Prompted by Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde’s Substack post and concluding question, I’m writing in response to the provocative idea put about by such conservative Christian voices as Joe Rigney, author of the book, The Sin of Empathy: Compassion and its Counterfeits, Albert Mohler and Allie Beth Stuckey, author of the book Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion.
Like any meaningful dialogue, it is a good idea to define the main words that we are using. I understand ‘empathy’ as the affective ability for me to ‘feel-with’ another person. That is, the emotional process of noticing their feelings and looking inside myself to find the same feeling within me. This is a complex form of emotional, affective connection in which I ‘sit with’ another person and resonate with their emotional state. The result is a profound emotional connection that dispels any haughtiness in me or my tendency to judge them. Rather I can be with another person with a quality of presence that creates a safe hospitable ‘relational space’ between us. My extensive experience as well as my work as a workplace and hospital chaplain, and as an educator of chaplains, have taught me that this quality of empathy is fundamental and essential for the practice of effective spiritual care. That ‘relational space’ that empathy creates is a sacred, wonderful quality of connection. In that sacred space of deeply ‘being with’ another person, the Holy Spirit can do profound work in both the one being cared for and the one offering care.
In many ways, the word ‘compassion’ is synonymous with ‘empathy’. The word itself (com-passion) stems from the idea of togetherness of feeling. It is to ‘feel with’ another person.
By contrast, the word ‘sympathy’ describes a feeling that I have towards another person that is not connected to whatever they are feeling. It doesn’t even have to notice what the other person is feeling. Sympathy is having a feeling towards another person, while empathy is feeling what another person is feeling.
The effect of these different emotions can be illustrated: If I see a beggar shivering in a shop doorway and I feel pity towards them, and perhaps give them a dollar, that is sympathy. If I sit next to them and open a conversation with them about how they are doing right now, that is the result of empathy.
I want to acknowledge that those proposing a sinful or toxic empathy do not necessarily use these words in the same way, perhaps because they seem engaged in a culture war against ‘progressive’ or ‘left’ Christians, whom they perceive as enemy to be resisted. (Rather I would suggest that the enemy of all Christians is the devil, evil in the world and sinfulness that lives in every human heart – but that’s another topic.)
On reflection, I think those engaged in this dialog of ideas may be at risk of making a ‘category’ mistake. While in ancient Hebrew thought a person is one integral being, ancient Greek thought often saw a person as consisting of components – body, mind and soul. In this schema, emotions can be understood as different from thoughts. I find this useful, because my life experience has shown me that I have no control of what emotions arise in any moment, but I do have control over my thoughts, at least to some extent’. My mid-life growth included learning to notice my emotions, to listen to them, because my emotions have truth to tell me. This was wonderful growth for an English man from a military family in which my early life suggested that emotions where primitive and not to be trusted because they got in the way of the ‘higher’ humanity of intellectual functioning. Yet if God made humanity in perfection (which I believe because God looked at humanity and called us ‘very good’), it seems reasonable to consider that the first humans had emotional capacity as well as intellectual functioning. It follows that emotions are intrinsically good. They indeed have truth to tell us that our rational minds might not have noticed. For example, I may feel angry because I have been transgressed in a relationship, long before my reason has figured out what is going on. Both sympathy and empathy/compassion are emotional responses to another person. They are emotional relational dynamics. They will be connected to a thinking response soon enough, because emotions tend of happen before thoughts form, at least this is how it works in me.
Sympathy is a detached emotion, from a relational perspective, while empathy is a connected emotion, relationally speaking. Sympathy stands apart from the other person, while empathy sits with the other person. I believe that our Lord Jesus Christ continually modelled empathy rather than sympathy. He crouched with the woman caught in adultery (try writing in the dust with your finger while standing up!). He called the ridiculed Zaccheus down from the tree to reverse his shame by selecting him as dinner host. He repeatedly offered and accepted hospitality from hated tax collectors and despised prostitutes. His heart went out to the grieving widows and the ostracized lepers not from a detached stance, but from being deeply connected to them. We might say that Lord Jesus ‘sat in the mud’ alongside the dejected, the marginalized, the ridiculed, the lonely, the sick, the grieving and the shamed. Most wonderfully He looked into my unworthy soul, my sinful mind and my fallen body, and loved me, even though it cost Him his lifeblood to restore me to life and love. That wasn’t pity, or detached sympathy, but wonderful holy empathy that understood my at a heart-to-heart level. Deep does indeed speak to deep.
The concern of Rigney, and Stuckey is that empathy might lead me to see past another person’s sin issues. The danger seems to be that I might empathically accept them and then go further and affirm some sin they may or may not be engaged in. This is a mental, intellectual problem because considering whether a person is sinning or not requires aligning their actions (or perhaps even their state of being) with an external law – a necessarily mental exercise. (We can argue all day long about whether certain actions are sinful or not – a core concern of conservative Christians engaged in culture wars.) They don’t want me to accept another person indiscriminately, but rather to assess their sin status and to challenge all sin as a priority. This empathy is leaving wide open the possibility of affirming sin. Indeed, doesn’t Jesus tell the woman caught in adultery to ‘go and sin no more’? yes, He does. This is an intellectual, mental, cognitive, response from Jesus’ mind and it happen a long, long way after the immediate empathic emotional response to have mercy on her, to protect her and sit in the mud with her. One does not preclude the other.
In conclusion, I affirm empathy as a holy response that seeks connection to another person, just as the Holy Trinity has empathy on me, even though I am deformed and defaced by sin. Having freely received, I am called to freely give.