Putting polished over real; putting explanations over empathy
'Putting polished over real' gets instant unanimous agreement. 'Putting explanations over empathy' earns a longer treatment: a host explains that facts don't matter when feelings have overtaken someone, using the sixth-grade crush as an analogy, but insists you never say anything untrue to comfort a person in a war zone. Another host tells of a funeral where a preacher 'preached' an unbeliever into heaven — empathetic to the room but communicating that anything goes. The verdict: meet people where they are, but don't stay there; don't rewrite the true thing to match the feeling.
More on Grief
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Holy Spirit experience: healing, cessationism, and testing the spirits
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The central hard question: is there a normative experience of the Holy Spirit in the world today, and what does it mean for a follower of Jesus?
From No. 593 · Do You Hear What I Hear
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Dear LFTP 3: Mom's false teeth
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Mike reads the letter: the family found their late mother's false teeth — creepy to keep, wrong to discard?
From No. 590 · Theodore Franco
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Dear LFTP: should I attend my murdered niece's funeral?
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Mike reads a letter from a woman estranged from her brother's family for thirty years whose niece was murdered by her husband in a murder-suicide.
From No. 587 · Coffee After Sunday
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Dear LFTP: AA member who witnessed a life-support withdrawal
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An AA member writes that while visiting a hospitalized fellow member with cookies, he arrived at the exact moment doctors withdrew life support and witnessed the family's raw grief; he now fears he intruded and caused harm.
From No. 568 · Like Jesus