Is Empathy a Strength or Weakness?

Empathetic could be near the top of the list of words that describe me. In my relations with other people, I nearly always find myself working hard to understand their point of view or the basis for their opinions and actions. It's part of understanding the person, sort of like an associated strongly-held belief I have that no problem can be solved without first understanding it fully.

What I wonder, especially in business, is whether my empathy is a strength or weakness of character. There certainly seem to be plenty of very successful people who seem to have very little empathy for others.

I've had some opportunities recently in encounters with other people to exercise my empathy by asking open-ended questions of people who express opinions and beliefs at odds with my own. In most cases, I am able to partially understand their viewpoint but am left wanting to dig deeper. It's not possible in the context of a casual conversation to prompt someone to reveal to me their deepest and possibly most secret painful experiences, which I theorize must be the root of their dark attitudes.

Mostly I seem to find people who view the world 180 degrees from my own perspective have a terrible bitterness as an undercurrent. That's what makes me want to explore in more depth. For example, an atheist will inevitably express a profound hatred for people with an evangelical, or "born-again" Christianity worn proudly on their sleeve. The hatred seems illogical, so I want to ask what terrible evil deed was perpetrated to make this individual so disillusioned with all Christians, just because one or two have had the gall to proselytize?

To the degree we are all formed by our life experiences, I can't help but wonder if the bitterest and angriest people were formed by some awful event or series of events in their young lives that they were never able to move beyond. I'm not angry or hateful toward atheists in general, but instead find myself mourning for them in a sense. Because something very foul must have happened in their lives to give them such a terrible lifelong simmering anger toward people of faith, and whatever it was is denying them the peace and comfort that can be found in a simple and trusting faith.

Too many people are living self-destructive lives, and I've met too many of them. It amazes me how often individuals I know behave in ways that they think are rebelling or getting even with people that have hurt them somehow, yet ultimately they are only harming themselves with those behaviors. Unfortunately, I don't have any magical answers I can give to such embittered people that can help them climb out of the deep, dark hole they have dug for themselves. But I hope that someday maybe I can at least help show someone the path out of that hole.

Maybe that's all God really wants from any of us.