Empathy is Not a Sin

I am late to this strange party.

There is a kerfuffle going around about empathy being a sin. Some theodudes think it is and most people know it isn’t. I am not going to get into it too much, but here are a couple of links to the empathy is sin crowd.

Reformed pastor and apoligist James White says empathy is “the ability to understand and share the feelings of another” and is sin:

When you start with man as image-bearing creature of God, you can understand why sympathy is good, but empathy is sinful.

Do not surrender our mind to the sinful emotional responses of others.

Minnesota pastor Joe Rigney sat down with Doug Wilson to declare empathy a sin in this odd exchange.

Rigney: That’s right. And the, and I think that actually is the most relevant difference between them because, so empathy is the sort of thing that you’ve got someone drowning, or they’re in quicksand, and they’re sinking. And what empathy wants to do it jump into the quicksand with them, both feet, and-and it feels like that’s going to be more loving, because they’re going to feel like, I’m glad that you’re here with me in the quicksand. Problem is you’re both now sinking.
Wilson: Right.
Rigney: Right. Whereas, if you do, I’m going to keep one foot on the shore, and I’m actually gonna grab onto this big branch, and then I’ll step one foot in there with you and try to pull you out. That’s sympathy, and that’s-that’s actually helpful. But to the person who’s in there, it can feel like you’re judging me.
Wilson: So sympathy’s clearly hierarchical.
Rigney: Right. It implies that one person is the hurting, and one person is the helper.
Wilson: Right.
Rigney: And, and no, and that’s part of the problem is no one wants to feel like they’re the hurting. We want to equalize everything. And so, and so empathy demands, get in here with me, otherwise you don’t love me.
Wilson: But what do you lose— when you get in there with them, and you’re all in, they’re drowning, they’re in the quicksand, they’re in the trouble, and you identify with them completely.

Rigney went around a little with Karen Prior here.

What the theodudes seem upset about is that they seem to believe empathy puts the person who understands another’s feelings and experience on the same level as the person who is being understood. They want to be in authority.

Equality. What a concept.

Furthermore, they seem to think empathy means accepting everything anyone else does without moral evaluation. Or at least James White seems to think that. White goes out on the porch of his blog and yells at all of the empaths on his lawn, screaming:

We are not to weep with the bank robber who botches the job and ends up in the slammer. We are, plainly, to exercise control even in our sympathy. We are not to sympathize with sin, nor are we to sympathize with rebellion, or evil.

But the new cultural (and it has flown into the church as well) orthodoxy is: you shall empathize. You shall enter into the emotions of others AND YOU SHALL NOT MAKE JUDGMENTS ABOUT SAID EMOTIONS. By so doing YOU SHALL VALIDATE ALL HUMAN EXPERIENCES AS SUPREME. The greatest sin of all today is to say, “The emotions that person is experiencing are the result of sinful rebellion against God, and hence do not require my validation, support, or celebration.” HOW DARE YOU! That is the great rule I stepped upon, and must now pay the price.

I’d like to say I know how you feel, James, but I don’t.

Empathy is Not Sin

Empathy isn’t acceptance of things you don’t agree with. Empathy doesn’t require you to give up any position you might otherwise have. For instance, parents can empathize with their wayward children (“when I was your age…”) and still adminster correction and direction. When parents communicate their understanding with care, it helps build relationship even when restrictions need to be imposed.

Empathy is simply understanding the inner world of other people. It is all about being able to relate to them and understand what they are going through. It quite important in human functioning and when absent is associated with cruelty and antisocial behavior.

When Joe Rigney and Doug Wilson talk about someone jumping into quicksand with both feet, they are not describing empathy; they instead describe impulsivity. Sympathy or empathy might move a person to prosocial behavior, but strategy to conduct the behavior is another matter. A thoughtful person would perform the rescue safely; an impulsive person might just jump in. Both would be empathic, but only one would live to tell about it.

Understand this; empathy is good.

 

Here are some articles on empathy and related topics.

Empathy-related Responding: Associations with Prosocial Behavior, Aggression, and Intergroup Relations

Empathy in Narcissistic Personality Disorder: From Clinical and Empirical Perspectives

Why empathy has a beneficial impact on others in medicine: unifying theories

Prosocial motivation: Is it ever truly altruistic?

33 thoughts on “Empathy is Not a Sin”

  1. With all sincerity, this is another reason you will not see me in any neo-cal, modern reform church.

    “It’s not about you”… ya right.

  2. This is what happens when psycopathy is glorified by a culture and given prominence. It’s extremely dangerous thinking and BEYOND dangerous theology.

  3. What the theodudes seem upset about is that they seem to believe empathy
    puts the person who understands another’s feelings and experience on
    the same level as the person who is being understood. They want to be in
    authority.

    When your mind can only see reality as Power Struggle, there are only two possible states:
    Their boot stamping on your face or your boot stamping on theirs. And the only way to avoid the first is to make sure of the second. Forever.
    Top or Bottom, Dom or Sub, Hold the Whip or Feel the Whip, Kill or be Killed, Eat or be Eaten.

    “When you play the Game of Thrones, you Win or you Die. There is NO middle ground.” — Cersei Lannister

    These theodudes have just appended “GOD SAITH!” to that.

  4. We have a former bank robber in attendance at our church. He was driven to that act out of desperation, and I’ve had the opportunity to talk with him about it. I empathize with the things that he felt drove him to that point – they’re familiar struggles, ones I’ve faced myself, and that I’ve also handled poorly, though not feloniously – but that doesn’t mean that I approve of what he did. That men who claim to be wiser than me claim that this is impossible … says more about them than it does about me, I think.

  5. I’m not sure they’re explicitly thinking this or not, but I suspect that because so much was made of their dear leader’s Lack of empathy, and because they believe that everything their dear leader has said & done in the last 4-5 yrs was holy and righteous, therefore Lacking Empathy is Good and having it is Bad. What has happened is a rewiring of their moral compass. I don’t see this crowd coming out of this reversal anytime soon… in order to stay on the dear leader’s train, they must proclaim good thing to be evil and evil things to be good…

  6. Thanks Warren for highlighting this. I have not heard of this before with any group of supposed teachers and preachers. This might help to explain something I noticed over the weekend and was commenting on in a couple of blog posts on Julie Roys. I was noticing a pattern that is happening there regardless of which particular religious institution was the one being reported with some kind of controversy regarding how certain individuals are being treated. On this blog when you are reporting on bad behavior with someone in such an institution, there no longer is anyone showing up to defend the institution and persons responsible. But over there they do show up pretty much every time.

    But regardless there are those who comments show absolutely no empathy for any of the possible victims being reported on, and they tend to look identical, like a third party wrote all of them, with only the particular names of the offenders and institutions changed. So you could take one of those comments and lift them out of the post that they show up on, change those two names to others and drop them into a totally different post and they would sound exactly like what is already there written by someone else. So either someone has a bunch of different names they post under and they are a covert narcissist troll haunting the site making the same basic comment over and over while using different names, or there is something bigger going on that is spiritual like a third party pulling strings and telling everyone to write the same exact damned by God thing.

    You know what the comments look like, as in the old days you saw them here too. Someone says something about how great the persons and their institution is and how they are profiting from being there in what they claim is some “spiritual” way. They defend those and cast abuses upon whoever wrote the piece and whoever posted it and whomever the reported victims are. They call everyone reporting the actual abuse as evil and proclaim their idol leaders as totally innocent while totally ignoring any and every fact to the contrary. And the key element that is lacking in all of that is any slightest hint of empathy. They show no empathy or concern that someone may have gotten abused and thrown under the celebrity leader’s bus. They tend to come across as judgmental, arrogant and rude. And their comments stick out like a sore thumb among other comments of Christians who actually display real empathy for the little people whom are being reported as being run over.

    Yet this could explain where this is coming from posts on J Mac’s COVID denials to the reported sex offenders and their enablers in “churches” to Christian businesses that are pyramid schemes making the head guy rich while everyone slaves away beneath him making far less than min. wage. These commenters are following narcissistic teachers who think that their own complete lack of true empathy for everyone is normal and the way that God is and the way everyone else should be! And so the only thought they can think of is that this institution and its celebrity narcissist personally benefits me greatly so who gives a damn about anyone that has to be thrown under the bus? Those people do not register as meaning anything at all in their self-centered world. I must protect that which I personally believe to profit from and so anyone and everyone who threatens that is the Devil incarnate. They express no concern for anyone but themselves. Empathy gets replaced by pride, denial and a purely self-centered view of the world where justice is discarded in the clear name of personal profit.

  7. I have an MA in theology. From a theological standpoint, their arguments and viewpoint is beyond utterly absurd. It is beyond theological malpractice. If I only considered it this way, I’d be forever facepalming.
    But when you realize that these people make God and theology in their own image all the time, it makes sense. They want an excuse not to walk alongside someone; they want a justification for their exclusivity and insularity. This “theology” provides that.

    1. But when you realize that these people make God and theology in their own image all the time, it makes sense.

      Ironic given this is exactly what these people believe of other Christians, liberal Christians especially.

  8. “Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.” ~ G. M. Gilbert, the psychologist assigned to keep an eye on the leading Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg.

    1. Another way of saying that, which I like very much: “Sin, young man, is when you treat people like things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.” –Granny Weatherwax, in Terry Pratchett’s “Carpe Jugulum”

  9. Of course, empathy is good. If it did not exist, then it is doubtful that the human race would be where it is, or here at all. “Survival of the fittest,” doesn’t necessarily mean the strongest, or the quickest. This is another “conservative” excuse for cruelty and neglect and they are reproducing and making the situation even worse.

    But, the best thing I’ve ever seen on strange ideas regarding empathy, was Lewis Black talking about Glenn Beck, in 2010. I believe he called it Glenn Beck has Notsee Tourette’s.

    1. Of course, empathy is good. If it did not exist, then it is doubtful
      that the human race would be where it is, or here at all. “Survival of
      the fittest,” doesn’t necessarily mean the strongest, or the quickest.

      Darwin himself defined “fittest” in this context as the likelihood of reproductive success over many generations. NOT the ones who wipe out all competition.

      And memes can transfer similar to genes, extending “fittest” as meaning those whose skills or personalities are beneficial to long-term survival of their group. Whether through competition or encouraging cooperation.

      I believe he called it Glenn Beck has Notsee Tourette’s.

      That anything like Dr Strangelove’s arm?

  10. It is a bit bizarre to read that christian leaders, under the guise of righteousness, are declaring normal human brain function — the “mirror system” — to be sin.

    I have long thought that these people may themselves be deficient in mirror system function and are interpreting their own incapacities to be normal and righteous, and are projecting them onto God.

    I interpret it to be evidence of an outbreak of the wrath of God against His own people that individuals like this are so influential in the churches.

  11. It is a bit bizarre to read that christian leaders, under the guise of righteousness, are declaring normal human brain function — the “mirror system” — to be sin.

    I have long thought that these people may themselves be deficient in mirror system function and are interpreting their own incapacities to be normal and righteous, and are projecting them onto God.

    I interpret it to be evidence of an outbreak of the wrath of God against His own people that individuals like this are so influential in the churches.

  12. This is just another example of (“religious”) people pontificating on a topic they clearly know nothing about.

  13. That’s beyond bizarre. James White, Joe Rigney and Doug Wilson have built themselves a straw boogeyman–an empathetic person–but they got the characteristics completely wrong. I think Bill Clinton’s “I feel your pain.” got it as close to right as possible. Not that he–or we–feel another person’s physical pain; but we can understand the pain , mental and/or physical, that person feels, because we know it is what we would feel if it happened to us. How can that be a sin?

    Sometimes, it can feel like a punch in the gut. For example, I know a woman, though only from on-line discussions, whose loving husband for 50 years died last night. She’s in both mental and physical misery. Her husband was the same age as mine is now; and I know, from other deaths in my family, very much how she feels. I am not only sorry for her situation, but I understand what she is going through. In that sense, I feel her pain. That is, I think, the difference between sympathy and empathy.

    1. And Trump seems to have zero empathy (which as I recall is part of the definition of a sociopath).
      Making it natural for some of these bozos to think of that as a sinless state.

  14. It quite important in human functioning and when absent is associated with cruelty and antisocial behavior.

    It’s far more than quite important. Without empathy, there would be no human society, no civilization. It is ingrained in all of us, and is the basis for the first lesson in morality every child learns when they upset a sibling or friend and their mother or father tells them “You wouldn’t like it if you they did that to you, would you?”

    Empathy allows us to see the world through the eyes of others, especially those who are suffering and in need. Without empathy, there is no sympathy or desire to render aid. Without empathy, the world would be filled with narcissists, sociopaths, and psychopaths, and we would all still be living in the Stone Age, if at all.

    I’ve only seen enough of James White’s content to know he likes the sound of his own voice. I guess he believes he’s found the kryptonite of increasing tendency of American society and Christians in general to empathize with the LGBTQ community, because isn’t that what it always boils down to with people like White — legislating sexual mores?

    If we empathize, it’s harder to otherize and demonize, and he feels the playing field shifting from under him. Support for gay marriage is up from around 40% to almost 70% in just the last 10 years, and what was almost surefire election winning issue for conservatives around the nation (opposition to gay marriage) has utterly vanished from the political arena. I guess nothing else is working for people like White, hence the reach into ridiculousness.

    But perhaps if the recent Atlanta mass murderer’s church had focused more on teaching the importance of empathy and less on instilling a sense of guilt and self-loathing in him for his sexual acts, his eight victims might still be alive today.

    1. *drily* Of course James doesn’t want to talk about the kryptonite the other elders at his church are preaching, which is that women who obtain abortions should be executed. While I don’t have James on record as saying that, the other elders most certainly are on record.

    2. *drily* Of course James doesn’t want to talk about the kryptonite the other elders at his church are preaching, which is that women who obtain abortions should be executed. While I don’t have James on record as saying that, the other elders most certainly are on record.

    3. I’ve only seen enough of James White’s content to know he likes the sound of his own voice.

      Just like The Pious Piper and that Jerk with his Kirk in Moscow, Idaho.

  15. This…is not empathy. Worse, it smacks of deliberately misstating what empathy is in order to feel superior to those who are empathic.

    That or he’s just lying.

  16. I’m astonished that evangelicals are straining at this and swallowing the camel of their perpetually loveless churches. Jesus to Saul, “its hard for you to kick against the goads” that sounds like empathy toward the persecutor of the church. Jesus seems to empathize both to the persecuted church and the murderer doing the persecuting. And what a life that came from divine empathy! Lacking empathy and sermonizing that it is a sin, what a coverup for spiritual narcissism…. (and to be expected with the sell out of the gospel for the new religious power mongers)

  17. This is one of the most bizarre assertions I’ve ever heard of. Empathy is certainly required for proper human relationships and a functioning society. Why did Jesus become man if not to empathize with our plight? I don’t know anything about James White, but he sounds like someone who likes to go against the grain and then enjoy the fuss that comes after.

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