Opening with Empathy

“If you press this button, someone on the other side of the world – someone you don’t know will die and I will give you $250,000 dollars”.  This was a line from a Twilight Zone reboot I watched as a young teenager.  The gist of the episode was that a strange man showed up on the door step of a struggling couple’s run-down apartment and left a box with a mechanical button and the dark offer for the woman.  The man told her he would return the next day.  The woman told the husband about the strange visit.  The husband responded that she should have nothing to do with it, regardless of their financial struggles. 

After a sleepless night the wife gave in and pushed the button.  The stranger returned the next day and traded her a bag of cash for the magical box back and told her, “Don’t worry, I will be sure to give the box to somebody far away that you don’t know.”

We interact on a regular basis with the nameless and faceless who may as well be on the other side of the world.  It’s called statistics and it’s not until a reframing event happens, like the lady in the Twilight Zone experienced that we convert the unknown into a person.

This was brought home to me years ago when someone close to me was in the midst of a life altering medical event.  During the diagnostic process we heard about a new drug that could be the solution to the problem, but the maker voluntarily pulled it because 0.2% of people died in an early trial.  I voiced my opinion that it should be made available, because the risk was only 0.2%!  The doctor looked at me and said, “To the people that died and those who cared for them, the number was 100%”.  My perspective was instantly changed.  The doctor had converted the statistic in to a person, someone’s loved one. 

Shortly after coronavirus cases showed up in the US, I found myself in the habit of checking the statistics regularly; How many new cases?  How many deaths?  What’s the death rate? etc.  It wasn’t until today that I knew of anyone in my circle who died or was grieving a loved one as a result of the pandemic.  In an instant, a statistic can change from a sterile number into a person.  Quoting a death rate to the ones I know who are grieving is meaningless, because in their world it was a 100% for the person they cared about.

It’s often not until a statistic becomes personal that we realize we’ve been using it to obscure a reality that might cause fear.  A death rate of half a percent or even better 0.1% doesn’t sound so scary.  Most people are willing to live with those odds.  But sometimes a comparison can bring perspective obscured by a statistic.  By the conservative version of the CDC United States death toll numbers, more people have died from coronavirus in three months than the 58,220 American soldiers who gave their lives in Vietnam over a ten plus year period (most of the deaths occurred in the years ’66 to ’70).  The Vietnam veterans I know carry the weight of what that number means.  

So, what’s the point of this?  Am I suggesting we aren’t scared enough and that we should cower in fear?  Hardly.  What I am hoping to convey is that we need to convert the nameless faceless statistics into people.  The word for this is empathy and we enter into it when we can imagine what others are going through.  Instead of minimizing the loss as the way through our fears, we want to honor the value of life.  It’s in valuing life that we are able to persevere through a difficult time.

In recent conversations, I’ve become aware of two competing interests.  People are either voicing a concern about the loss of life or the loss of livelihood.  Often, people holding either view voice contempt for those not agreeing with them.  Both views matter.  What’s too often missing in the conversation is empathy.  

Instead of treating others with a different view with contempt, we need to use empathy to honor the difficult, different situations many are in.  We would do well not to minimize the different kinds of losses others are going through, but to understand them.

While this may be challenging, I find it’s easier to do so when I remind myself that more was done for me.  Jesus doesn’t just empathize with our plight.  He is our high priest who was tested in every way and because of how he suffered, he understands the griefs we experience.  This is the reason given that we can “with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”  We can have confidence because we are not nameless, faceless statistics, but the ones that Jesus had his heart pierced for.

May we find in Jesus, the one who is empathetic to our plight, grace and mercy in our time of need.