Utilizing Sympathy and Empathy in Historical Analysis - Part Four

Utilizing Sympathy and Empathy in Historical Analysis

Part Four

Yet, there is not one single social or political dilemma that the United States resolved given the seemingly limitless resources at her disposal.  Women still die of breast cancer at alarming rates in this prosperous nation which appears to lack the moral and ethical character to distribute its resources to benefit its most vulnerable citizens.  At the dawn of a new millennium, possibly intractable arrogance and incivility in American international policy contributed to the insanity that yielded the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 11 September 2001.  A protracted war of more than a decade costing more than ten trillion dollars and creating longstanding deficits of greater sums was the reaction of the Bush Administration.  There is not a single social ill to which the United States has ever committed similar resources. 

Notwithstanding her premiere status in the world, the United States lags behind as it relates to public education, public healthcare and other societal challenges relative to the resources of other countries and their use of them.  Future historians may justifiably and harshly condemn this current generation of American citizens for formulating and financing a culture of individual and collective narcissism.

Summarily, as we mature spiritually and develop personally, extending unconditional forgiveness towards anyone and everyone who harmed us is a necessity step in achieving wellness, authenticity, integrity, healing and wholeness.  These enduring riches of life will not emerge in the life of anyone who intractably refuses to forgive.  Instead, he or she will suffer greatly with resentment, bitterness and strife.  Those emotional and psychological toxins eventually poison a person’s heart and mind.  An existential and spiritual death results albeit the continuance of physical life. 

Nevertheless, a very helpful, pragmatic and practical method of attaining forgiveness is detailing the hard, raw and complex facts that influenced the decisions of the people who harmed us.  If we switch places with them, perhaps we discover that we would have chosen similarly.  Should we maintain that we would have made more moral, ethical and just choices, can we authentically posit that we possess the courage and character to defeat personal fears and selfish ambitions.  Conceivably, were we in parallel circumstances, we would have done exactly what our perpetrators did.  Acknowledging this stark reality affords us the divine, gracious and compassion opportunity to sympathize or even empathize with the people who harmed us.  As we extend this generosity toward them, we assuredly forgive them following the example of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who prays on the cross, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”