How do you teach compassion? How do you instill empathy in those who seem to have a barricade of hate surrounding them? Jesus told a story. Why? Because stories change our lives.

According to narratologists and psychologists, stories have the power to transport us into the lives of others, to resonate with the characters, to imagine their lives and feel their feelings, and to place themselves within the embodiments of those outside of our own perspectives.[1] Stories allow us not only to understand what someone else is going through but to feel it. The key to human change is not through the mind but through the heart. Our minds follow our emotions. When our emotions are activated, when empathy for others kicks in, we begin to make sense of the world from a new perspective. We begin to “unde…