The Hidden Faces of Suffering
Robert Seiple Wednesday, 1 December 2004
He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him.
Isaiah 53:3
This text from Isaiah is more familiar to me than the actual experience of suffering that it evokes. Undoubtedly the same is true for most Western Christians. Most of us have led a protected life and a privileged existence. All too often, it seems, we are the ones hiding our faces rather than really empathizing with suffering.
This is not to say that we do not "feel sorry" for victims of disease and disaster, persecution and poverty; we do. But where we are frequently found wanting is in the kind of empathy that is personal, practical, and applied. Engaged empathy—incarnational empathy—is clearly the higher calling, and it is the theme that this special issue of The Brandywine Review is designed to explore.
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