What to Do When the Pain of Others Overwhelms You

By: Andrea Lee

Toxic empathy is disorienting. On one occasion, when my anguish over the suffering of others flooded out to a friend, she said, “Who died and gave you a Junior God badge?”

Gulp.

My emotional response to suffering in the lives of other people had unmoored me from biblical bearings. I was adrift in a sea of sorrow and was overwhelmed. Empathy is a good gift that can go terribly wrong: people with sensitive consciences, vivid imaginations, and caring hearts are often plunged from compassion to poisonous despair by the suffering of others. How does this happen and what can we do about it?

First, a word of clarification: this article is meant to give hope and balance to those who want to respond to suffering in a Christ-like way by highlighting a danger of empathy. In calling attention to this danger, I don’t want to minimize the calling believers have to demonstrate incredible compassion, patience, love, and wisdom to those who are struggling. We can be heartbroken for the suffering of others while praying with hope and clinging to the truth that God’s grace is sufficient for every trial.

Now, let’s cover some definitions and descriptions. According to the Cambridge Dictionary, empathy is “the ability to share someone else’s feelings or experiences by imagining what it would be like to be in that person’s situation.”[1] It’s as if you are experiencing the pain of another person yourself.[2] This idea of sharing the pain of another is certainly a biblical concept, although the Bible uses words like “compassion” and “sympathy.” Sympathy is the feeling of pity and grief for the plight of another, while compassion is being moved to action and kindness in order to relieve suffering. Jesus powerfully embodied heartfelt action in the face of pain. Jesus’ willingness to feel our weaknesses (Heb. 4:15) and His sorrow for our condition (Heb. 2:18) moved Him to act in kindness to relieve our greatest problem (Eph. 2:4).

The New Testament clearly charges followers of Christ to be tenderhearted. We are to “weep with those who weep” (Rom. 12:15) and to “put on…compassionate hearts and kindness” (Col. 3:12). We have the example and power of Jesus, who is full of compassion and mercy (Matt. 9:36; 15:32). The conclusion we might draw is that the temptation for most believers is to care too little, not too much, when others suffer. But for some people, caring deeply takes them to a place of paralyzing despair.

What Does This Despair Feel Like?

When our empathy becomes suffocating, the pain is all we feel. We only see horror and brokenness in the world. As Joe Rigney, Professor at Bethlehem Bible says, destructive empathy is “a total immersion into the pain, sorrow, and suffering of the afflicted.” [3] There is a subtle twist in our thinking: “The more I’m overwhelmed by your pain, the more I really care,” or, “Unless I am undone by your suffering, I must not be compassionate.” Or even more insidious, “I refuse to experience peace or joy (the fruit of the Spirit) while you are suffering.”

To be clear, empathy is not the problem. The problem is the belief that we are best representing God by being overwhelmed by suffering. We are to “weep with those who weep” (Rom. 12:15) and “rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer” (Rom. 12:12). When we can’t, our emotions may be calling the shots more than our faith. Here’s the issue in a nutshell: “When we overidentify with our emotions, we begin to distort our perspective on reality.”[4] So instead of letting pain take over our entire spiritual landscape, we must keep our spiritual footing. Only by keeping the big picture in view can we help our hurting friends.

How Do We Keep Our Spiritual Footing in the Face of Suffering?

Let’s look at Paul’s experience in Romans 9. The Apostle is remarkably open about his deep empathy: he has “great sorrow and unceasing anguish” in his heart. He even wishes that he could exchange places with his Jewish brothers (Rom. 9:3). This is compassion, sympathy, and empathy of the highest order. Other people’s rebellion and rejection of God troubled him immensely. And yet, it did not immobilize him. Paul keeps God’s Word, God’s mercy, and God’s sovereignty firmly in view. By doing so, he is able to maintain his spiritual equilibrium in the flood of anguish he experiences.

God’s Word 

Romans 9:6 says, “But it is not as though the word of God has failed.” Paul is addressing what some people thought to be God’s failure to keep the promises He made to Israel. These people didn’t realize that the children of God are children of the promise, not children of the flesh (physical descendants of Abraham). The point for those struggling with toxic empathy is this: the aching in Paul’s heart did not cause him to minimize or sideline God’s Word. Paul refuses to let his grief claim his soul.[5] He sees God’s glory and purposes as bigger than the pain of sin and suffering, even when those he cares about deeply are the ones hurting.

God’s Mercy 

Paul goes on to talk about a difficult truth in Romans 9:6-12: God chooses not according to works, but because of His sovereign will. Paul proclaims how this truth highlights God’s mercy. In the swirl of empathic emotion, we are tempted to forget that God is merciful and just. Paul seems to shout, “What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God’s part? By no means!” (Rom. 9:14). The paralyzing effect of toxic empathy often starts here. Without realizing it, we descend into a fog that insists God isn’t doing a very good job. This is where my friend’s quip about the Junior God badge comes in.

When we are wearing this badge, we think, “I could run the world better…This suffering is unbearable…It’s all up to me to fix this…It’s my responsibility to make this better NOW…How could a good God let this happen? How can I live in a world where things like this can happen?” We feel ready to cast judgment on the way God is running the world because the suffering overwhelms us. But God is not unjust! The Judge of all the Earth will do what is right (Gen. 18:25). In our turmoil, we forget that pain and suffering serve God’s glorious purposes. We forget that followers of Christ do not get what they deserve. (These are truths you must remember to keep your spiritual footing, not things you proclaim to your hurting friend.)

God’s Sovereignty

In his contemplation of the worst suffering a human can face (an eternity apart from God), Paul clings to God’s sovereignty. The words still shock my sensibilities when I read them: “But who are you, O Man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, ‘Why have you made me like this?’ Has the potter no right over the clay?” (Rom. 9:20-21). Acknowledging God’s sovereignty will actually deepen our compassion, not lessen it, while at the same time keeping us focused on God’s perfect purposes. Toxic empathy says, “I am overcome by the suffering of others.” Godly empathy says, “I am burdened, and my heart is deeply affected by the trials of others. But God is so powerful that He uses even suffering to accomplish His glorious purposes. I can trust Him—with myself and with those near me.”

Ultimately, the emotions generated by empathy are meant to move us. We must run to the only One strong enough to carry the pain. Isaiah 53:3b calls our Savior “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief” who “surely bore our griefs and carried our sorrows” (Isa. 53:4). God Himself, in Jesus Christ, took on the pain and punishment we deserve for being rebels to His Kingship. We must cast our burdens (including the burden of our pain for others) onto the Lord Jesus, lest we sink beneath those burdens.

We must also move toward others in their pain. If we don’t know how to handle the deep emotions of empathy, we may distance ourselves from suffering. This is precisely the opposite response that Jesus intends His followers to have. We are to move toward others, not because we are sufficient to remedy their pain, but because we know the Savior can comfort them.

We can rest in the place Paul found his peace—in worship. “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be glory forever” (Rom. 11:33, 36).

Question for Reflection

What passages help you to keep your spiritual footing in the face of suffering?

[1] Cambridge University Press, “Empathy,” https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/empathy, accessed January 7, 2020.

[2] Merriam Webster, “Empathy,” https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/empathy, accessed January 6, 2020.

[3] Joe Rigney, “The Enticing Sin of Empathy,” Desiring God,  https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/the-enticing-sin-of-empathy, accessed January 6, 2020.

[4] Alasdair Groves and Winston Smith, Untangling Emotions (Wheaton: Crossway, 2019), 140.

[5] Ibid., 141.

About the Author

Andrea Lee serves as a biblical counselor for women at Mount Vernon Baptist Church in Atlanta, GA. She has a Masters of Arts in Biblical Counseling from The Masters University. Andrea has been married to her husband, Darien, since 2006.

Posted at: https://www.biblicalcounselingcoalition.org/2020/02/10/what-to-do-when-the-pain-of-others-overwhelms-you/

Seeing the People in Front of You

Darby Strickland

As I read the gospels, I am struck by how attuned Jesus is to the people around him. Many encounters start with the simple introduction of who he sees.

• Jesus sees Andrew and Peter following him, and he engages their inquiring hearts (John 1:38).

• Jesus sees Nathanael and encourages his devout worship (John 1:47-50).

• Jesus sees the paralyzed man and heals him (John 5:6–10).

• Jesus sees the hungry crowd and feeds them (John 6:5–11).

• Jesus sees the grief of Mary and Martha and weeps with them (John 11:33).

As Jesus looks around, his eyes are active and engaged. He notices people. And he looks long enough to see people’s physical and spiritual needs. But what he sees is just the start of the story; he then moves in and is present with them.

My question is: Is this true of me? There are many days when I am distracted and don’t notice the people around me. My eyes are open, but my brain is elsewhere. There are other days when I choose to look past the people around me and toward something I deem more essential or enchanting.

Jesus lived a life that was practiced at seeing. So much so, that even as he hung on the cross, experiencing intense and unrelenting pain, he saw his mother in distress and asked his friends to care for her (John 19:26). At that point, we would not expect him to be noticing others, but he did. As he struggled for breath, he would have been right to focus on the much more significant and critical task of securing our eternal union with God. But even at that moment, Jesus sees the people around him and cares for them.

I want to grow in this. I want to notice the precious people that the Lord has surrounded me with. But it is not easy to do. There are so many things that compete for my attention. There have been moments I have been too engrossed with a task, or something on my phone, to even look up! Yet, I am challenged by how the gospel writers bring us into Jesus’ line of sight, and how what Jesus sees directs his next steps. So I must ask myself, who is in my midst that I am not seeing? I continue to ask the Lord to give me his eyes to see.

And I assume I am not alone in this. Do you hide behind the shield of busyness, thinking that what you are engaged in at the moment is more important than those the Lord has placed in your path? I do. Seeing takes work. It means looking away from myself (and what I am doing) and entering into the world of another. And it takes practice. Here are a few questions to get you (and me) started:

• Are you, like me, failing to see?

• What captures your attention as you move through your day?

• What do you notice yourself looking at?

• Are you careful with what steals your attention?

• Do you see your affection growing for what you spend time seeing (both good and bad)?

It helps me to know that Jesus sees me even now. We are never alone as he invites us to see and bless the people he places in our midst. I want to grow in doing what Jesus himself did. Will you pray with me that we grow in seeing?

Posted at: https://www.ccef.org/seeing-the-people-in-front-of-you/?mc_cid=fd1450e036&mc_eid=90be5e29a6

Why God's Kindness Leads to Repentance

Article by Michael Card

What we thought would be a routine procedure dragged out to three days in the hospital. The surgeon was amazingly kind, as were the nurses who meticulously cared for us. On the second day, when I began to realize that we might have a longer stay ahead, I went down to the store for some “possibles” we would need.

When I filed into the checkout line, there was a woman ahead of me with as many items in her hands as I had. She smiled and said, “Why don’t you go ahead of me.” Little did she know the minefield she had just stepped into.

“Oh, I couldn’t do that,” I said. “My mother didn’t raise me to break in line, and what’s more I was always taught to let girls go first,” I said jokingly, but also kind of serious.

She patiently smiled, but insisted again that I go ahead: “I have some questions, and I don’t want you to have to wait on me.”

“But I would be glad to wait,” I said, still trying to be considerate, kind, my mother’s son, and so on.

Then she said something that suddenly brought tears to my eyes. There are tears in my eyes at this moment as I write these words, though I’m not sure I completely understand why.

RECIPROCAL KINDNESS

“Why won’t you let me be kind to you?” she said.

Why wouldn’t I? In my mind, apparently kindness counted only when I did it for someone else. In that small encounter I learned a new lesson. If you truly love hesed as Micah 6:8 says, you should love having it shown to you as much as showing it to others. As Paul says, it’s a pathway, and it can be traveled in more than one way.

Perhaps something like this is in view when Paul asks why we sometimes despise the riches of God’s kindness. Why would we question him in the garden? Why would we refuse to enter the Promised Land? Why would we say no to his extravagant offer of loving us through his Son?

His kindness is a path that leads us to repentance, that leads us to Jesus.

HESED: THE PATH TO REPENTANCE

Paul is not the systematic theologian he is sometimes made out to be. He is a church-planting pastor, overpowered by the grace and mercy of God. Though Paul had been a persecutor of the church, ungrateful, even wicked, Jesus forgave him and enlisted him to become one of its most influential apostles. Paul had become a sure recipient of hesed, and he remained amazed by it for the rest of his life. He offers encouragement and deals with problems in his letters. And like the other New Testament writers, he thinks in Hebrew and writes in Greek.

We do not consult the letters of Paul like a theological answer book. Rather, we go to Paul to find the answers to problems and conflicts in the church and in our lives. That was the original purpose of his writing. He was writing to encourage the young church as it faced impossible obstacles. If he has a theology (and certainly he does), it is what William Lane calls a “task theology.”

To be honest, hesed as we have sought to define it is not prevalent in the writings of Paul. Twice he quotes Old Testament passages but frustratingly stops just before the word hesed appears (Rom 15:9, 10). Scholars cannot even agree on what Greek word he used when he was talking about hesed. Some say agape (love), while others argue for charis (grace).

But understanding hesed is not a matter of settling on one single term. Its semantic range is simply too vast. Grace, mercy, and love are central to Paul’s understanding of God’s free offer of forgiveness. In his writings, they are less technical theological terms and far more about describing the heart of God.

THE KINDNESS OF GOD

There is another term Paul uses that often describes the character of God and belongs in the world of hesed. It is the Greek word chrēstotēs usually translated “kindness” (see Rom 2:4; 2 Cor 6:6; Gal 5:22; Col 3:12; Titus 3:4).1 We have seen that this idea falls close to the center of the semantic range of hesed. The word most often appears in the midst of the “chain sayings” Paul (and Peter) was so fond of. In Ephesians 2:7 Paul speaks about the immeasurable riches of God’s grace being displayed through his kindness (chrēstotēs) to us in Christ Jesus. But two passages in Romans speak most clearly of God’s hesed as Paul seems to understand it.

We are not certain when the church in Rome was founded. There is no attribution to a single apostle. When Paul communicates to the believers in Rome, it is clear they have already been gathering for some time, perhaps as early as AD 40. When he arrives in the city he is greeted by a strong group of the followers of Jesus from an apparently well-established church that demonstrates remarkable hospitality (Acts 28:13- 15). In his letter to the Romans, Paul comments that they are known all over the world (Rom 1:8). But a crisis overshadows the church.

Suetonius wrote about a riot in the city in AD 49 over someone he referred to as Chrestus. It is a slave name that means “good one.” Historians agree that it is, in fact, a garbled form of the name Christos. As a result of the disturbance, Emperor Claudius ordered that all the Jews be banished from the city. This would include Jewish Christians as well. As a result the Roman church was divided. The Jews were sent away, while the Gentile believers remained behind.

From the beginning Jesus had been worshiped in Hebrew as Messiah; then as the remaining Gentiles filled the leadership vacuum he was celebrated in Greek as Kurios, or Lord. In AD 54 Claudius died, and as was the custom his edicts were canceled. The Jews returned to Rome (see Acts 18:2), and tension in the church began to rise. Before the expulsion, leadership was primarily Jewish. In the gap caused by the edict, Gentiles had taken up leadership. They had been shaping the church for five years. This is the central problem Paul is dealing with in the letter to the Romans. There are leadership struggles and disagreements in the body as to who Jesus is and how he should be celebrated. Believers are judging one another and factions are forming.

KINDNESS LEADS TO REPENTANCE

In his letter Paul gives two reasons for writing. First, he has been trying to come to them but has been prevented thus far (Rom 1:10, 13). Second, he wants to encourage them and be encouraged by them (Rom 1:12). Paul begins in chapter 1 with a discussion of sin. He goes on to encourage the church to not get caught up in the sins of paganism and to also avoid the sin of passing judgment on those who do.

The context of Paul’s allusion to hesed in Romans 2:4 is the previous discussion of sin in the Gentile world. In the opening verses of chapter 2 he is insisting the church, given the pagan environment, must also keep from the sin of being judgmental, for when they judge others they are really judging themselves. In that context he makes an extraordinary statement that relates to the hesed character of God: “Or do you despise the riches of his kindness, restraint, and patience, not recognizing that God’s kindness [chrēstotēs] is intended to lead you to repentance?”

The best motivator to keep the Roman Christians, both Jew and Gentile, from becoming mired in their sinful pagan surroundings, and also to keep them from judging each other in the process, is to remember the revelation of God’s character that goes all the way back to Exodus 34. He is a God of hesed. It is not fear that drives us to him, but rather his unexpected and extraordinary kindness that provides a pathway along which we are drawn to him.

Taken from Inexpressible by Michael Card. Copyright (c) 2018 by Michael Card. Published by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. www.ivpress.com

Michael Card has recorded over thirty-one albums, authored or coauthored over twenty-four books, hosted a radio program, and written for a wide range of magazines. A graduate of Western Kentucky University with a bachelor’s and master’s degree in biblical studies, Card also serves as mentor to many younger artists and musicians, teaching courses on the creative process and calling the Christian recording industry into deeper discipleship. Card lives in Tennessee with his wife and four children.

posted at: http://gcdiscipleship.com/2019/01/17/why-gods-kindness-leads-to-repentance/

Cares and Consolations

Article by Mike Emlet, CCEF

What cares and concerns burden you today? What challenges are you facing? Does God seem relevant to them? Do you experience his presence and help in the press of life’s challenges? What happens when anxieties grow within you?

Yesterday, in my Scripture reading, I came to Psalm 94, which contains one of my favorite verses:

When the cares of my heart are many, your consolations cheer my soul. (v. 19)

Or as the NASB puts it, “When my anxious thoughts multiply within me, your consolations delight my soul.” While I want to focus primarily on God’s consolations in this blog, first notice the realism of the psalmist: when the cares of my heart are many, not if. Life in a fallen world is hard, often excruciatingly painful. Christians don’t float above the mess of life, stoically relegating disappointments, trials, and tragedies to some back room of our lives. No, we sow in tears (Psalm 126:5). In the world we face tribulation (John 16:33). We are utterly burdened beyond our strength (2 Cor 1:8). We weep with those who weep (Rom 12:15).

But where do we go when the inescapable cares of our lives are multiplying? We look for and embrace the consolations of God. What are those consolations? It’s helpful to consider both “macro-consolations” and “micro-consolations.” Macro-consolations are foundational truths about God’s character and actions that bring comfort and confidence in the midst of hardships. Micro-consolations are the particular comforts and blessings God tailor-makes for a given day in our lives.

What are macro-consolations that help as fears and anxieties rise within us?

• God’s power. I am consoled by the fact that even a sparrow cannot fall to the ground apart from God (Matt 10:29). Or as the Heidelberg Catechism Question and Answer #1 notes, “He also watches over me in such a way that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father in heaven.” The One who created and sustains all things by his powerful word (Col 1:16-17) will not drop the ball when it really counts.

• God’s love. I am consoled that God’s power is directed and animated by his love. Psalm 94:18 highlights that God’s “steadfast love” holds us up. His loyal, faithful, never-ending love that comes to its apex in Jesus Christ. No wonder Paul can exclaim, “He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?” (Rom 8:32).

• God’s wisdom. I am consoled that God knows what he is doing. His powerful love flows in the deep channels of his wisdom. This really is the theme of the book of Job—can I entrust myself to him even when my finite perspective is screaming, “Foul!”

• God’s presence. I am consoled that he is with me. Perhaps this is the most critical comfort. I am not alone. Sometimes we acknowledge God’s power, love, and wisdom, but we envision him operating at a distance as though he is an absentee father. Yet one of the most precious realties Scripture reveals is that our God is with us. “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me” (Ps 23:4). And this Good Shepherd is with us forever through the presence of his Holy Spirit (Matt 28:20), and one day we will see him face to face (Rev 21:3).

What about micro-consolations? Here it is important to pay attention to the particular grace of Jesus Christ; it is sufficient for the day. In the midst of difficulties, it is often hard to pull back and ask God to give us eyes to see the specific shape of his tender care in a given day. Here were some of my micro-consolations from yesterday: I learned that one of the servers at a coffee shop I often visit attends a Bible study at a nearby church led by one of my colleagues. God kept both my wife and my son (a relatively new driver) safe as they drove separately in the midst of treacherous conditions associated with our first snowstorm. A friend with a four-wheel drive vehicle picked me up after I was stranded near the coffee shop. I enjoyed the antics of our labradoodle in the snow. I had a warm bed to sleep in. And there were many more ways I tangibly experienced the fresh mercies of Christ that day.

God promises in Jeremiah 31:25, “For I will satisfy the weary soul, and every languishing soul I will replenish.” What are the cares of your heart today? Let your anxiety serve as a pivot point, turning you to your Father who pours out his many consolations in your time of need.

posted at: https://www.ccef.org/resources/blog/cares-and-consolations?mc_cid=89235bded9&mc_eid=90be5e29a6

Your Lord's Day Might Be Someone Else's Way of Escape

Article by Rosaria Butterfield

Radically ordinary hospitality begins when we remember that God uses us as living epistles—and that the openness or inaccessibility of our homes and hearts stands between life and death, victory and defeat, and grace or shame for most people.

Consider with me the tension of 1 Corinthians 10:13: “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.” This passage speaks to the intensity, the loneliness, and the danger of temptation. It also speaks to the lived tension of applying faith to our trials and then waiting for that way of escape to present itself.

Have you ever thought that you, your house, and your time are not your own but rather God’s ordained way of escape for someone?

REMEMBERING THE LORD’S DAY

I think about this every Lord’s Day morning as I’m preparing food for two meals: one weekly fellowship meal at church and one meal at home with neighbors and friends and folks from church. I pray as I prepare food, remembering how the Lord’s Day was a special day of temptation for me when I was a new believer. You see, beyond its wholesome surface, it is a day of warfare in toto. Perhaps you’ve not noticed this, but the Lord’s Day is a terrible day of temptation and sin for many people. Without the moorings of worship, a vital church community, and meaningful fellowship, it’s nearly impossible to actually honor the fourth commandment— the commandment that reminds us to “remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy” (Ex. 20:8)

How do we “remember” this, what we now call the “Lord’s Day”? The best way to remember anything is to do it collectively. God is calling me to remember the Lord’s Day not just for myself, for my own personal holiness, but also to live in such a way that I enable others to do so as well. I am called to create a place at the table for others, to be available to the hurting and the lost.

We keep the Lord’s Day in this communal way by sharing the ordinary means of grace that God has given to us. The Lord’s Day is not a “family day” or a “just us day.” If you preserve this day in that way, you steal glory from God and unwittingly cause others to stumble. Remember 1 Corinthians 10:13? You just might be the way of escape.

LIVING IN COMMUNITY

Living in community is not just pleasant; it’s life-saving. In Life Together Bonhoeffer comments:

Sin demands to have a man by himself. It withdraws him from the community. The more isolated a person is, the more extractive will be the power of sin over him, and the more deeply he becomes involved in it, the more disastrous is his isolation.[1]

Sin demands isolation. While community does not inoculate us against sin, godly community is a sweet balm of safety. It gives us a place and a season where we are safe with ourselves and safe with others.

My favorite day of the week is the Lord’s Day, and I want to share that day with others. Kent and I open our home after worship to anyone who will come. We must. We remember what it is like to be a new Christian, to be single, to have secrets that get you alone and torment you, and to have no place to go after worship, the odd tearing apart of the body of Christ as each retreats to her own corner or clique while the benediction still rings in the air. It is an act of violence and cruelty to people in your church who routinely have no place to belong, no place to need and be needed, after worship. Worship leaves us full and raw, and we need one another.

THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IS NOT A PERFORMANCE

We live in a world that highly values functionality. But there’s such a thing as being too functional. When we are too functional, we forget that the Christian life is a calling, not a performance. Hospitality is necessary whether you have cat hair on the couch or not. People will die of chronic loneliness sooner than they will cat hair in the soup.

Know that someone is spared another spiral binge of pornography because he is instead playing Connect Four with you or walking the dogs or jumping on the trampoline. Know that these small things that you may take for granted have been the Lord’s appointed way of escape for a brother or sister. Know that someone is spared the fear and darkness of depression because she is needed at your house, always on the Lord’s Day, the day she is never alone but instead safely in community where her place at the table is needed and necessary and relied upon.

Know that someone is drawn into Christ’s love because the Bible reading and singing that come at the close of the meal include everyone, and it reminds us that no one is scapegoated in this Christ-bearing community.

* * * * *

Editor’s note: This article has been taken from The Gospel Comes with a House Key: Practicing Radically Ordinary Hospitality in Our Post-Christian World by Rosaria Butterfield, ©2018. Used by permission of Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, Il 60187, www.crossway.org.

[1] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together: A Discussion of Christian Fellowship, trans. John W. Doberstein (New York: Harper & Row, 1954), 112.

By Rosaria Butterfield

The God Who Is Generous

By Tim Keller

Excerpt from “The Prodigal Prophet”

God’s compassion is not something abstract but con­crete. It plays out not just in his attitude but in his actions toward human beings. It is intriguing that he speaks of these violent, sinful pagans as people “who do not know their right hand from their left” (Jonah 4:11). That is an exceedingly generous way to look at Nineveh! It’s a figure of speech that means they are spiritually blind, they have lost their way, and they haven’t the first clue as to the source of their prob­lems or what to do about them. Obviously, God’s threat to destroy Nineveh shows that this blindness and ignorance is ultimately no excuse for the evil they have done, but it shows remarkable sympathy and understanding.

There are many people who have no idea what they should be living for, or the meaning of their lives, nor have they any guide to tell right from wrong. God looks down at people in that kind of spiritual fog, that spiritual stupidity, and he doesn’t say, “You idi­ots.” When we look at people who have brought trou­ble into their lives by their own foolishness, we say things like “Serves them right” or we mock them on social media: “What kind of imbecile says something like this?” When we see people of the other political party defeated, we just gloat. This is all a way of de­taching ourselves from them. We distance ourselves from them partly out of pride and partly because we don’t want their unhappiness to be ours. God doesn’t do that. Real compassion, the voluntary attachment of our heart to others, means the sadness of their con­dition makes us sad; it affects us. That is deeply un­comfortable, but it is the character of compassion.

There are many people who have no idea what they should be living for, or the meaning of their lives, nor have they any guide to tell right from wrong.

God’s evident generosity of spirit toward the city could not be a greater indictment of Jonah’s ungenerous narrowness, what John Calvin calls his greatest sin, namely that he was “very inhuman” in his attitude to­ward Nineveh.

“They Don’t Know What They Are Doing”

If you are acquainted at all with the New Testament, it is impossible to read about this generous God with­out remembering Jesus. God is saying to Jonah, “I am weeping and grieving over this city — why aren’t you? If you are my prophet, why don’t you have my compas­sion?” Jonah did not weep over the city, but Jesus, the true prophet, did.

Jesus was riding into Jerusalem on the last week of his life. He knew he would suffer at the hands of the leaders and the mob of this city, but instead of being full of wrath or absorbed with self-pity, like Jonah, when he “saw the city, he wept over it and said, ‘If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace — but now it is hidden from your eyes . . . because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you’” (Luke 19:41– 2:44). “Jerusa­lem, Jerusalem . . . how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing” (Luke 13:34).

On the cross, Jesus cried out, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing,” (Luke 23:34). Jesus is saying, “Father, they are torturing and killing me. They are denying and betraying me. But none of them, not even the Pharisees, really completely understand what they are doing.” We can only look in wonder on such a heart. He does not say they are not guilty of wrongdoing. They are — that is why they need forgiveness. Yet Jesus is also remembering that they are confused, somewhat clueless, and not really able to recognize the horror of what they are doing. Here is a perfect heart — perfect in generous love — not excusing, not harshly condemning. He is the weeping God of Jonah 4 in human form.

Over a century ago the great Princeton theologian B. B. Warfield wrote a remarkable scholarly essay called “The Emotional Life of Our Lord,” where he considered every recorded instance in the gospels that described the emotions of Christ. He concluded that by far the most typical statement of Jesus’s emotional life was the phrase “he was moved with compassion,” a Greek phrase that literally means he was moved from the depths of his being. The Bible records Jesus Christ weeping twenty times for every one time it notes that he laughs. He was a man of sorrows, and not because he was naturally depressive. No, he had enormous joy in the Holy Spirit and in his Father (cf. Luke 10:21), and yet he grieved far more than he laughed because his compassion connected him with us. Our sadness makes him sad; our pain brings him pain.

By far the most typical statement of Jesus’s emotional life was the phrase “he was moved with compassion.”

Jesus is the prophet Jonah should have been. Yet, of course, he is infinitely more than that. Jesus did not merely weep for us; he died for us. Jonah went outside the city, hoping to witness its condemnation, but Jesus Christ went outside the city to die on a cross to ac­complish its salvation.

Here God says he is grieving over Nineveh, which means he is letting the evil of the city weigh on him. In some mysterious sense, he is suffering because of its sin. When God came into the world in Jesus Christ and went to the cross, however, he didn’t experience only emotional pain but every kind of pain in un­imaginable dimensions. The agonizing physical pain of the crucifixion included torture, slow suffocation, and excruciating death. Even beyond that, when Jesus hung on the cross, he underwent the infinite and most unfathomable pain of all — separation from God and all love, eternal alienation, the wages of sin. He did it all for us, out of his unimaginable compassion.

Reprinted from THE PRODIGAL PROPHET: Jonah and the Mystery of God’s Mercy, by Timothy Keller. Published on October 2, 2018 by Viking, an imprint of the Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © Timothy Keller, 2018.

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