued, and loved.

Kamil Aquila Malak is a teacher at the Arab Baptist Theological Seminary. He is also a Physics teacher and the Science Coordinator at the National Protestant College-Kfarchima.