George Müller
How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in your life you will have been all of these.
—GEORGE WASHINGTON CARVER
Compassion is the ability to feel sorrow for another’s misfortune and want to alleviate it. It is having the emotional capacity to be conscious of another’s distress. It is a shared sense of suffering.
Empathy is the ability to put yourself in another’s shoes. It is being able to imagine what another is going through and feeling. It involves being capable of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experiences of another without having those feelings, thoughts, and experiences being communicated to you. Empathy is the first step to having compassion.
I struggled to find a great man whose main character trait was compassion. Many great men had compassion but it did not seem to be an overriding trait in their life. The male gender does not appear to produce (or maybe value) their own versions of Mother Teresa, Florence Nightingale, or Clara Barton. Men like Albert Schweitzer and David Livingstone both came to mind. But then my brilliant editor suggested a man I had never heard of before. When I read about his accomplishments, I was blown away!
George Müller—The Man Who Cared
George Müller (1805–1898) was a Christian evangelist and orphanage director in Bristol, England. It is estimated that his orphanages cared for over 10,024 orphans during his lifetime. He also established 117 schools, which offered Christian education to over 120,000 children.
Despite an inauspicious start (he was stealing, drinking, gambling, and a known liar by age ten), Müller became a Christian when his father sent him to school and a friend invited him to a prayer meeting. That night he asked God for salvation and immediately stopped drinking, lying, and stealing. Hoping to become a missionary, he started preaching regularly in nearby churches.
After becoming seriously ill, Müller moved to Bristol and started the Scriptural Knowledge Institution for Home and Abroad, with the goal of aiding Christian schools and missionaries; distributing Bibles and Christian tracts; and providing day schools, Sunday schools and adult schools. Within a year there were five day schools in operation—two for boys and three for girls. This project (and all of Müller’s projects) never received any government support and only accepted unsolicited gifts. By the time of Müller’s death this organization had received and disbursed £1,381,171 (approximately $2,718,844 USD)—around £90 million in today’s terms—primarily using the money for supporting the orphanages. They also distributed about 285,407 Bibles, 1,459,506 New Testaments, and 244,351 other religious texts, which were translated into twenty different languages. The money was also used to support other “faith missionaries” around the world. Their work continues to this day.
Müller’s orphanage work began in 1836 in his own home, accommodating approximately thirty girls. He quickly started three more homes that took in 130 children. By 1870 they were caring for 1,722 children in five facilities. Müller was known for the compassionate care and the superb education he provided each child.
Müller never asked for financial support, nor did he go into debt, even though the five homes cost over £100,000 to build. Accounting records were scrupulously kept and made available for scrutiny throughout his lifetime.
Müller was a huge believer in the power of prayer. Many times, he received unsolicited food donations just hours before they were needed. On one well-documented occasion, when all the children were sitting at the table, they gave thanks for breakfast, even though there was nothing to eat in the house. As they finished praying, the baker knocked on the door with sufficient fresh bread to feed everyone, and the milkman gave them plenty of fresh milk because his cart broke down in front of the orphanage.
Each morning the orphans spent time in prayer and reading the Bible. Every child who left the orphanage received a Bible and a tin trunk with two changes of clothing. The children were well dressed and well educated. School inspectors were hired to maintain high educational standards. Müller went to great lengths to find good employment for his charges after they left his homes. Nearby factories and mines claimed they were unable to obtain enough workers because of his efforts in securing positions for the children old enough to leave the orphanage.
Müller prayed about everything and expected that each prayer would be answered. Several well-known stories illustrate his faith and the rewards of that faith.
One example occurred when one of the orphan house’s boilers stopped working. The boiler was bricked up and the weather was steadily worsening. Müller quickly prayed for two things; firstly that the workers he had hired would take it upon themselves to work throughout the night, and secondly that the bad weather would hold off. On the day before the work was due to commence, the weather was bitterly cold. But on the morning before the workmen arrived, a southerly wind began to blow and it was so mild that no fires were needed to heat the buildings. That evening, when the foreman of the contracted company attended the site to see how he might speed things along, the team leader stated that they would prefer to work through the night instead of going home. The job was done well before bad weather arrived.
During another winter, strong gales caused considerable damage in the area and over twenty holes were opened in the roofs of the orphanages. Around twenty windows were also broken. The glazier and slater normally employed had already committed their staff to other work so nothing could be done until the following Monday. Had the winds and heavy rains continued, the damage to the orphanage would have been substantial. After much prayer, the wind stopped in the afternoon and no rain fell until Wednesday, by which time most of the damage had been repaired.
Another story illustrating Müller praying for God’s intervention occurred on the SS Sardinian in August 1877 while crossing the Atlantic. His ship ran into thick fog. Müller told the captain that he needed to be in Quebec by the following afternoon, but Captain Joseph E. Dutton said that he was slowing the ship down for safety. Müller would miss his appointment. Müller asked to use the chartroom to pray for the lifting of the fog. The captain claimed prayer would be a waste of time but followed him below decks. When the two men went back to the bridge, they found the fog had lifted. The captain became a Christian shortly afterwards and later became known as “Holy Joe.”
Müller spent hours in daily prayer and Bible reading. It was his practice, in later years, to read through the entire Bible four times a year.
Today, the George Müller Charitable Trust still maintains the key principle of seeking money through prayer alone, and actively shuns fund-raising activities. The charity works together with local churches in the area to enable them to reach out and care for their communities. They especially target children and young people, and families with physical, emotional, social, or spiritual needs. They also encourage giving to missions and relief efforts around the world.
Müller’s compassion and empathy for others lives on today. It is impossible to count how many people’s lives have been saved, changed, salvaged, or helped through his efforts; but I would estimate it has to be in the millions. God took one man with a heart of compassion and used him to touch the world in ways that still echo across time.
Why Compassion and Empathy Are Important
Compassion and empathy are the essence of a man’s soul. It is from the soul that all goodness springs: love, mercy, charity, forgiveness, respect, and humility, among others. These are the traits that remain after the body dies and decomposes. These are also the traits that most often touch the lives of others in ways that are remembered.
Boys need to learn compassion for others or they become self-centered and self-focused. When that happens, other people in their lives suffer. Without empathy and compassion boys do not become whole men. They are out of balance, never having the softer traits (gentleness, caring, loving) to knock the rough edges off their harder core traits (aggression, ambition, selfishness).
Grecian philosophy likened the governing or reasoning ability of man as being represented by the head or brain, the protective and virtuous spirit of man as the chest, and the stomach as being the more base appetites of a man. C. S. Lewis purported that a man’s head (intellect) rules his belly (base instincts, lusts, and desires) only through his chest (heart) containing traits such as magnanimity and sentiment, which are indispensable as a liaison between “cerebral man and visceral man.” As he said, “It may even be that it is by this middle element that man is man: for by his intellect [alone] he is mere spirit and by his appetite mere animal.”[90]
Boys who do not learn to have compassion and empathy seldom develop the ability to understand and love others, including themselves.
How to Teach Your Son Compassion and Empathy
Mothers are key factors in teaching boys about compassion and empathy. A mother’s unconditional style of love helps boys—merely through her example—understand what it means to have compassion and empathy for others. A woman was created to be more nurturing than a man (in general). A mom has the capability of being empathetic whenever anyone is feeling bad, comforting when they are wounded, and healing when they are in pain. She is more often than not caring, kind, thoughtful, gentle, compassionate, loving, and sensitive. She feels compelled to make sure the children are safe, fed properly, washed, and clean, with all their needs met. Her presence helps children thrive and grow like vigorous stalks of corn in fertile soil. Her nurturing instincts bring vitality to family life. Her healing touch cures everything from scraped knees to bruised egos. Her gentle compassion soothes even the most horrendous betrayal. Women love to encourage and support other people in their search for meaning in their lives. They love to share their life experiences with one another. They like to help others with their problems.
Dad, make sure you value and respect your wife’s loving, nurturing nature in front of the children. Make sure they understand how important it is for the family to thrive and grow. These are powerful lessons your son needs to learn if he is to become a “whole” man.
Surprisingly, death seems to be one of the more effective lenses through which we can teach boys about compassion and empathy. One activity that turns out to be very healthy in the emotional development of boys is hunting. Societal wisdom might suggest that killing an animal (hunting) would breed violence and cruelty in males. But research suggests just the opposite is true. Hunting, in fact, actually develops respect and reverence for life and other universal virtues in males such as generosity, fortitude, respect, patience, humility, and courage. I remember the first deer I killed—the experience really sunk several lessons into me: (1) how fragile life actually is, and (2) that guns were not toys but highly destructive tools not to be used lightly. These are lessons I’ve carried my entire life.
According to family therapist and bestselling author Michael Gurian, hunting paradoxically makes males more empathetic and develops responsibility, fairness, and compassion. Besides war, it is the most powerful way for males to learn these virtues. Gurian contends that healthy, safe hunting under the guidance and training of mentors actually produces a holistic experience that creates less violence in young males. In contrast, the one-dimensional experience of violent video games that do not show the real-life consequences of life and death instead generates more violence in males. Hunting helps develop a sense of self-mastery and impulse control in males that contributes to a healthy self-esteem. As Gurian says, “Hunting has proven to be across the spectrum—especially in those males we think of as violent, criminal males—as having great results in teaching those guys to hunt and getting them reoriented toward things they couldn’t get in the inner city, so they even see a gun in a new way by learning to use it to hunt. It’s why we are having success at places like Idaho Youth ranch. Places where boys are hardened criminals, but they’ll kill an animal and hold it and weep.”[91]
Dr. Randall Eaton is an award-winning author and behavioral scientist with an international reputation in wildlife conservation. During a recent conversation I had with Dr. Eaton, he told me,
Hunting is one of the most transformative experiences a boy can have. Women are adapted to bring life into the world, but men are adapted to take life in order to support or protect life. I conducted thousands of surveys on older men and asked them to choose the life experience that most opened their hearts and engendered compassion in them. It was not becoming a parent, which was extremely high for women who had birthed a baby, nor was it teaching young people, nor the death of a loved one or beloved pet, but it was “taking the life of an animal.”
According to Dr. Eaton, hunting makes men more compassionate and more peaceful. As he says, “Hunting and killing are as fundamental to male development as birthing and infant care are to women. . . . Men take life to support life, and the kill itself is the event that engenders compassion, respect for life, and the moral responsibility to protect it.”[92] In his surveys of men who had hunted all their lives, the men overwhelmingly selected three universal virtues that they acquired from hunting: inner peace, patience, and humility. He cites Jimmy Carter and Nelson Mandela as just two of many famous men who are examples of both exemplary hunters and peacemakers.[93]
Another effective way to teach boys about compassion and empathy is through pets. Having them take care of and be responsible for nurturing, raising, and providing for an animal not only teaches them emotional maturity but also prepares them to lead and provide for a family. Since boys and dogs go together like bacon and burgers, it’s no surprise that one of my most powerful lessons about compassion came through a dog.
The first time I saw Old Lucky Dog, she came loping across the manufacturing plant wearing a slipshod, homemade, foam rubber collar someone had titled “Cecil.” I took an instant liking to this clumsy, barrel-chested mongrel puppy. Discovering her to be a stray, and having been looking for a handsome pup to call my own, I decided to claim her. I quickly phoned my wife to notify her I was bringing home a cute little puppy. She was not impressed when I wrestled a 30-pound mutt through the front door. Thinking this dog fortunate to have been rescued by such a good master from the grasp of a savage winter storm, I decided to call her Lucky. I was soon to learn that destiny had already christened her with that apropos appellation.
At first glance Lucky appeared to resemble a small female moose. She was a short-haired, tawny-yellow, German shepherd-looking hound, powerful through the chest and shoulders, with semblance to an Australian dingo. With oversized ears (which pricked straight up to their fullest glory whenever the words “walk,” “car,” or “biscuit” were murmured) and a long, brown muzzle attached to a hard, lumpy skull, she aptly acquired the nickname “Moose.” Other nomenclatures she’s been called include floppy-eared, good-for-nothing, chicken thievin’, mud-wallowing, and yeller dog—usually while I was chasing her around the yard with a rolled-up newspaper.
As she grew into an eighty-pound cur, some of Old Lucky Dog’s favorite pastimes included chasing pheasants in the vacant fields around our home, being visited by neighbor kids for walks or tea parties in her doghouse, chasing her tail for hours on end, and wildly snorting and shaking as she hunted rabbits in her sleep. To the amazement of anyone who ever met her, Lucky Dog would do absolutely anything for a biscuit. We taught her to roll over, sit up, moan, howl, stand on her hind legs and walk backward, and even flop down and play dead if you shot her with your finger (always with one eye open looking for her biscuit). She ran around with a grin on her face most of the time and was blessed with an almost human sense of humor. One Christmas, we harnessed her to a sled and tied cardboard antlers to her head to pull the children around the neighborhood. Another time we had a family portrait taken with everyone wearing nose glasses, including Old Lucky Dog.
When we purchased our new home, I learned an interesting fact about our canine friends. They have a propensity to “dogmatize” a yard. Our beautiful Norman Rockwell landscape was almost instantly turned into a quagmire, a virtual swamp complete with dog paths, steaming smelly mounds, trashed flower beds, and holes—lots of holes. Being a known digger, Lucky excavated large quantities of earth under the guise of keeping the property free of moles. She was even kind enough to leave one on the patio one morning to justify her actions. Another interesting trait about “Moose” was her inability to bark like a normal dog. Consequently, at the drop of a hat, she would break into an uncontrollable, long, drawn out, piercing, hoarse fit of howling. I attributed this to either lack of vocal cords or an underdeveloped brain stem.
Lucky was fond of adventure and was a master escape artist from our fenced backyard. Learning of the high fees we paid several times to bail her out of the dog pound prompted my brother to remark that Lucky was her last name—Darn was her first name as far as he was concerned. Old Lucky Dog did lead a charmed life. She was once hit by a car (luckily for her head-on), and generally turned up like a bad penny no matter how much she was encouraged to find a new residence. She was found (and returned by an ex-neighbor who thought he was doing us a favor) at a distant grocery store, stepping on the electric door opener, greeting customers and escorting them to their cars (most likely in hopes of bagging a biscuit). She was found “playing” in a busy intersection ten miles away, again returned by a Good Samaritan after I was dumb enough to forget to remove her nametag from around her neck. Even after being spayed, she was undaunted, and frisked out alongside the attendant, piddling all the way down the hall in ecstasy of seeing her family again.
Though undoubtedly a fine specimen of doghood and extremely intelligent in matters pertaining to her own self-gratification, she could truly have been considered “lucky” in every sense of the word. Her dumb-luck philosophical approach to life, though cute to anyone spending short periods of time with her, was often frustrating and the cause of great aggravation. But she was an addictive, acquired taste, much beloved by the family.
One day during her prime, Old Lucky Dog started having seizures. We discovered that she had epilepsy and were directed to give her phenobarbital to control her seizures. As she developed a tolerance to the drug, even larger doses became less effective and sapped her personality. One day I found Old Lucky Dog during a rainstorm, collapsed and drowning in the mud, unable to stand up—a shell of her former self—and knew her luck had run out. Taking her to the pound and staying with her while she was put to sleep was truly one of the hardest things I had endured to that point in life. Over the years I’ve liked to think that Old Lucky Dog is having fun in dog heaven, running like the wind, ears flopping, chasing all those rabbits and pheasants, and eating as many biscuits as her belly will hold. I still miss Old Lucky Dog.
The scene from the movie Old Yeller comes to mind when the boy, Travis, is forced to shoot Old Yeller after he becomes infected from fighting off an attack by a rabid wolf. If you don’t cry out of compassion and empathy during that scene, you don’t have a heart.
So, am I saying if you want to teach your son empathy and compassion get him a dog? Yeah, maybe I am—a boy needs a dog. One of the great lessons (and blessings) in life is to have enjoyed the unconditional loyalty and companionship of a good dog.