root@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU (Charles Root) (03/16/86)
You have asked Peter Homeier whether the empathy that he describes can be found in the Bible as a gift. If not, you imply that it may be from Satan. Peter's experience sounds very much like that described by Charles Williams in both his fiction and non-fiction. Williams believes that when the Bible says we should bear each other's burdens, it means just that. He believes that it is literally possible to take someone else's pain and fear from them and bear it for them. This is not so much a special gift from God, as a possibility that is available to everyone through the Holy Spirit. He sees this as the essense of Christianity. After all, our most basic assertion is that Christ bore the guilt for our sin. He believes that when we are told to emulate Christ, this means that the life of the Christian community should be based on bearing each others' burdens. This view is set forth most powerfully Williams' novel "Descent into Hell". It is hard to summarize this work in a way that does justice to it. But in this work, Williams gives us a vision of a Christian community that is not bounded by space or time, and which is engaged in continual acts of exchange. According to C.S. Lewis' introductory comments in a volume of Williams' poetry, this vision is based on actual experience. I do not see how anyone could read Williams and doubt that this is from God, and is in fact precisely what Jesus meant by love.