Christian Empathy: Where is it?

My friend Joe, an agnostic Christian, and I had a nice chat on the phone last night. We had not seen each other over the Holidays and were discussing our Xmas family experiences. During the course of our conversation, he relayed an incident which happened at a soup kitchen that his church sponsored.

It seems that one of Joe's church friends has recently 'gotten the spirit' and become a very vocal evangelical. Joe attends a rather liberal Methodist church - extremely liberal for our area - and there aren't many holy warriors who are his fellow parishioners. During the soup kitchen, a young Guatemalan family entered; a dad, mom and two young children. Joe and his newly Jesus’ed up friend walked forward to welcome them. Joe attempted to welcome them in Spanish and make them feel at home. Joe's evangelical friend immediately bent down one of the kids and said, "Hi, do you know Jesus?"

Joe said that he simply walked away in disbelief but now wishes he had said something immediately to his friend. To his credit, Joe is going to tell his friend that he thinks that his actions were completely inappropriate in that setting - a soup kitchen. Joe raised the point that his friend evidently cannot imagine what it would be like to have someone push their religion on you in those circumstances. In other words, his friend cannot empathize. I laughed and told Joe that I had met very few Christians who seem capable of empathy with people of other faiths or non-believers.

If you examinethe major conflicts between the secular world and religion, in the United States in particular, I believe that you will find a lack of empathy on the part of the Christians to be a major contributor to the problem. Most Christians can't imagine what it would be like to be in a minority viewpoint and have symbols and reminders of the majority constantly paraded in front of you and shoved down your throat. Most Christians can't empathize with the Jewish or Muslim child who comes home in tears due to the inevitable attacks that children who are 'different' suffer at the hands of their peers. Most Christians don't see why non-Christians get so upset that Christian symbolism and phrases are printed on our money and used in our official, supposedly secular, political procedures.

Is it really so hard for Christians to, for one second, imagine if they were the minority and it was the beliefs and rituals of someone else that were constantly promoted and sometimes forced upon them? Do Christians simply not care? Is it a 'evangelize at any cost' mentality that governs? Is it simply the nature of a majority to behave in a manner akin to fascism?
I have to say that the vast majority of Christians I know have a major failing when it comes to having empathy for those of differing religions. Most of them have zero empathy for those with no religious beliefs. Perhaps Christians love playing the victim so much that possessing or demonstrating empathy is simply contrary to the role. I really don't know. My thinking now is so far away from that narrow, dark and frightened place that ruled it when I was a believer that trying to decipher the motivations of the faithful now is almost impossible for me.

By the way, when the 'war on Christmas' is over, will someone tell me?

Tagged as:'war on christmas',christian,atheist,atheism,religion