Ken
Hadaway (left), director of missions at Grace Church in Southern Pines, N.C., stands in the Grace Church
lobby with Julie and Brad Riley of iEmpathize.
“Do
I empathize?” asked Brad Riley of “iEmpathize” as he spoke recently at Grace Church
in Southern Pines, N.C.
Riley,
who lives with his wife, Julie, in Boulder, Colorado, is the founder and president
of “iEmpathize” (iE), “an international child advocacy and media non-profit” with
a mission “to eradicate child exploitation while engaging culture in creative
solutions.” The group focuses on the U.S. and Mexico (www.iempathize.org).
“What we want to do is eradicate this
stuff,” Riley said about human trafficking. “Sixty percent [of the iEmpathize
budget] is used in prevention, restoration and intervention mixed with advocacy.”
He
noted that disengaging and apathy are not “the heart of God.” He defined
“empathy” as “walking in someone else’s shoes” or as “taking a walk with that
person.”
“It’s not just to say ‘I’m not OK with that [human trafficking],’”
Riley said. “Sympathy is passive. Empathy goes further. If we don’t step in,
criminal enterprises get to do what they want. It’s a criminal problem, first,
and a culture problem, second.”
He told of a young girl in Guatemala who saw her father kill her mother
before killing himself.
“Her uncle began selling her for sex,” Riley said. He added that when
two men, together, sexually abused the girl, she fought them, escaped and found
her way to a safe house in Mexico City. No legislation against human
trafficking existed in Mexico until three years ago, he noted.
The essence of the Gospel is really about empathy, Riley said.
“When we were in a bad way, the Word became flesh and dwelled among
us,” he said. “God built us to be sympathetic beings. When we become insulated
and focused on ourselves, God’s kingdom gets stifled out.”
He read God’s words recorded by Amos: “I hate, I despise your religious festivals; your
assemblies are a stench to me” (Amos 5:21 NIV).
“Amos accused God’s people of
participating in things the heathen did,” Riley said. “In our American church
culture, we insulate ourselves from the problems of the world … Instances of
injustice are all around us. Google ‘human trafficking in N.C.,’ and stories
will come up – right here in our zip code.”
He said the comfort we receive from God should be given by us to other
people.
“There’s a poverty in our language when we proclaim the grace of God,”
Riley said. “It has to be lived.”
He described “empathetic distress” in a baby nursery: “When one baby
cries, the others begin to cry. They don’t know why.”
“Empathy requires a first step,” Riley said, adding, “We can turn off
the TV, but the victim of injustice never gets to look away.”
Riley said his mother, a math teacher, repeatedly told him, “If you
don’t look at the problem, you’re never going to solve it.”
“The only way to address darkness is to step into it and bring light to
it,” he said. “It may require something radical of us to fulfill a reasonable
request.”
Referring to Martin Luther King’s work in the Civil Rights Movement,
Riley said, “He [King] asked for reasonable requests but was willing to pay a
radical price.”
