There’s a story of a German pilot in World War II. He was one “kill” short of earning the Iron Cross when he spotted an American B-17 bomber crew in trouble. They’d already taken heavy fire from Nazi guns, and they would have been easy prey.
But the German pilot remembered that a superior officer had told him, “When your enemy is no longer a threat to you, he ceases to be your enemy.” In those war-torn skies, the German pilot found a peculiar emotion: empathy. He didn’t pull the trigger. He nodded at the surprised Americans and escorted them until they reached safer skies over the North Sea.
It’s natural to feel sympathy for those who are like us, for the people who are on “our team.”
But Jesus calls us to a higher kind of love. His victory over sin and death means that no one can threaten us any longer. We no longer have to regard anyone as an enemy. Freed from the need to defend ourselves, let’s reach out to understand the very people we might feel tempted to dismiss. That doesn’t mean that we need to accept or explain away sin, but let’s see people for who they are – people Jesus came to save and to be with and to love.
Prisoners and their families are easy to dismiss as “other people” who deserve what they get. But without Jesus, we all deserve separation from our Father. As we look to His example, I pray we all find an emotion that’s too rare in our days: empathy.