Pillar #1: Empathy

Empathy — David Chose

David was in the palace, surrounded by cedar and sandalwood, the kind of quiet that makes a man forget what consequences feel like. Everything about that place told him he was safe, untouchable. He saw Bathsheba on the roof, her skin catching the moonlight, and something small but dangerous moved inside him. Not a roar. A whisper. Take her. And he did.

When she became pregnant, panic followed. Not regret. Panic. He tried to manage the situation instead of facing it. He wrote the letter to Joab, put Uriah on the front lines where arrows don’t miss, and waited for the problem to disappear. Uriah died. No parade. No relief. Just silence and the subtle sense that something had shifted under his feet.

Then Nathan walked in. No threats. No guards. Just a parable. A rich man steals a poor man’s only lamb—the one he raised, the one that slept beside him—and kills it to impress his guests. David erupted. Slammed his fist down. That man deserves to die.

Nathan didn’t argue. He just looked at him and said, You are that man.

Everything tilted.

David didn’t defend himself. He didn’t say she came to him. He didn’t say he was stressed, powerful, human, entitled. He didn’t explain. He didn’t justify. He collapsed under it and said the only thing that mattered: I have sinned against the Lord.

And in that moment, he felt the full cost. Not just guilt, but loss. Uriah was gone. Bathsheba was widowed. Trust was shattered. God was betrayed. And David didn’t push that pain away. He didn’t numb it or outrun it. He let it stay. He let it hurt. He let it reshape him.

That wasn’t regret for getting caught.

That was feeling the weight of what he had done—to another human being—and not turning away from it.

That is where empathy begins.

Empathy — Saul Failed

When Samuel arrived at Saul’s camp, the battle was already over. The Amalekites were gone. Smoke still hung in the air. By the letter of the command, it should have been finished. But it wasn’t. You could hear sheep bleating in the background—animals that were supposed to be dead.

Saul came out confident. Comfortable. He told Samuel they had kept the best of the animals for sacrifice, for God. It sounded holy. It sounded reasonable. It sounded like leadership. Samuel didn’t argue theology with him. He asked one simple question: Does God want sacrifice, or obedience?

That’s when everything started to unravel.

Saul knew something was wrong. He could feel the shift—the eyes on him, Samuel’s disappointment, authority draining out of the moment. But his attention remained fixed on himself. He did not seem to feel the betrayal Samuel was carrying or the weight of having treated God’s command as something he could revise for convenience.

What Saul felt most clearly was the throne wobbling.

So when he said, I sinned, it did not lead him toward repair. He immediately asked Samuel to honor him in front of the people. Even in confession, he was still managing appearances.

Empathy would have required Saul to step outside his own fear long enough to understand what his choices had cost others—the trust he had broken, the responsibility he had abandoned, and the burden he had pushed onto Samuel.

Instead, he felt the crown slipping. That fear drowned out everything else.

Empathy — What Prison Showed Me

I don’t tell this story because I always get empathy right. I don’t. I still miss what people are carrying, become absorbed in my own pain, and sometimes respond defensively instead of compassionately. This is simply one place where I saw clearly what empathy could do—and what happened when it was absent.

I started noticing the new faces coming onto the block.

The panic had finally quieted in me, but every new face that walked through still looked like it was waiting to be attacked—eyes wide, shoulders locked, breath shallow.

The place smelled lifeless—stale, like sweat and fear. They came from wherever they came from, but now they were here—thrown into a yard where everyone was sizing them up. Some had never thrown a punch. Some got hit the first day—blue and purple bruises, swollen eyes, fat lips. Others were luckier, still unmarked, but you could see it. They flinched at every sound. Scanned the room like it might swallow them whole.

They looked like little kids.

Like babies dropped into a cage full of wolves.

And I hated how much it reminded me of my own first night—alone, pretending I wasn’t shaking.

I cried for them inside. Not out loud. Just this ache that said, That was me. That could still be me.

I couldn’t watch another guy get erased. Not when I still remembered what it felt like.

So I started helping.

Not because I was brave. Not because I was trying to build a reputation. Because someone needed to see them—and no one else was stepping forward.

I’d go face to face. Quick. Quiet.

“Hey—I’m Jason. You look new. I just want you to know you’re seen. You matter.”

Then I’d hand them what I knew they needed: toothbrush, toothpaste, soap, deodorant. Sometimes a small candy bar. No asking. They’d never ask—too scared, too proud, too new. So I gave it first.

The shock in their eyes was everything.

They weren’t shocked by the supplies.

They were shocked by the absence of a hook.

Most of them had never experienced kindness without leverage attached. In their world, everything cost something. A favor meant you owed. A gift meant you were owned. So when I handed them a bag and walked away, it confused them.

No angle.

No quiet debt.

No future favor.

Just human.

In that moment, they weren’t prey. They weren’t weak. They weren’t a target.

They were human again.

And I felt bigger than the cell. Bigger than the rules. Bigger than the place that tried to shrink all of us.

Over the next few months, word got around. In prison, nothing stays hidden. You live on top of each other. People see patterns. They notice quiet things.

Guys saw me hand off a bag. Heard the low “no strings.” They didn’t say much. Just small nods. Whispers in the yard. On the line.

It took six to eight months. Slow. Quiet. No speeches.

Then one day I came back from work—long shift, tired—and under my pillow was a rolled-up bag. Hygiene stuff. A candy bar. An anonymous note:

“I know you’ll find it a good home.”

That moment hit harder than anything else.

They weren’t giving to me.

They were trusting me to carry it.

They’d seen it work. They’d felt it. And now they were part of it.

They started handing me bags. Not for me—but for me to deliver. Because they knew I’d find the right guy. The one pretending he wasn’t shaking.

And that’s when I saw something change in real time.

Men who had never been shown empathy choosing to practice it.

Not because they were told to.

Not because it benefited them.

Because they had felt it.

Some of those men had never been shown empathy in their lives. Not at home. Not on the streets. Not in prison.

Some of them had been the ones doing the sizing up.

But they watched what happened when someone was seen instead of tested. They saw the relief in a new guy’s shoulders. They felt what it was like to receive a bag without a hook—or they saw the impact when someone else did.

And they made a choice.

In that environment, kindness doesn’t earn you status.

They chose it anyway.

For some of them, it may have been the first time in their lives.

Prison also showed me the opposite.

Men who had learned early that empathy was weakness. That if you feel for someone, you get exploited. That if you don’t strike first, you’re prey.

They’d spot the new guy—scared, quiet, not from the streets—and move on him. Verbal jabs. Emotional beat-downs. Physical violence that gained nothing. No commissary. No power. Just cruelty because they could.

I don’t know what each man had lived through or what shaped him. But many seemed to have learned early that cruelty was protection—and that compassion only made you vulnerable.

Maybe some had never been shown another way to be. Maybe they had, and survival had buried it.

That’s when I understood something clearly:

Empathy isn’t automatic.

It’s taught.

And if it’s never taught, cruelty fills the space.

Prison didn’t teach me empathy. It revealed what the absence of it does.

I learned it long before prison—in a house where service wasn’t optional. My dad taught me that the purpose of life is to serve. To set aside selfish tendencies and make someone else’s life lighter. My mom lived it quietly. They showed me that another person’s pain matters. That strength isn’t dominance—it’s restraint.

That foundation was already in me when I walked into that yard.

Pain didn’t create empathy in me.

It gave me a place to use it.

And I also learned this:

Pain doesn’t automatically make someone compassionate. Sometimes it just makes them mean. If empathy was never built early, suffering won’t magically install it.

But it can still be learned.

At any age. In any place. If a person is humble enough to see. If they are willing to love instead of dominate. If they choose to move toward pain instead of exploiting it.

Empathy isn’t fixed at birth.

It’s built.

And it can be rebuilt.

If you want real change—the kind that lasts—you start there. Without empathy, change is just behavior management. It’s compliance. It’s image. It’s fear-driven adjustment.

Empathy changes the core.

I didn’t do what I did because I was special.

I did it because those men needed to know they mattered.

And because I had been taught that when you see pain, you move toward it.

That’s empathy.

Not weakness.

Not sentiment.

Not personality.

A learned skill.

A daily choice.

And the first pillar of real change.