73 Sermon Illustrations on Empathy

Biography of therapist Carl Rogers, who has deeply influenced Christians though he himself rejected the Christian religion. He champions self-worth, non-judgmental therapy, and inner (psychological) renewal. His underlying philosophy leads to humanism and pantheism. It mimics much of Christianity. Toward the end of his life he has turned to spiritism and Ouija boards to contact his dead wife Helen, whom he separated from in the last 5 years of her life. This spiritism is the logical outworking of themes in psychology - be your own god.

Interview with Jimmy Johnson, head coach for the Dallas Cowboys. The most important thing in his life is the 3 championship rings he has earned in sports.

There are some key ingredients for NFL head coaches: #1: Jettison all influences and experiences that don’t have to do with winning. Johnson divorces his wife, Linda Kay, after taking the Cowboys job because they’d grown apart and because he didn’t want family stuff getting in the way of the biggest job of his life. “My nightmare is to sit at some three-hour dinner party between a couple of coaches’ wives, making small talk.” His ideal dinner: Heineken on ice, nachos, salsa. He doesn’t remember birthdays, not even his two sons’, and doesn’t do Christmas. But he’s stern about it. Don’t tell me how to live my life, his glare tells you, and I won’t tell you how to live yours.

“Look,” Johnson said, his eyes pointing lasers. “I’ve prepared my entire life - 48 years, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year - for 16 Sundays. Everybody out there in the world judges whether I’m a successful human being based on how I do on those Sundays. If we lose, I’m a complete bum, a worthless human being. If we win, I’m a success. That’s the way this business is. I will not be a loser.”

Somebody mentions how bad Johnson must feel for Ricky Blake. Blake, a backup running back, was helping the team run out the clock on the last play of the game when in a freak accident he sheared a leg bone from a hip socket, possibly ending his career. Now the team probably would have to use a valuable roster move to bring Curvin Richards, a rookie, onto the roster, or risk putting him on waivers and exposing him to the league. But poor Ricky. Hard worker, great kid, really wanted to play in the NFL. “Well,” Johnson shot right back, and here came the truth, “as bad as it is for Ricky, all I’m thinking about is: Can I get Curvin through waivers without losing him? And how are we gonna beat Houston?” He saw the look of disbelief in his questioner’s eyes. A kid is on his way to the hospital, his career may be over, and this guy, his mentor, can’t spare a few minutes of melancholy for what might have been. “Hey, the crisis is not the issue. The issue is how you handle the crisis. Is feeling sorry for Ricky gonna help us win? No. And remember something: My whole life revolves around us winning.” Understood.

Sermon in "50 Day Adventure" series. #6 Jesus knows are struggles.

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GO TO THE THRONE

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I. Whom do you go to when you are hurting?

A. Think of the greatest crisis you ever faced.

B. Do you gain anything by going to Jesus?

II. Jesus is great. 4:14

A. He is our Great High Priest.

B. Jesus has gone through the heavens to the supreme place.

C. Therefore hold firmly to your faith we profess.

III. Jesus knows the human condition. 4:15

A. Is Jesus so great he doesn't care?

B. Jesus doesn't just know about being human, he experienced it.

C. We can approach Jesus confidently because he knows our weaknesses.

IV. Approach God boldly. 4:16

A. We can go to Jesus.

B. Throne of grace.

C. We can have confidence.

V. Our time of need.

A. Jesus can help us when no one can.

B. Do you turn to Jesus in a crisis only?

#3636

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At June Carter Cash’s funeral her stepdaughter Rosanna recalled how years ago she was sitting with June in the living room at home when the phone rang. June picked it up and started talking to someone, and after several minutes Rosanne wandered off to another room because it seemed she was deep in conversation. She went back 10 or 15 minutes later and June was still completely engrossed.

“I was sitting in the kitchen when she hung up a good 20 minutes later, and she had a big smile on her face, and she said, 'I just had the nicest conversation,'“ Rosanne said. “And she started telling me about this other woman's life and her children and that she had just lost her father and where she lived and on and on. And I said, 'Well, June, who was it?’ And she said, 'Well, honey, it was a wrong number.’ That was June. In her eyes there were two kinds of people: those she knew and loved, and those she didn't know and loved. She looked for the best in everyone. It was a way of life for her. ... She was forever lifting people up.”

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[Original illustration at this number was added to HolwickID #16640]

"My own experience and development deepen everyday my conviction that our moral progress may be measured by the degree in which we sympathize with individual suffering and individual joy."

-- T. S. Eliot, Quotes from the Masters, 4/1/02

"Resolve to be tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant with the weak and the wrong. Sometime in life you will have been all of these."

-- Lloyd Shearer, Bits & Pieces, 5/16/03

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"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor." (Isaiah 61:1)

When Marie Antoinette went to her bridal, all the sick and the poor were kept out of her way, that no unpleasant sight might mar the occasion. When Jesus Christ moved toward His cross, the sick, the poor, the wretched, and the outcast of Syria's peasantry gathered into the street and highways to get within reach of His great, warming, hospitable love and sympathy. Wherever He went He drew the slums after Him.

- {From a sermon by S.H. Howe, D.D.}

The normal Christian is very much aware of the command of Jesus to "pick up your cross" or to "carry your cross" (Matthew 16:24, 10:38; Mark 8:34-38). Instinctively the sincere Christian will drop to his knees and cry out to God, "Lord, I will pick up my cross and follow you!" And he begins the life of cross bearing.

But soon loneliness seems to set in. The Christian finds himself very much alone.

Though in the midst of family, friends and other Christians, he cannot seem to find anyone with a similar heart. He cannot locate another person who shares the deeper walk with God, or the intense relationship with God he is experiencing. It is lonely "carrying the cross." The burden becomes heavy, yet he cannot seem to find someone else to share this with. Others do not seem to understand him, or his cross.

There is a uniqueness about the relationship with Christ in cross bearing. It is "your cross, and no one else's." No one else has a cross like yours, so they do not seem to understand you. A.W. Tozer, in his book, "Man the Dwelling Place of God," shares with great insight here, as he states, "Always remember: you cannot carry a cross in company. Though a man were surrounded by a vast crowd, his cross is his alone and his carrying of it marks him as man apart...." (p. 171).

This sense of aloneness in carrying your cross will drive you back to God, who alone can really help you.

The cross you carry is really in your heart, and only God can walk with you there. You may try to explain the intimacy with God, the heaviness of heart God has given you, and the burden of what you learned from God while alone with him. You may seek to find someone to share it with, but you just cannot find anyone who truly understands. Go to God immediately and do not be surprised if others not only do not understand you, but also will not know exactly how to help you. They, if sensitive, will say, "Please know that I will be praying for you!" This will be some form of enabling for your cross bearing.

As you carry your cross, you will experience two other things:

1. You will be much more quiet while with others.

2. You will not withdraw from those with deep problems.

In fact, you will sense even a greater ability to help carry their load, for you now have a greater appreciation of what it means, and the resources God has granted.

*

Maybe it's because my father-in-law was a corrections officer for a while, and I've heard his stories about the wasted lives behind prison bars. But whatever the reason, I've always admired the men who minister as prison chaplains. It's tough ministry, but it's ministry where it's desperately needed. I've got a new friend, Bill, and he works as a prison Chaplain, and he recently told me about an incident that touched me when he told me and it continues to touch me. Bill had been visiting this cell block, and he went out in the exercise yard for some fresh air, he said. There was this clean cut, young inmate who happened to be African-American, who walked up to him, and he said, "Hey mister! Are you broke?" Well, Bill kinda fished around in his pocket and didn't find any money in there, and the inmate said, "Hey, it doesn't matter, your money is no good in here anyway. Now, are you broke?" Only this time the inmate had tears in his eyes. And then here's what he said: "Mister, don't try to minister to people in here if you ain't broke, cause we all are." Now, that's not just inside prison walls.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A WORD WITH YOU today about "Knowing What It Is To Be Broke."

You don't have to go into a prison to find people who are, in the words of that inmate, "broke." There's so much pain today, and so much of it is from broken things - broken family, broken health, broken heart, broken dream, broken relationships, broken trust - you may be "broke." Perhaps, even in spite of a life that's reasonably successful and an outward image that looks fine. You may be one of the millions of the walking wounded ... not sure where to put your pain ... where to put your brokenness.

Our word for today from the Word of God, Hebrews 4:14, says this: "Since we have a great high priest who has gone through the Heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess." Now, here Jesus is called "high priest" and you know those were the men in the Old Testament who represented people to God. So Jesus is now our personal representative with God in Heaven.

Now, if that inmate, or even you, were to walk up to this Savior and ask, "Are you broke?" He might refer you to the next verse, verse 15. Here's what it says - "We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are, yet was without sin. Let us then approach the throne of Grace with confidence." Now, He's walked in our shoes, He's felt what we feel - except He never responded by doing something outside of God's will. And we can come to Him with confidence. Why? Well, we're coming to a Savior who has lived the feelings we are bringing to Him. He knows what it is to be poor ... He knows what it feels like to be turned on by your family ... to be betrayed by someone very close - He was. To be rejected - He was. To be pressured to do the wrong thing - He was. To be tortured ... to be lonely ... to be murdered - He was all of those. This Savior knows the pain!

There are other people who can empathize. There are some counselors who can help you understand the pain, but only Jesus can carry your pain and begin to heal a lifetime of scars. He says, "I came to bind up the broken-hearted." But the great tragedy may be this: You're needlessly carrying all your hurt alone because this Savior isn't your Savior because you've never given yourself to Him. He went way beyond the pain to the core reason for our wounds - human sin.

We're all the victims of people's sins and we're sinners ourselves. Sin is our personal rebellion against our Creator, saying, "God, you run the Universe, I'll run me." Because we're away from the one we were made by, we keep making choices that increase our pain. But Jesus is saying to you today, "Why are you carrying that all alone? I died for you. Won't you let me be your Savior? Let me pick up your pain. Let me begin to apply my love to your wounds." If you've never done that, why would you walk alone one more day? If you want to begin a personal relationship with Him, I hope you use the link below to let me know. I'll send you the booklet I wrote about it, called "Yours for Life." If the question is, "Jesus, I'm 'broke.' Only someone who's 'broke' can help me," then you come to the mangled body on the blood-stained cross and see that the Son of God was "broke" so you don't have to be anymore.

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Copyright © Ron Hutchcraft Ministries, Inc., PO Box 400, Harrison, AR 72602. Used by permission. Written by Ron Hutchcraft. "Practical Answers to Real Life Issues"

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We Americans tend to be impatient. But something happened on Tuesday, August 29, 2001, that made me pause, feel an appropriate sense of embarrassment, and ask God to help me deal with my proneness to impatience.

Commuters in Seattle were stuck in a rush-hour traffic jam. The congestion was on a bridge that spans a busy ship canal connecting Puget Sound to Lake Union and Lake Washington. Police had stopped northbound traffic during the morning rush hour because a 28-year-old woman had perched on a railing and was threatening suicide.

Despite Seattle’s image as a laid-back city of kindhearted folks, recent increases in highway congestion have exposed occasional short tempers and harsh confrontations. This one was particularly ugly. As police personnel tried to calm the woman and talk her down, people caught in the massive traffic jam became indignant over the inconvenience she was causing them.

A spokesman for the police department said people were calling for her to get it over with. "Commuters were coming by and urging her to jump, and that was on the mild side of what they said," Clem Benton said. "I’m not going to repeat the other things they said."

What tone does a tired Mom use with her child at the end of a hard day? How does a sports-fan dad react to his child’s request to read a book or help with homework? Parenting is hard work and makes demands at inconvenient times.

How do you react to a sick neighbor’s tall grass? Do you find it hard to make a hospital call to a friend who has been there for days after an injury or heart attack? Why do people have to die during a CPA’s tax season or during your busy season? Loving your neighbor as yourself is the essence of godliness at all times.

Have you noticed how much encouragement it takes for a new believer? Do you know that alcoholics often need to talk to somebody at 2:30 in the morning? Are you aware that people who lead others to Christ typically do so by investing huge amounts of time and interest in them over time? Spiritual service calls for the sacrifice of time and energy on the behalf of others.

Wouldn’t you like for just one day to go the way you’d planned it? Life would be so neat and tidy. You could get everything done that needs doing. You would have time for a leisurely dinner at the end of the day. And when was the last time you had a day like that?

The poor lady in Seattle jumped, was fished out of the water, and rushed to the hospital in critical condition. Flowers, gifts, and public apologies have been offered to her. It probably would have been better if people simply showed her some compassion on that awful Tuesday when she was despondent.

Try to remember her story the next time you are exasperated.

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© 2001, Rubel Shelly. From Rubel Shelly's "FAX of Life" printed each Tuesday.

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Mark and Barbara Stringer, missionaries to Colombia, South America, recently wrote an article entitled, "Disposable People." Today’s society has disposable clothes, cups, diapers, plates, etc., so why not have disposable people. This is a reality in parts of Latin America.

Los Desechables are the beggars, the drug addicts, the homeless children and the insane. Some sleep under bridges or on the streets while sustaining themselves through prostitution or stealing. Many are addicted to sniffing glue because they say it keeps them from feeling hungry.

When there gets to be too many on the streets of any one city, the city fathers have been known to order the police to load as many as they can catch into a stock truck and deposit them just outside the city limits of a neighboring city. These people do not usually live long in their harsh environment, but on occasion, when there is a lot of thievery, a death squad will speed up the process at night.

A disposable little black boy was abandoned on the streets of Bogota over 30 years ago, but his fate was different. The orphanage directed by Mark and Barbara took him in. Warren and Phyllis Sanders, also Colombian missionaries, adopted him. They say God’s image in him, not a disposable person.

He became a good preacher of the word, an accomplished musician, and editor of a Hispanic newspaper in Washington D.C. before returning as a missionary to his native land. It should come as no surprise that among the many hymns Martin Sanders has composed, one proclaims that IN GOD’S EYES NO ONE IS DISPOSABLE.

Who are Los Desechables of American society? They fill our jails, prisons and reformatories beyond capacity. The L.A. County Jail is known as California’s largest mental institution. Out of sight, out of mind.

A wise man once wrote, "Do not do what seems to lie in the future, but attend to those things at hand." Is there even one disposable person in your local youth detention center, city jail or community prison in whom you can see the image of God? Go to that person. Dare to love God through them.

A little girl was late for dinner and explained she was with Sally who fell and broke her new doll. Her father said, "Oh, did you stay and help her fix her doll?" The little girl replied, "Oh no, daddy, I don’t know how to fix dolls, I stayed with Sally to help her cry."

Sometimes, and often initially, all we can do is visit the prisoner and help him pray. Then the life-changing relationship begins.

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Hundreds of thousands of Kurds had fled Saddam Hussein's Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War, and they were spread over miles of mountainside on the Turkish border. Christian agencies flooded in with food, medical help and the Gospel of Jesus Christ. But most of the Christian workers connected with people only from trucks and distribution points, where they handed out food and blankets. But the missionaries from one particular mission organization really broke through the barrier that others were encountering when they talked about Jesus. They had a unique way of getting close to the people and winning their respect and their trust. Here's their radical outreach strategy: these missionaries offered to pick up the garbage. See, it was everywhere on those mountainsides, and it was gross. Nobody wanted to do the garbage, but those who were willing to were the ones who got listened to.

Well, I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about “Being There For The Garbage.”

What opened doors and hearts among those needy people on that Iraqi mountainside is the same thing that will open doors and hearts where you are - a willingness to win the right to be heard by being there for people's garbage.

Jesus did. In Philippians 2:5-7, our word for today from the Word of God, He tells us: “Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but He made Himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness, He humbled Himself and became obedient to death - even death on a cross.”

This is the Jesus who touched the lepers no one else would touch, who stopped for people every one else walked by, who washed the dirty feet of His followers, who defined His day by the needs of people who came to Him for help, and who allowed men He had made to beat Him and crucify Him. The King of heaven came to us as a servant and stole our hearts away.

You have neighbors who really need Jesus, coworkers, friends and family members. How are you ever going to get them interested in the Jesus who is their only hope? By serving them. By being there to help them with the garbage of their lives. In Jesus' name, be there when their health levels them, when their marriage is struggling or over, when they lose a loved one - and be there when all the funeral folks have gone home. Be there when they're struggling financially, when they don't have enough help, when their business is in trouble, when their kids are in trouble, when they've lost their reputation and no one wants to be around them.

Their moment of loss is your moment of loving opportunity - to show them Jesus' love in action. And then, ultimately, to explain to them Who this love comes from, and how He poured out His life on the cross to clean up all the moral garbage of our lives.

You win the right to be heard by being there to help people pick up the pieces and pick up the garbage. Initially, they may not be interested in your message, but tell me, who can be against someone who picks up their heavy burden and helps carry it? Who is there when nobody else is? It's that kind of love that will open their heart to the greatest love of all!

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Copyright © Ron Hutchcraft Ministries, Inc., PO Box 400, Harrison, AR 72602. Used by permission. Written by Ron Hutchcraft. "Practical Answers to Real Life Issues"

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Bob Stith teared up when he looked around the room after a news conference at Exodus International's 28th annual conference in Orlando. It is his ninth year to be directly involved in ministry to former homosexuals, and he regrets not having become involved earlier.

Stith, pastor of Carroll Baptist Church in Southlake, Texas, told the Florida Baptist Witness in an interview that he has made up for lost time. Two years ago, Stith made a motion at the Southern Baptist Convention that would generate what has become a meeting of minds of SBC leaders on the issue of homosexuality and how Southern Baptists can equip churches to minister in this area.

In June at the SBC annual meeting in Phoenix, an eight-member task force formed by LifeWay Christian Resources and the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission urged the churches of the 16-million-member convention to “make themselves available to God's leading” in beginning ministries to reach “all the precious men and women for whom Jesus died.”

In Orlando, preparing to lead conferences that help facilitate interaction between Exodus and church and pastoral ministries, Stith said he “felt good in some small way” that he has been able to help bridge and bring together the SBC and Exodus.

In 2001, Stith said he thought he was “spitting into the wind” with his motion and even told others that. He was a small town pastor, convicted in the middle of a sermon years earlier that he was preaching on the issue with little regard for the redemption God offers.

“I asked myself, if someone who struggled with that heard me preach, would they come to me for help?” Stith recalled. “And I knew instantly that they wouldn't, not if they were in their right mind.”

Convinced he didn't know enough about the issue and burdened to find out more, Stith said he turned to Exodus for information and began to attend their conferences in 1995.

“I began to feel in my heart that this is going to be a watershed issue for the church and we weren't prepared for it,” Stith said.

He said his wife believes he is “much more compassionate” after being involved in Exodus. He said he's been “humbled” but also convicted that many pastors and church leaders who could be helped by Exodus in ministering to the community at large mistakenly think they must personally know someone struggling before they seek information.

After nine years, Stith said he is proud of the SBC's providing a mechanism for the churches to “stand in compassion and truth.”

“I was so moved,” he said in describing the SBC annual meeting in Phoenix where the task force, of which he was invited to be a part, declared to the world that Southern Baptists were interested in ministry to homosexuals.

“I knew that it was God because basically I'm a nobody in the convention. I knew it was a God thing,” Stith said. “We were, through the task force, able to bring focus on what Exodus is doing.”

SBC entities' cooperation with ministries like Exodus and Tim Wilkins' Cross Ministries will prevent duplication of ministry efforts and provide for a forum in which leaders can learn from one another, Stith said. An example of that was Exodus' presence in the exhibit area at the SBC in Phoenix. “It was a huge thrill to see this happen,” he said.

“I have just wanted to give back to them in some way,” Stith said of his role as facilitator between Exodus and the SBC.

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Version in my sermon on August 31, 2003:

Bob Stith is a small-town Southern Baptist pastor. Several years ago he was in the middle of a sermon he was preaching on homosexuality when it struck him -- he was good at condemning their sin, but he was showing little regard for the redemption God offers.

Bob got involved with Exodus, a ministry to those trying to leave homosexuality. Most pastors wait till they encounter such a person in their church, but he decided to make the first step. It taught him empathy for those who are torn inside by their sexual urges and desire for Christ. The stern preacher became a humbled man.

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Johnny Cash explained his affinity for black clothing in his 1971 hit “Man in Black” when he said it symbolized the downtrodden people in the world.

“Everybody was wearing rhinestones, all those sparkle clothes and cowboy boots,” he said in 1986. “I decided to wear a black shirt and pants and see if I could get by with it. I did and I've worn black clothes ever since.”

When someone says, “I feel your pain,” the person really may. A groundbreaking study shows that some of the same brain regions involved in feeling physical pain become activated when someone empathizes with another's pain.

And when it's time to feel better, thinking that a drug helps can make it so, according to a different brain-scanning study that finally caught the power of placebo in action.

The studies, reported in Friday's edition of the journal Science, provide important new evidence of the power of the mind, said Dr. Jon Levine, a pain specialist at the University of California, San Francisco, who reviewed the research.

“Very likely the same part of the brain which is affected by empathy for pain, and therefore suffering, is the area that also our mind or our expectation has to deal with if we're going to get control of that pain,” Levine said.

In the empathy study, British researchers recruited 16 couples. One at a time, the women were put into brain scanners called MRI machines; the men sat nearby. The women could see only their loved one's hand and a computer screen. The women and men got brief electric shocks to the hand. The computer screen flashed who would get the next shock and whether it would be mild or very sharp.

When the women got shocked, the MRI showed how their brain's entire pain network activated, researchers reported. They registered feeling the jolt and how much it stung, from sensory brain regions, as well as how much it made them suffer - the “affective” or emotional regions.

But when the men got shocked, part of the women's pain network sprang into action, too - not sensory regions but emotional ones. They knew when the men were being shocked only by watching the computer screen.

The lead researcher, Tania Singer of University College of London, likened it to vivid feeling when imminent pain is imagined and the heart speeds up before the actual sensation arrives.

Men were not studied for their reaction to how women responded to a shock.

Singer did not tell the couples that she was studying empathy so as not to rig the results. But she later asked the women to describe how they felt when their partner was zapped.

“They indicated it was as unpleasant” when the man got zapped as when they did, Singer said. “What they say matched what I saw in the brain activity.”

She also rated their degree of empathy, using questions such as how easily they cry at movies. The more empathetic their nature, the more emotional brain activity there was.

It was not “emotional contagion,” like how one person's yawn can set a whole room to yawning, because the women could see only their partner's hand, Singer said. Instead, the women were using the same brain areas that anticipate one's own pain.

In the second study, volunteers put inside MRI machines had either electric shocks or heat applied to the arm. The pain activated all the expected neural pathways, researchers from the University of Michigan and Princeton University reported.

Then, researchers smeared on a cream they said would block the pain. In fact, it was a regular skin lotion.

When the volunteers were zapped again, they reported significantly less pain - and pain circuits in the brain showed they really felt better. Those were the same brain regions that respond to painkilling medication.

Then researchers spread on cream again, this time telling the volunteers it was a placebo - and they hurt all over again.

Doctors long known have known the placebo effect is real. It is one reason that they talk up the benefits of a drug as they write the prescription. But the effect has been assumed to be psychological, Levine said.

The study provides “a novel and important insight into the fact that placebo is in fact due to a physiological attenuation of the pain signal,” he said.

As for empathy, Singer now is studying whether people can sense a stranger's suffering as much as a loved one's.

Is empathy a learned trait or a genetic one? Her study suggests it is a completely automatic response that varies merely in its degree, meaning it probably is hard-wired into our brains through evolution.

After all, Singer said, empathy serves two important survival functions: bonding between people, especially mother and child, and the ability to predict others' actions, such as whether someone in pain is a threat.

*

I recently heard a young man preach a sermon on the importance of sharing the Gospel. His philosophy was that as long as Christians are obeying God by witnessing to the lost, they should not care whether the lost accept Christ.

He proposed that this attitude takes the pressure off the one sharing the Gospel. After all, if we only care about obeying God and not the results of sharing our faith, what do we have to lose? While I agree that the decision of another person to accept or reject the call of Jesus is certainly not the responsibility of the one who shares the Gospel, I disagree that the Christian's attitude be one of not caring.

His charge for Christians to not concern themselves with non-Christians who reject Jesus bothered me for two reasons: God commands Christians to care, and God has convicted me many times for not caring.

Christians are charged in Colossians 3:12 to be compassionate: “Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.” We are to care, just as Christ cares, for the lost souls of men.

I used to view non-Christians as outsiders. I looked at them as mere projects that I needed to check off my “I shared Christ with them” to-do list. I embraced sharing the Gospel of Jesus as my job, and I faithfully did it out of obedience. This “just do it” attitude is definitely in line with my personality. Spiritual gifts tests have confirmed that I am a prophet/teacher.

The downfall to a person with these gifts is that she is usually lacking in the compassion and mercy department. For example, when a turtle makes the dangerous decision to cross a busy road, many people think, “Poor thing.” I think, “Stupid turtle.” When someone comes to me with a problem, I'm not the huggy, let-me-cry-with-you type. I'm more the factual “Here's what you need to do so dry your eyes and get on with it” type.

Unfortunately, I must admit that while I had a heart for obeying God in sharing the Gospel with the lost, I did not have a heart for the lost. I can recall telling several people about Jesus and not grieving over their negative response to His plan of salvation. God convicted me that I was viewing non-Christians as a type of enemy, an enemy that I needed to conquer in the spiritual war of evangelism.

I would faithfully put on my armor, swing the sword of truth at whomever came my way, and walk off the battlefield without giving a second thought to where the wounded fell. I simply counted my efforts as medals toward spiritual heroism.

Jesus doesn't view non-Christians as the enemy but as victims of the enemy. According to Philippians 2:5, Christians are to have the same attitude as Christ. It took me a while to realize that not having a heart for the lost is just as disobedient as not sharing the Gospel. Christ longs to gather His lost sheep. He searches for them and delights in looking after them, “For this is what the Sovereign Lord says: 'I myself will search for my sheep and look after them'“ (Ezekiel 34:11). He cares for them (1 Peter 5:7). It is impossible to have the attitude of Christ while not caring for the lost.

Befriending a non-believer for the purpose of sharing the Gospel is very different than becoming their companion. Companions are companionable, meaning they are suited for one another socially in their likes and dislikes. Therefore, we are not to be “companions” with a non-believer, but we are to befriend them in order to share the good news of Jesus with them.

Jesus befriended non-believers. He befriended and protected a prostitute when no one else would. He went into the house of Matthew, a lying and cheating tax collector, and ate dinner with a gang of sinners in order to subject them to His holiness. “When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, 'Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and 'sinners'?’ On hearing this, Jesus said, 'It is not the healthy that need a doctor, but the sick'“ (Matthew 8:11-12). Jesus came to set the sinners free.

As we befriend non-believers for the sake of sharing the love of Christ, it is wise to establish some boundaries. First and foremost, we should never indulge in sinful activities in the name of witnessing. The Gospel should be shown with our actions as much as it is spoken with our words.

My friend Toma always says, “Your talk talks and your walk talks but your walk talks more than your talk talks.” It is also a good idea to let the non-believer know up front that you are devoted to Jesus. After all, we are not secret agents, but ambassadors for Christ. “We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us” (2 Corinthians 5:20a).

Although we should establish who we are in Christ, it is helpful to develop a relationship before bombarding them with Scripture. By showing interest in their lives and getting to know them, we develop trust in the friendship. Keep in mind that a good fisherman hides the hook.

In realizing these truths, I began to pray for a heart like His. As a result, He enables me to see the lost through His eyes and care for them through His love. I am becoming more and more aware of how precious they are to Jesus. My heart hurts for those who don't know my sweet Jesus. I long to see them embrace their maker, the giver of hope and joy. God is still working on me, but I am thankful that He is making my heart a little more like His each day.

Oh, and I simply must tell you ... I recently pulled my car over to help a turtle cross the road. God is definitely working on me.

Vellore, India, began to gain its reputation as a treatment center for lepers almost a century ago. Deformed faces, stubby limbs, leathery skin - all were telltale signs of this population sector. Shops, schools, and restaurants all banned the lepers, fearing that germs and bad luck could contaminate their air. Outcasts, rejects, untouchables - the lepers of Vellore were forced to live secluded lives on the fringes of the town.

And then in the mid-1900s, humanitarian organizations came to work with Christian Medical College (CMC), a landmark of Christian education and service in Vellore. They brought with them medicine, plastic surgery, and appeals to the public for compassion and acceptance. They also brought microcellular rubber (MCR). This black sponge like material was used to fabricate shoes and sandals for feet without sensation, the cushiony material preventing the onset of ulcers.

With medical care and reconstructive surgery available, it soon became impossible to spot a leper - well, almost impossible. The only indicator of leprosy that lingered among many in Vellore was those unique black shoes.

At the sight of a pair of black MCR shoes, backs would be turned toward the wearer. No amount of education about the noncontagious nature of leprosy could break the segregation. Compassion and brotherhood refused to rise above stigma.

What was to be done? After much brainstorming, the Christian community made a statement - not one of words, but one of empathetic, Christian action. All connected with Christian Medical College - staff and students alike - purchased and wore black MCR shoes. The townspeople were in confusion: Who was the doctor and who was the leper? Who was the accepted and who was the pariah? From whom did you turn away and with whom did you shake hands? No one could be sure.

The statement made by a Christian community changed the perspective of an entire town. Today one can find black MCR shoes in most shoe stores in Vellore. Everyone wears them. Many young people continue to attend CMC, one of only a few places that offer quality Christian medical education in India. And each leaves with more than a profession. Each leaves with at least one pair of black MCR shoes that symbolize true brotherhood.

What a statement of Christianity! To cross over the barriers of differences and embrace another! Isn't that what Jesus did? If He could walk in someone else's shoes shouldn't we?

________

Signs of the Times, Copyright (c) March 2004, Pacific Press, http://www.signstimes.com

*

During the wee hours of Sunday morning, December 8, 1996, after the third night of Hanukkah, someone took a baseball bat and broke the front window of a house on the street with a lighted menorah in the window, and the criminals reached through the shattered glass and smashed the menorah.

The menorah is used to celebrate the eight-day Jewish Festival of Lights, also known as Hanukkah, which occurs around the same time as Christmas. As a nativity scene reminds Christians of their heritage and faith, so does a menorah for Jews.

The woman who lived in the vandalized house was no stranger to prejudice. As a child, she had come with her mother, a Holocaust survivor, and her father, to the United States to escape persecution in the Soviet Union. Now, as she viewed the smashed menorah, the familiar fear returned.

Lisa Keeling, a young mother who lived down the street, heard about the incident on returning from mass with her family. She was appalled. Newtown has about fifteen hundred families, representing many cultures and religions. Lisa had never heard of anyone being singled out because of faith or ethnicity. How would she feel if someone desecrated a crèche on her lawn she wondered. Unless everyone were free to practice religious beliefs, no one could be free.

Lisa had an idea. She said to her husband, “I’d like to put a menorah in our front window so that family will know they are not going through this alone. If the vandals come back, they’ll have to target us, too. What do you think?

Lisa’s husband didn’t hesitate. “Go for it,” he said.

Lisa soon ran into another neighbor, Margie Alexander, who had been as horrified as Lisa when she heard the news and was also eager to act.

Margie started driving from store to store, looking for menorahs, with Lisa calling all the likely sources and relaying the information to Margie on her car phone. Word got around, and several Christian neighbors dropped by, asking where to purchase a menorah. Margie and Lisa bought up all they could and distributed them just before sundown — time to light the next candle.

Then Lisa took down the Christmas lights in one of her windows and put the menorah there, all by itself. “I didn’t want there to be any doubt about the statement we were making,” she recalls.

That night, when the Jewish woman turned onto her street, she stopped in amazement. Greeting her was a sea of orange menorah lights, shining in silent solidarity from the windows of all eighteen Christian households on her block. Blinking back tears, she went home, replaced the broken bulbs in her own menorah and put it back in the window.

Margie and Lisa are hanging menorahs again this Christmas. “it’s become the most cherished part of my Christmas,” Margie says, “and it’s taught me a wonderful lesson: Just one little step in the right direction can make life better for everyone.”

________

Copyright 1997 by Joan Wester Anderson, From Angels We Have Heard on High. For more stories of God's love, visit Joan's website at: http://www.joanwanderson.com; submitted by Jackie Skeels

*

In the period after the Crusades, the Catholic Church made its greatest claims for authority over secular power; not surprisingly, the secular powers made their own claims for who had the ultimate power. As part of this struggle, in 1303 Pope Boniface VIII excommunicated the king of France, Philip the Fair. In response, the king sent troops to arrest and kill the Pope.

The Pope’s enemies found him seated on his throne, wearing the mantle of Saint Peter and the crown that Constantine had given to Pope Sylvester. The troops asked the Pope if he would agree to renounce the papacy but he refused, saying he would rather lose his head. In French he told them, “Here is my neck, here is my head.”

The soldiers looted the Pope’s palace of gold, silver, fine clothing, and anything else they could get their hands on. A contemporary chronicler notes that they left the Pope “as poor as Job.” Pope Boniface watched it all and muttered, “God gave; God has taken away.”

The Pope was thrown in a dark cellar for three days and nights, sleeping in his papal robes on a straw mat. Finally some of his kinsmen set him free. Brought out into the light, he had himself taken, almost gropingly, to the public square. The reporter tells us what he said there: “‘Good men and good women, you know that my enemies came, and took away form me my goods and the goods of the Church. I have had nothing to eat and nothing to drink. If among you there is a good woman who wants to help me with her offering of bread and wine – and if she does not have bread and wine, a little bit of water – then I will give her God’s benediction and mine.’

“Everyone started to shout, ‘Long live the Holy Father,’ and all the women who were there and all the others ran immediately through the village to the Palace of the Pope, offering him, some wine, some bread, some water, and some of them, not finding enough containers, threw the wine and the water on the pavement of the Pope’s room in great quantity.

“And all could come before the Pope; the good and the bad; the small and the great; and all of them were able to talk to the Pope as to another poor man.”

[In Dante's "Divine Comedy" this pope (who was alive at the time) was portrayed as being in the eighth circle of the Inferno for the crime of selling positions in the church to the highest bidder.]

*

A classic text on interrogating enemy captives offers a counterintuitive lesson on the best way to get information. [It is also good advice for witnessing more effectively.]

.....

Six months before the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison broke into public view, a small and fairly obscure private association of United States Marine Corps members posted on its Web site a document on how to get enemy POWs to talk.

The document described a situation very similar to the one the United States faces in the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan: a fanatical and implacable enemy, intense pressure to achieve quick results, a brutal war in which the old rules no longer seem to apply.

Marine Major Sherwood F. Moran, the report's author, noted that despite the complexities and difficulties of dealing with an enemy from such a hostile and alien culture, some American interrogators consistently managed to extract useful information from prisoners. The successful interrogators all had one thing in common in the way they approached their subjects. They were nice to them.

Moran was writing in 1943, and he was describing his own, already legendary methods of interrogating Japanese prisoners of war. More than a half century later his report remains something of a cult classic for military interrogators. The Marine Corps Interrogator Translator Teams Association (MCITTA), a group of active-duty and retired Marine intelligence personnel, calls Moran's report one of the “timeless documents” in the field and says it has long been “a standard read” for insiders. (A book about the Luftwaffe interrogator Hans Joachim Scharff, whose charm, easygoing manner, and perfect English beguiled many a captured Allied airman into revealing critical information, is another frequently cited classic in the field.) An MCITTA member says the group decided to post Moran's report online in July of 2003, because “many others wanted to read it” and because the original document, in the Marine Corps archives, was in such poor shape that the photocopies in circulation were difficult to decipher. He denies that current events had anything to do with either the decision to post the document or the increased interest in it.

But it is hard to imagine a historical lesson that would constitute a more direct reproach to recent U.S. policies on prisoner interrogation. And there is no doubt that Moran's report owes more than a little of its recent celebrity to the widespread disdain among experienced military interrogators for what took place at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo when ill-trained personnel were ordered to “soften up” prisoners. Since the prison scandals broke, many old hands in the business have pointed out that abusing prisoners is not simply illegal and immoral; it is also remarkably ineffective.

“The torture of suspects [at Abu Ghraib] did not lead to any useful intelligence information being extracted,” says James Corum, a professor at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College and the author of a forthcoming book on counterinsurgency warfare. “The abusers couldn't even use the old 'ends justify the means' argument, because in the end there was nothing to show but a tremendous propaganda defeat for the United States.”

Corum, who recently retired as a lieutenant colonel after twenty-eight years in the Army and Reserves, mostly in military intelligence, says that Moran's philosophy has repeatedly been affirmed in subsequent wars large and small. “Know their language, know their culture, and treat the captured enemy as a human being” is how Corum sums up Moran's enduring lesson.

Part of why Sherwood Moran became such a legendary figure among military interrogators was his cool disregard for what he termed the standard “hard-boiled” military attitude. The brutality of the fighting in the Pacific and the suicidal fanaticism of the Japanese had created a general assumption that only the sternest measures would get Japanese prisoners to divulge anything. Moran countered that in his and others' experience, strong-arm tactics simply did not work. Stripping a prisoner of his dignity, treating him as a still-dangerous threat, forcing him to stand at attention and flanking him with guards throughout his interrogation -- in other words, emphasizing that “we are his to-be-respected and august enemies and conquerors” -- invariably backfired. It made the prisoner “so conscious of his present position and that he was a captured soldier vs. enemy intelligence” that it “played right into [the] hands” of those who were determined not to give away anything of military importance.

In his report (written in the form of a letter of advice to interpreters newly assigned to interrogation duty) Moran stressed that he would usually begin an interrogation by taking almost the opposite tack.

I often tell a prisoner right at the start what my attitude is!

I consider a prisoner (i.e., a man who has been captured and

disarmed and in a perfectly safe place) as out of the war, out of

the picture, and thus, in a way, not an enemy ... Notice that ...

I used the word “safe.” That is the point: get the prisoner to a

safe place, where even he knows ... that it is all over. Then

forget, as it were, the “enemy” stuff, and the “prisoner” stuff.

I tell them to forget it, telling them I am talking as a human

being to a human being.

Every soldier, Moran observed, has a “story” he desperately wants to tell. The interrogator's job is to provide the atmosphere that allows the prisoner to tell it.

Begin by asking him things about himself. Make him and his

troubles the center of the stage, not you and your questions of

war problems. If he is not wounded or tired out, you can ask him

if he has been getting enough to eat; if he likes Western-style

food ... You can ask if he has had cigarettes, if he is being

treated all right, etc. If he is wounded you have a rare chance.

Begin to talk about his wounds. Ask if the doctor or corpsman

has attended to him. Have him show you his wounds or burns.

(They will like to do this!) ...

On [one] occasion a soldier was brought in. A considerable

chunk of his shinbone had been shot away. In such bad shape was

he that we broke off in the middle of the interview to have his

leg redressed. We were all interested in the redressing, in his

leg, it was almost a social affair! And the point to note is

that we really were interested, and not pretending to be

interested in order to get information out of him. This was the

prisoner who called out to me when I was leaving after that first

interview, “Won't you please come and talk to me every day.”

(And yet people are continually asking us, “Are the Japanese

prisoners really willing to talk?”)

Moran spoke fluent Japanese, but more important, he was thoroughly familiar with Japanese culture, having spent forty years in Japan as a missionary. He used this knowledge for one of his standard gambits: making a prisoner homesick. “This line has infinite possibilities,” he explained. “If you know anything about Japanese history, art, politics, athletics, famous places, department stores, eating places, etc. etc. a conversation may be relatively interminable.” Moran emphasized that a detailed knowledge of technical military terms and the like was less important than a command of idiomatic phrases and cultural references that allow the interviewer to achieve “the first and most important victory” -- getting “into the mind and into the heart” of the prisoner and achieving an “intellectual and spiritual” rapport with him.

Moran's whole approach -- and Hans Joachim Scharff's, too -- was built on the assumption that few if any prisoners are likely to possess decisive information about imminent plans. (And as one former Marine interrogator says, even if a prisoner does have information of the “ticking bomb” variety -- where the nuke is going to go off an hour from now, in the classic if overworked example -- under duress or torture he is most likely to try to run out the clock by making something up rather than reveal the truth.) Rather, it is the small and seemingly inconsequential bits of evidence that prisoners may give away once they start talking -- about training, weapons, commanders, tactics -- that, when assembled into a larger mosaic, build up the most complete and valuable picture of the enemy's organization, intentions, and methods.

Moran's report had an immediate impact. The Navy and the Marines recruited second-generation Japanese-Americans to teach an intensive one-year language course for interrogators that included a strong emphasis on Japanese culture. James Corum notes that the graduates of this course were among the most effective interrogators in the Pacific Island campaigns of 1944 and 1945: Marine interrogators deployed to the Marianas in June of 1944 were able to supply their commanders with the complete Japanese order of battle within forty-eight hours of landing on Saipan and Tinian.

In contrast, in late 2002 the military's Southern Command had so few interrogators and interpreters that it was forced to employ inexperienced and untrained civilian contractors to perform these jobs at Guantanamo. The officer in charge of the Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center at Abu Ghraib had no interrogation experience himself and no skilled interrogators or interpreters working underneath him. He, too, turned to civilian contractors. Government auditors criticized these deficiencies in early 2004 and noted that several of the firms that supplied civilian contractors had no experience in such work. Yet the shortage of military interrogators continues, and the Department of Defense continues to employ people outside the military for some of this work. “They let a bunch of out-of-control contractors, CIA freelancers, untrained military-intelligence people, et cetera get turned loose under the promise and pressure of getting quick results,” Corum told me.

One of the most striking points Moran made was that those interrogators who tried the hardest to break down the morale of POWs were actually revealing their own fear -- ”fear that the prisoner will take advantage of you and your friendship.” This, he noted, was “the same idea that a foreman must swear at his construction gang in order to get work out of them.”

Of course there always is the danger that some types will take

advantage of your friendliness. This is true of any phase of

life, whether you are a teacher, a judge, an athletic trainer, a

parent. But there is some risk in any method. But this is where

the interpreter's character comes in ... You can't fool with a

man of real character....

Moran was saying that an interrogator who is genuinely tough has the confidence to know that he will always keep the upper hand, even while being nice. “Enlightened hard-boiled-ness,” he called this attitude. And he concluded that “strange as it may seem to say so,” the most important characteristic of a successful interrogator is not his experience or even his linguistic knowledge; it is “his own temperament” and “his own character.”

________

Adapted from article "Truth Extraction" by Stephen Budiansky in ATLANTIC magazine, June 2005.

*

In all their affliction he was afflicted … in his love and in his pity he redeemed them, — Isaiah 63:9.

Let them that suffer according to the will of God commit the keeping of their souls to him in well doing, as unto a faithful Creator. — 1 Peter 4:19.

Look at the gentleness of Christ as He weeps over Jerusalem, as He is moved with compassion at the multitudes milling as sheep without a shepherd, as He tactfully leads a woman at Sychar’s well to a knowledge of Himself, as He deals with the woman in the eighth of John, as He graciously instructs Peter to feed His sheep, and in every act of compassion and love of His sinless, holy life. Though He did display justified intolerance of sin (John 2:13-16) His life was full of gentleness. — C.F. Bundy

On Thy compassion 1 repose

In weakness and distress:

I will not ask for greater ease,

Lest I should love Thee less.

Oh, ‘tis a blessed thing for me

To need Thy tenderness. — A. L. Waring

Dr. James Dobson’s experience at the public school system was from 1960-1963. At the final year, he had to say goodbye to 25 to 30 teary-eyed kids. One young lady whom he said goodbye to in 1963 called him in 1975. Julie had grown up. James remembered her as a seventh grader with a crisis of confidence in herself. Her Latin heritage embarrassed her and she was overweight. She had only one friend who had moved away the following year. She and Dr. Dobson talked on the phone about the good ole days.

“Where do you go to church?” she asked. He told her, and she asked if she could visit. He told her she could, and the next week she came. In the coming months, she became a Christian.

A few months after her initial visit, Dobson asked her, “Julie, I want to ask you a question. Will you tell me why you went to so much trouble to obtain my unlisted number and call me last fall?”

“Because when I was a seventh-grade student in junior high school, you were the only person in my life who acted like you respected and believed in me, and I wanted to know your God.”

As we consider this unique capacity given to us by God - the capacity to feel - there are some shared feelings expressed almost wherever you go. Allow me to illustrate.

Some time ago, I was at the airport waiting to catch a plane. The television monitors seemed to be the focal point at every departure gate, and I wondered what story was attracting such undivided attention. It was the trial of Timothy McVeigh for the bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City. His friend was on the witness stand.

"What did he say when you said that even innocent children would die in this planned explosion of the building?" the prosecutor asked. Every viewer waited with bated breath for the answer. The alleged accomplice replied that McVeigh had told him, "Everyone there is guilty by association with this evil government, and they are getting what they deserve." At this moment it was impossible to miss the reaction: Every man and woman present was shaking his or her head in disbelief. It was the silent expression of incredulity that a man could have no twinge of conscience at such a callous act.

More recently, remember the tragic story of an eighteen-year-old young woman? She excused herself from the middle of a dance at her prom, returned moments later, and asked the band to play her favorite song. Nobody was aware that she had gone to the bathroom, gave birth to her baby, and then suffocated the baby to death. Psychiatrists describe her as a woman who has amputated her feelings from reality. Society at large was dumbfounded by the horror of that unconscionable act.

But it is not only the bizarre that homogenizes our feelings. We watch with widespread approval when tears of delight are shed in pursuit of something noble. Kerri Strug, who, with only one foot to bear the weight of her painful landing, courageously vaulted in the 1996 Olympics for the honor and goal of helping her team win a medal for her country, winning the emotional applause of a watching world. The tears were hard to restrain.

Tears are a vital part of our make up. Jesus wept at His friend’s grave, even though He was going to raise him from the dead. The Bible says there is a time to mourn and a time to laugh. The best gift Jesus Christ gives to you is to show you what to weep for and what joyous laughter is all about.

_________________________

Copyright © 2002 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with permission. "A Slice of Infinity" is a radio ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

*

One day in October 2012, a New Yorker named Jeff Ragsdale, recently dumped and down on his luck, taped a flyer around Manhattan. It read, “If anyone wants to talk about anything, call me.” He included his cell-phone number.

Within a day, he had received about a hundred calls and text messages. When people started posting pictures of the flyer on Reddit.com, the social-news Web site, that number jumped to seven hundred calls and a thousand text messages daily.

The main thing that distinguishes Jeff’s activities from the work of a priest or a counsellor is his lack of training. His callers know that. Many have aired their problems previously through professional channels and now want to connect with someone who’s like them -- someone who has nothing practical to offer but who may understand.

________

From the article "The Disconnect" by Nathan Heller.

After British singer-songwriter Vicky Beeching announced her homosexuality earlier this year, some Christians reacted angrily, others defensively regarding an artist whose compositions have been sung in their churches for years. Some have posted letters, articles and blogs to prove her wrong. For the record I have no doubt her theological beliefs regarding homosexuality are flawed.

But as I read her story, I was reminded of how many times I’ve heard similar things from same-sex strugglers growing up in a conservative Christian environment. I ached as I read her account of the pain, fear and alienation she felt as she silently dealt with her feelings. I imagined this young girl who loved God, who was terrified of allowing anyone to know of her struggle.

At times Ms. Beeching mustered the courage to seek spiritual guidance. This did not end well. Certainly her recollections may be colored by her subsequent experiences, but I’ve heard similar stories from many who have overcome same-sex attractions.

Her story reminds me again of how crucially important it is for Southern Baptists to carefully analyze our attitudes and responses regarding those who struggle with homosexuality. I don’t mean just the pastor. I mean the church as a whole. Are our people trained to deal with this issue? Would your church have made a different outcome possible?

Some ideas to consider:

1. Develop an ability to empathize. Tim Wilkins of Cross Ministries has said, “One of the reasons evangelicals have not made much progress in reaching homosexuals with the Gospel is their failure to empathize with the excruciating pain homosexuals experience.” This doesn’t imply acceptance of sin. It simply means you are willing to realize a fellow human being is in pain. The old saying “people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care” is certainly true here.

2. Be prepared to walk with them. Too often Christians are more willing to give advice than to come alongside strugglers. I once counseled “Gene”* who left a very good job and moved 200 miles away to get help in overcoming his same-sex desires. Gene said he once worked up the nerve to talk to a pastor at his church. The pastor listened compassionately but never followed up in any way. Later Gene saw him coming down the hall and when he spotted Gene, the pastor abruptly turned and went the other way. Conversely, several have told me that their journey out happened because someone in their life loved them, unconditionally and consistently walking with them toward Jesus.

3. Be ready to give an answer for the hope you have. Ms. Beeching said in an interview that the problem is that we take the Bible out of context. She mentions the prohibition against homosexuality and against shell fish both in the book of Leviticus. She also says that God is a God of love who loves her just as she is. Dan Haseltine of Jars of Clay questioned opposition to gay marriage, also earlier this year. “We often say, ‘Scripture is clear about this or that,’ but the very fact that so many people disagree or have alternate perspectives or interpretations of scripture, means that we have to move beyond simply quoting a scripture to prove our point,” Haseltine said. How well and how winsomely would your church members answer these claims? Several new books listed in this Baptist Press story can provide help.

4. Avoid saying “It’s just a choice.” You will likely lose any possibility of ministry if you do. Sin is always a choice. The particular temptation we face is not. Along those same lines, avoid arguing “it isn’t genetic.” There is a difference in genetic determination and genetic predisposition. We are all predisposed to sin. The Bible says we are all by nature children of wrath (Ephesians 2:3). It shouldn’t surprise us if that nature presents itself in sexual brokenness. Additionally, I have known many strugglers who were sexually abused. They didn’t choose that.

5. Don’t demand higher standards of discipleship from same-sex strugglers than you would others (i.e., those living together, those leaving their mates for someone else, etc.).

6. Help make our churches “safe” places for those who struggle with any sin. Familiarize yourself with where help can be found. Don’t just recommend anything or anyone until you acquaint yourself with what their beliefs are. I’ve known of “Christian” counselors telling someone they should embrace their identity as a homosexual.

I am saddened by reports of others who have “come out” as a result of Ms. Beeching’s testimony. Far too many Christians have accepted these arguments because they simply didn’t know how to respond lovingly and with sound apologetics. Do your church members?

*Name changed.

________

Bob Stith (bstith777@juno.com) is founder of Family and Gender Issues Ministries in Southlake, Texas, and formerly served as the Southern Baptist Convention’s national strategist for gender issues.

There is a need for each of us to develop what I like to call "moral imagination." By this, I mean the ability fully to think through the implications of our actions, particularly as to how they will affect others. Over the past century, society has made extraordinary technological advances because of the active imaginations of our scientists and researchers, but we have been slower to advance morally because of a general unwillingness to practice imagination in the moral sphere. So let me start now by offering an example of the harm that can ensue when we refuse to exercise moral imagination.

[Consider] the late Lee Atwater, the brilliant but highly aggressive campaign manager who directed George Bush's successful 1988 presidential bid. In 1980 Atwater was managing a congressional election campaign in South Carolina, during which his campaign released information that the Democratic candidate in the race, Tom Turnispeed, had years earlier suffered an episode of depression for which he had received electric shock treatment.

Turnispeed was mortified and outraged. None of us appreciates having his or her medical history made public, and particularly not our psychiatric history. He responded with an anguished attack on his opponent's campaign ethics. When Atwater was asked to respond to Turnispeed's attack, he answered that he had no intention of responding to charges made by a person "hooked up to a jumper cable."

What a grotesque violation of privacy and what a shameful humiliation of another! Atwater's cruel words put into the voters' heads a vicious, graphic image that potentially poisoned not only their perceptions of Turnispeed, but also of everyone else who had undergone electric shock therapy.

This story, however, has a postscript. Ten years later Atwater was in a hospital bed dying of an inoperable brain tumor. In the last weeks of his life, while he was lying in a room connected to all sorts of uncomfortable and invasive machines, he wrote a letter to Turnispeed begging his forgiveness. I am convinced this was no phony deathbed repentance. Finding himself in this horrible circumstance, Atwater finally realized the enormous cruelty he had committed and fully regretted it.

Had Atwater had the moral imagination to realize in 1980 what he realized in 1990, he never would have released information about Turnispeed's treatment or mocked his experience. Indeed, moral imagination involves "repenting" of evil acts before we commit them, by wielding our imagination in such a manner that we act rightly towards others even when we don't have the experience or knowledge to be fully empathetic.

*