Jesus, too, encountered a naked man living with mental torment. He responded quite differently.
empathy
Morality transformed
The delight I felt while reading this book needs further interrogation, because its stories deal with troublesome subjects.
On Sunday, after a tragic week of race-related killings in Dallas, Minneapolis, and Baton Rouge, I took a seat in my white evangelical middle-class megachurch in central Pennsylvania. I didn’t know what to expect, but as the sermon began I found myself pleasantly surprised. My pastor used his scheduled sermon on the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25–37) to address the issue of race in America.
Moral concern usually begins when one person makes an effort to become, in some measure, one with the other. Privilege impedes this.
While I happen to think that refusing to bake a cake for a gay wedding that isn’t even happening at your own church is a distortion of what it means to follow Jesus, this is more lament than argument. It makes me sad; and our religious freedom tradition, quite rightly, isn’t particularly concerned about my sadness. What’s far more frustrating than pro-RFRA sentiment itself is the lack of empathy displayed by some who hold it.
Empathy made it big in an era some call the "me generation." By discovering my feelings inside you, even you are about me.
Our brains are wired to allow us to read each other's minds, to feel each other's person.
Is exaggerated violence in Passion plays merely a product of our baser natures? Or does the savagery actually have a proper place in the crucifixion's meaning?