Empathy: its uses and abuses

For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses,
but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin. (Hebrews 4:15)

Recently, Christian nationalists have taken to declaring empathy a "sin." Expanding his 2019 articles written for Desiring God, Joe Rigney published a book with Canon Press titled, "The Sin of Empathy," and this assertion that empathy is a sin has become a talking point that defines religious nationalists here in America.

Rigney gives a number of illustrations demonstrating how the abuse of empathy has contributed to the gagging of truth destroying the institutions and souls of the Western world, and many of his criticism are true and helpful. But notice our phrase "the abuse of empathy"; this would have been a proper title for the book.

The abuse of empathy is often sin, but empathy itself is no sin. In other words, the valid distinction between the use and abuse of empathy is lost on the masses of Christian political activists. They claim empathy is "sin," so empathy is never proper, compassionate, or faithful.

This condemnation of empathy has grown in popularity to the point that several national publications of a secular bent have taken notice. Two months ago Vox ran an article titled, "Christian Nationalists decided empathy is a sin, so now it's gone mainstream."

Liberals' objections to calling empathy "sin" are predictably hollow. Being chronic abusers of empathy themselves, naturally they defend that abuse.

But what about the proper use of empathy? Is empathy really "sin"?

God designates the Christian Church His "pillar and foundation of the truth" (1Timothy 3:15), and thus no matter how helpful we judge them to be, politically, the people of God must not trade in half truths and lies.

We begin by defining our term: what is the origin and meaning of this word, "empathy?"

"Empathy" came into common English usage a century ago, but the word itself has its roots in the Greek word ἐμπάθεια (empatheia). Thousands of years old, empatheia is constructed by joining the prefix en (in) to the noun pathos (feeling or passion).

In his 1873 dissertation titled, On the Optical Sense of Form: A Contribution to Aesthetics, German philosopher Robert Vischel coined the German word "Einfühlung" as a designation for "the human capacity to enter into a piece of art or literature and feel the emotions that the artist had worked to represent." Thirty years later, the word began to be used by German psychologists to express an individual's "feeling into" another's thoughts or emotions.

A few years later (1909), the English word "empathy" was coined in order to translate the German "Einfühlung."

Here is the Oxford English Dictionary's definition of "empathy":

The power of entering into the experience of or understanding objects or emotions outside ourselves... (Lipps) propounded the theory that the appreciation of a work of art depended upon the capacity of the spectator to project his personality into the object of contemplation. One had to feel oneself into it'... This mental process he called by the name of Einfühlung, or, as it has been translated, Empathy.

Empathy is not limited to entering into the experience or emotions of others, but also entering into objects. What was originally spoken of in German was the ability to enter into a work of art or literature by feeling what the artist had worked to communicate through it. Empathy is not only experienced with people, but also objects.

Go into an art museum and you'll notice individuals sitting on benches showing an empathic face while gazing fixedly at the painting. Meanwhile others pass by giving the painting only a momentary glance. Some enter into the painting empathically[fn]"Empathically" and "empathetically" have the same meaning.[/fn]; others choose not to; and still others seem to possess no capacity for doing so.

From the OED's definition we also learn that empathy is not limited to entering into others' feelings and experiences, but also importing our own feelings and experiences into a person or object of art (for instance). Empathy may help us enter into another's feelings and emotions, but also to impute our own feelings and emotions to them. The OED refers to this as "One had to feel oneself into it [him/her]."

Having defined empathy, why have religious nationalists taken to calling it "sin?"

Read the book if you wish, but Rigney and religious nationalists are denouncing empathy as "sin" not because any of the things spoken of above are evil, but because empathy is (as we pointed out above) often abused in support of sin.

For instance, the sinful and simple minded tried to enter into the suffering of men who had contracted AIDS by their habitual practice of sodomitic acts, and were dying. They talked and listened and read about the tragic loss of life and partners washing through homosexual enclaves such as San Francisco's Castro district, which led them to talk and listen and read about the humiliation and shame of the Castro's bathhouses where these deeds were performed, and naturally these sinful and simple minded allowed their empathy (which Jesus had for the woman at the well) to run away with them so that, rather than pointing to and calling AIDS victims to confess their sins and repent, they called for the repeal of sodomy laws and the mainstreaming of sexual perversion.

The very real suffering of AIDS which spread across our nation and world was the focus of the empathy of millions, but it did not lead to truth, but rather lies and the mainstreaming of sexual perversions American now liltingly refer to as LGBTQism.

Those who lived in the physical and moral debauchery of sodomy began to die of a virus usually contracted during their sex acts, and the horror of their sickness and death was so awful that they became the subject of the majority of American's empathy which, unrestrained by God's Law, became the justification for the American electorate to change from condemning and shaming sodomy, to feeling sorry for sodomites and privileging them and their filthy acts.

This abuse of empathy is constant across Western culture, now. Every manner of evil and those who commit that evil becomes the subject of empathy run amok, so that every manner of evil and those who commit it is justified by women and men who are incapable of disciplining their empathy so that it doesn't become an oppressive force trotted out to justify wickedness.

Put yourself in the place of all those gays whose partners died. What if it was my son? What if it was your son? How would we feel knowing our son had to get out of Wisconsin and move to San Francisco in order to give and receive the love he felt and needed?

Just imagine their shame. Imagine the filth of their bathhouses. Can you imagine the awful lives and deaths our prejudices have forced on them? Look at what the church and it's hypocritical moralism has done! We need to help them come out of their closets by giving them the respect we'd want if we were in their place.

And so the abuse of empathy led to public acceptance of gay pride parades down our Main Streets to the applause of all fair minded citizens whose empathy had converted them to, finally, supporting SCOTUS's Obergefell declaring sodomitic and lesbian marriage one more civil right guaranteed by our Constitution.

So here we are today having defined down deviancies of every sort, releasing deviants from their proper shame and condemnation by giving free reign to the twisted abuse of empathy in support of every form of wickedness. Because of our refusal to restrain and discipline this abuse of empathy, we now have normalized the slaughter of babies through hormonal birth control, pharmaceuticals, and surgery. Empathy has been abused in justification and normalization of the sins of fornication, divorce, insurance fraud, adultery, sodomitic acts, people who refuse to work while eating very well, gay identities, racism, child abuse, female rebellion, neutered Bibles; and so it's no wonder we have on our hands a bunch of religious people who talk of "the sin of empathy."

We fully empathize with them in their condemnation of empathy's abuse, but we must not abuse our empathy by joining them in their error. Empathy has its place, but we we must not allow it to be abused. It's too precious.

Empathy "precious?"

Yes.

Examples are everywhere and always, but we'll stick with Jesus Christ. His empathy is on full display in all four Gospels, and very precious.

And Jesus called His disciples to Him, and said, “I feel compassion for the people, because they have remained with Me now three days and have nothing to eat; and I do not want to send them away hungry, for they might faint on the way.” (Matthew 15:32)

Jesus felt the hunger of the people. His empathy entered into their hunger, so He fed them.

Seeing the people, He felt compassion for them, because they were distressed and dispirited like sheep without a shepherd. Then He said to His disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Therefore beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into His harvest.” (Matthew 9:36-38)

The sheep were distressed and dispirited. Jesus felt empathy for them in their lack of shepherds, so He told His disciples to pray for God to provide shepherds for them.

When Jesus went ashore, He saw a large crowd, and He felt compassion for them because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and He began to teach them many things. (Mark 6:34)

Jesus had empathy for the large crowd in their lack of a shepherd, so He fed them well, teaching them "many things."

Therefore, when Mary came where Jesus was, she saw Him, and fell at His feet, saying to Him, “Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died.”

Jesus wasn't weeping for Himself. His empathy led Him to feel with us, fallen men, our grief and sorrow at sickness and death; and here, particularly, Mary and Martha's grief and sorrow over their brother's death. Empathizing with them, He wept for them—and for all of us.

But in truth, the supreme justification of the virtue—not the sin—of empathy is Isaiah's prophecy concerning Jesus, the Christ:

Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows. (Isaiah 53:4)

The Incarnation is the world's supreme empathy. Jesus, the Son of Man, entered into our mortality and sin, taking upon Himself the griefs and sorrows of sinful man without in any slightest way allowing empathy to undercut or deny His Father's perfect justice.

There are countless examples of empathy's proper uses and improper abuses across Scripture, and none of it is complicated. The greatest good suffers terrible abuse. Evils are justified in the name of equality, justice, authority, compassion, and love so that all of us need to learn to recognize the abuse of equality, justice, authority, compassion, and love.

Many women today never stop recounting horror stories of men who abused their authority, and almost always the moral of their stories is that authority—particularly male authority—is itself evil.

So now we have a book written which illustrates and documents the abuse of empathy, but it's titled "The Sin of Empathy."

Doug Wilson pronounces his judgment:

Empathy abandons God for the sake of the neighbor.

And:

men ...should think of empathy [as if] someone said "lung cancer."

Wrong. Like compassion, empathy is a gift of God that is often abused to justify sinners and their sin. But also, like compassion, empathy must be defended against such abuse. To call it "sin" is a lie, and the truth is never strengthened by lies.