#009 - Empathy and the Holy Spirit - pt. 1

APRIL 2019

Something strange happens when a bunch of empaths get together and decide to start feeling the same way toward something. Empathy is a real thing and also a really weird thing. Some people are naturally wired towards feeling others' emotions and taking on the burden of how someone else may be feeling in the moment. Some psychologists believe that every human being is born with varying levels of empathy that develop over time. It seems women are more prone to be empaths than men, and women also get the upper hand in distinguishing emotions. Not to put a gender spin on it, but it is a proper broad stroke. Go figure. Mom always knows when you’re lying about where you are. Call it a woman’s intuition.

In the hunter-gatherer days of humankind, men would hunt, and women would care for the community. As a result, our brains are prewired with several tendencies based on these genders. Let’s say that if you identify as a certain gender, you will begin to think and act like the gender you assume. So, you will likely be a compartmental or connected brain. Some people fall in between, too.  

I learned all of this while working at a marriage conference from a very informative sex psychologist. Thank you, Dr. Drew. He told me that men’s brains are like waffles and women’s brains are like spaghetti. Once again, thank you, Dr.  Drew.  I’m sure some of you reading this have heard the saying before. It simply means that men can place stuff into neat compartments, and women tend to have things more connected. Dudebros, think about that the next time your wife cries over something seemingly insignificant to you. It could be connected to five other things.

Without getting into too much of a gender rant (because in this political climate), this has to do with the empathy concept in supporting the previous claim that women are better empathizers than men. Sorry, fellas. It's just how they’re wired from birth. Empathy requires a connection. And that’s the bottom line.

Empathy has been studied since the birth of modern Psychology, and people who are natural empaths can be sought after in certain career fields. Funeral home directors, for instance, need to be fairly good at empathy when dealing with bereaved families and widows. Dealing with death requires empathy. It is obvious to me that people seek out "empaths" when dealing with tough issues and losses. It is then like a burden lifted when a person looks you in the eyes and tells you they know exactly how and what emotions you’re feeling in the moment.  

This power becomes more like a superhero power and is one of the reasons empaths are good friends and generally good people to have around. These people become emotional amplifiers when happy and emotional dampeners when times get tough. In the electronics sense, I can call these empaths emotional capacitors because they can smooth out rough emotions, creating a smooth current of modulated emotional energy. Weird stuff, right? 

So, are you one of these people? Or are you on the struggle bus with this one? 

Regardless of how you rank on an empathy scale for those who lack natural empathy, there is good news—empathy can be taught and learned, and over time, you can become more empathetic. If you are one of these people, empathy training can hone in and create a powerful skill set that can be used to help those who are in need. Or it can be used for manipulation. The power is yours.

Uber experiences

In this writing and in others, I have mentioned that God has the tendency to place other Christians in my life, especially among my Uber drivers. My old truck, which breaks down frequently, allows me to go on these Uber drives quite unexpectedly. This time, my serpentine belt decides to break, and the shredded half becomes wrapped around my radiator fan. To make it more stressful, I’m going to work at a church that is the furthest from my house, at a staggering sixty-three miles. Not to worry I’m a pro at this because of its frequency in my life, so as soon as I see the carnage of belts and fans, I immediately request an Uber from the side of the highway. All this was in the early hours of Sunday morning, and at least it wasn’t raining. 

Crystal showed up, and God decided to keep us company during our nearly hour-long drive to a mountain suburb of Atlanta. This morning, Crystal was driving to clear her head and decided to turn on her app. It was her first pickup of the morning. She was struggling with thinking that she was going to hell because of some decisions she made, mainly being in a long-term committed relationship outside of marriage. As a Christian, you stop believing in coincidences early in your walk.

She asked me many Holy Spirit questions, and I tried to empathize with her and help her talk through her feelings. I physically felt what she was going through- her struggle within. I became sad when she did, happy when she was, and eventually felt like we ended the ride on a good note. After all, I have to maintain my 4.99 rating on Uber. I began to realize that her struggle was one we all share and cling to religiously. Ultimately, I advised her to listen to what the Holy Spirit was telling her, and we both left the conversation in tears.

The spirit convicts more than man.  

This all starts with my truck breaking down and her taking me to church—all while having church along the way. On the way home, I have another Uber driver pick me up. This time, I was greeted by a Dominican man in his thirties named Juan, and as soon as he opened his mouth, I knew we would be great friends.

Juan, you see, was a natural empathizer!

It takes Juan to know Juan.

He didn’t usually drive on this side of town; he was gay, and he was a Christian. Most importantly, he gave a ride to someone who recommended the church I worked for as a safe place for him to visit. Being gay in the South doesn’t provide you with too many options for church, family, or community. These are things that any minority struggles with.

I was the second person he interacted with from this organization, and he saw it as a sign from God that he needed to visit our downtown campus. We started talking about empathy and what it meant to him and he had no idea that I had a journal entry in progress on the subject. Once again, God gave me proof that he was working in my life. Empaths can sense energy and can read people’s energy naturally. They can get creeped out or emotional just by a person entering their field of perception. 

Juan, my fabulous new friend, told me a story about a man he picked up once. He knew something was off without looking at this person or talking to him. He told me that the energy in the car changed, and he felt uncomfortable for the rest of the ride. When swimming in an open ocean, the feeling of a cold spot in a seemingly warm ocean is the feeling an empath gets at this moment. Empaths can naturally hyper-perceive energy like this, and without getting too much into the unseen realms of energy, each person has their own energy. More on that later.

Close encounters of the spiritual kind. 

When I met Hercules for the first time, he was quite an unassuming stagehand, and I was working for an ultra-charismatic Christian denomination. People were speaking in tongues all around me, and for those who have never heard of or been a part of this phenomenon before, it can be very unnerving. Hercules was there to help us set up for the event, and he was merely the start of my weeklong journey into the mystical realm of spiritual energy—a Holy Spirit holiday if you will. 

Hercules is an empath, and we begin to talk about the ups and downs of being in such a way.  After realizing that we were talking more than we were working, I ended the conversation with him on the topic of reading people’s auras. What people will share with you is amazing when you listen and ask the right questions. Hercules wasn’t the best speaker, but I was still captivated by how he talked about reading energy.  He said everyone’s energy had a color and, after denoting my bluish aqua energy, told me his mood changed by the people he was around. Just like Juan!

We all know people who, by their personalities, suck the fun out of a party or the energy out of the room. Empaths are highly susceptible to this shift of energy.  When I was younger, I told someone that they were an energy sponge because they tended to slow the work process. When this person was around, it was like the crew was stuck in honey or molasses because of how fast they were moving. And surely, if you are not good at empathy, you have felt this shift in energy. 

Usually, the frat bro of the group quips, “Man, it just got icy in here!” 

Hercules and I bond over empathy and exchange numbers, and I’m happy to say we still keep in touch. This encounter set me up on a seven-day adventure through the lands of Oz, and fortunately, it was a timely visit. 

Insert Christianity rant.

Denominational Christianity is broken up into various flavors of the master religion. People have conceived, and millions have believed in a seemingly harmless ideal or way of governance that, in practice, becomes less than that. Theories and rhetoric put into practice can sometimes have demoralizing effects, especially when, by any means necessary, an end result is met. Compliance becomes a word of unity. Individualism is crushed for the sake of the state. Nationalism is the reasoning and becomes the battle cry. This is why Communism and Socialism sell well but deliver an unintentionally mediocre and destructive end product. But this is about Christianity, right?

The same can be said of splitting religion into denominational groupings. Even large non-denominational multi-campus churches run into the same problems. If attendees do not have a strong core pride in the organization, a mediocre product is delivered. Then, this product becomes destructive to the whole religion. I’ve written about this plenty. It is the personalization paradox of Christianity. How can we not divide up a personal religion? How can we empathize with one another towards a more ecumenical approach?

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Commentary: When I originally wrote this, I believed in a totalitarian ecumenical approach, but now I feel subtle differences in personalization make Christianity fun and unique. This is to interject a shift in personality as I have become older.

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I argued with someone recently about my use of personalization to describe Christianity. His answer was the B-i-b-l-e. He argued that half of Christianity is personal and the other biblical. I happen to disagree with this, as you can imagine. It is like using the Bible to defend the Bible. My interpretation of his argument was that it’s a personal relationship with Jesus paired with the Bible. Coequals in his personal version of Christianity.  This is, however, at its core divisive because it undermines the ultimate message of Jesus by placing the whole of the Bible as coequal. And boy, is the Bible a divisive point. 

Unity is a message that should be preached in Christianity more. Unity with those who are Christians regardless of religious upbringing and background, regardless of biblical interpretation. The simpler we can make our message, the better and the better understood we will become. God gives us Jesus as a message of unity for the future of humanity, a solution as to how we are to survive into what is to come. Until Jesus comes again, and until then, we have something he left behind to help us with our empathy. 

Ultimately, for all of us to become better Christians and neighbors.

Et Spiritu Sancti.

At first, I thought of writing two separate journals about empathy and the Holy Spirit. But the more I wrote about the two, the more I realized how interconnected they can be. I also realized how out there and esoteric these two ideas become. 

On one side of the equation, physical feeling is associated with both. On the other, an unseen force at work can show up at will or in a supercharged group of believers. Science through quantum mechanics tells us that we are all made up of energy, and Jesus connects us to God through his Holy Spirit. So, I guess you could say we are all linked to the creator's energy by Jesus and physically to each other by the energy at the core of our makeup. 

Our very atoms and cells are energy; the world created for us is energy, and the Holy Spirit is the physical manifestation of this innate energy.  I believe the purest form of what God intended the energy of his creation to be in this manifestation. This Holy Spirit. The one that lives inside all born-again Christians. God has created all of humanity for this experience. It is one we have to allow into our lives voluntarily, but once it takes hold, its power is unimaginable. 

This spiritual energy can manifest in your life and convict you, can speak truth to you, and can remove the pain and depression away from any situation. All by asking. All by praying. All by ultimately living a God and Jesus-centered life. The life of a true Christ-follower. But all this is contingent on you allowing and calling the Holy Spirit to move. This is a purposely deep conversation that ties into what it means to be a good empath. Or how to train yourself for empathy rather than sympathy. 

Sympathy is simply saying I feel sorry for you, while empathy is feeling a person's energy in a sorry state. 

I heard a speaker put it another way. Sympathy is noticing a person in a well and remarking on how bad it must suck; empathy is climbing down into the well with them. Empathy is about experiencing life in another’s shoes and shaping your perspective by experiencing others. Only once you have experienced someone else’s struggle can you begin to help the healing process. Group therapy is a great example of this concept. Through other’s similar or shared experiences we can all grow towards a healthier future and a brighter tomorrow. 

When we feel the Holy Spirit, we empathize with our savior, Jesus. This powerful emotion is so strong that most people are destroyed (emotionally wrecked) or overwhelmed by it. This can be life-changing, and trust me, it happens to me on a near-daily basis. It can be a spirit of happy thankfulness or despair at my unworthiness. This Holy Spirit is how I know that God and Jesus are real, and their impact on my life is something I will touch on later. I promise.

When a bunch of Spirit-filled Christians gets together, something magical happens, and hopefully, you have experienced this if you are one. When the music is just right, and everyone around you is worshipping, something takes control of you. Something spiritual. Something unexplained. Perhaps it comes to you during the message of a service when the communicator says something that convicts you personally. Maybe it is the feeling you get when you give to others or do something nice for a family member. And maybe even each time a bell rings, someone has a Holy Spirit moment. 

The full gospel approach of Aimee McPherson.

In the early 20th century, no one was more evangelical and influential than a California woman named Aimee Semple McPherson. Before Billy Graham, there was Aimee. Born into a religious Canadian family, she started a movement that still exists today with a global consistory of eight million members. Celebrities ranked among the congregation at her Los Angeles temple where up to ten thousand people would crowd to hear her speak. It is even rumored that Cole Porter based the character Reno Sweeney from his musical Anything Goes after her. Her story was about women's empowerment when women had just gotten the right to vote.

I booked a gig filling in for one of my friends, not knowing who or what I would encounter. Turns out it was for the Foursquare Gospel Church, founded by Aimee Semple McPherson. It was the end of a spiritually enriching month for me. For the first time in my life, I knew that the Holy Spirit could move in me, and for the first time, I could use it to help those around me. I came to this gig after being in such an overflowing state, and during the first session, I became spiritually filled to the point of exploding into song. I started doing lights like God wanted me to. I knew, however, that it was what needed to be done.