Quotes About Empathy

Whatever we are living through, we are in it together. It is not a contest between us. We are good by one another's goodness; we are sinners by one another's sin. In other words, both love and sin are highly contagious.

Jesus himself always went where the pain was. Wherever there was human suffering, Jesus was concerned about it now, and about its healing now.

God never intended most human beings to become philosophers or theologians, but God does want all humans to represent the very Sympathy and Empathy of God. And it's okay if it takes a while to get there.

What, then, does it mean to follow Jesus? I believe that we are invited to gaze upon the image of the crucified Jesus to soften our hearts toward all suffering, to help us see how we ourselves have been "bitten" by hatred and violence, and to know that God's heart has always been softened toward us.

If you want to be important, serve others. And if you want to be at the top, then slave to help everyone else. The

But God loves things by becoming them.

Two thousand years after Jesus lived here, Christians still have a hard time accepting his upside-down world, in which we are expected to work for justice on behalf of others but not to demand or expect it for ourselves (Matthew 5:6,10-12). This is one of the hardest challenges of Jesus' message. It demands an expanded heart and mind.

The point of the Christian life is not to distinguish oneself from the ungodly, but to stand in radical solidarity with everyone and everything else. This is the full, final, and intended effect of the Incarnation—symbolized by its finality in the cross, which is God's great act of solidarity instead of judgment.

The great commandment is not thou shalt be right. The great commandment is to be in love.

The more that we can put together, the more that we can "forgive" and allow, the more we can include and enjoy, the more we tend to be living in the Spirit.

but I do believe that the only way out of deep sadness is to go with it and through it.

Jesus touched and healed anybody who desired it and asked for it, and there were no other prerequisites for his healings.

And to be fully honest, I think your heart needs to be broken, and broken open, at least once to have a heart at all or to have a heart for others.

So long as we all cling to our prejudices and identify with our preconceived views and feelings, genuine human community is impossible. You have to get to the point where you can break free from your feelings. Otherwise in the end you won't have any feelings; they'll have you.

Human life is about more than building boundaries, protecting identities, creating tribes, and teaching impulse control.

Your heart needs to be broken—and broken open—at least once to discover what your heart means and to have a heart for others.

Wherever there was human suffering, Jesus was concerned about it now, and about its healing now. It is rather amazing and very sad that we pushed it all off into a future reward system for those who were "worthy"—as if any of us are.

The second insight about steps and stages is that from your own level of development, you can only stretch yourself to comprehend people just a bit beyond yourself.

Live simply so that others may simply live.

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.

We don't forgive people because they deserve it," she said. "We forgive them because we deserve it.

I must be losing patience with my fellow humans, Miss Beryl went on. Anymore I'm all for executing people who are mean to children. I used to favor just cutting off their feet. Now I want to rid the world of them completely. If this keeps up I'll be voting Republican soon.

God) seemed to know everything that was in her heart and to understand that nothing dwelt there that wasn't absolutely necessary to her survival.

Rub wiped his nose on his sleeve. "I just wisht—" "What?" Rub sighed. Where to begin? "That I'd be nicer to you?" He shrugged again, but this was the gist of it, Sully could tell. "I wish I would, too," he said, and for some reason this seemed to cheer Rub up.