On the Sin of Empathy

    I'll note that I unfortunately don't have access to Joe Rigny's book, "The Sin of Empathy: Compassion and its Counterfeits." I do have a lot of experiences with empathy, and I've read some interviews with him and other men of faith, both for and against empathy. So I hope I'm coming in with a more educated perspective than, "I feel this way."

Myself and Empathy

    In all theology, we're putting ourselves, our values, and who we are as people on the table. I think it's only fair that I explain a bit about myself.

    My name is Maria. I am a 21 year old transgender autistic woman. I was born and raised a Quaker, English and American Christians who believe the Light of God exists equally within all people. I have what my girlfriend describes as "low-empathy autism": when it comes to other people's suffering, I don't feel much of anything. I often see beggars on the streets of my city, or deathbeds in the hospital, or even see my own beloved girlfriends going through extreme emotional turmoil, and I don't feel for them at all. I lived most of my life thinking this is normal, and apparently it's not.

    Being virtuous gives me no joy except knowing that I'm making myself right with God. However, in a roundabout way, it also seems easier for me than for other people: I don't feel the corruptive, selfish need to look away. While I can't empathize, I can sympathize and show compassion to people others find monstrous. When my loved ones are suffering, I don't suffer with them, but instead I'm able to think my way through how to help them. Most of my friends are, by contrast, extremely empathetic, and yet they seem to like my approach more than others. I can tell when to be solution oriented and when to just listen, and listening isn't a drain on me as it is with others. They're comfortable telling me their problems because they feel less like they're burdening someone.

    I'm not perfect. Nobody is. It makes controlling my sinful nature difficult. As it's easier to help, it's also easier to not care and ignore. I've made that mistake a lot before, and I'm positive I'll do it again, no matter how hard I try. But I do try, and that's what matters.

    Now I feel comfortable talking theology with you all.

"The Sin of Empathy," As a Talking Point

    While I don't like the condemnation of others, as it implies that I myself am not just as sinful, Joe Rigny disgusts me. His position of anti-empathy isn't just provocative phrasing of a complicated issue, but exactly the pathetic, wicked stance it sounds like. He doesn't use his beliefs to advocate true help, but to endorse pain and to harden his heart against feeling anything for the usual conservative enemies. His approach is the theological equivalent of a child yelling at an adult not to smoke because it's unhealthy, rather than understanding why. If I'm wrong, and he's right, then may God turn me from my evil, but I have a strong feeling that isn't really the case.

    This is the case for most of those who talk about "The Sin of Empathy." It isn't that you should temper your emotions to be more helpful, but that kindness towards the gentile is wasted. It, as with all evangelical and self-righteous Christianity, is so consumed by Pride that it can't see itself for the hypocrisy it is. They will, in one sentence, condemn all humanity for being sinful, and in the next, assert that they are above every other sinner alive. The truth of our universal sin rings hollow when you act like it doesn't apply to you.

    However, I'm also compelled by the concept, and not especially convinced by the pro-empathy side. I have a lot of negative experiences with empathy: people who take pride in their empathetic nature, but reject helping others because it hurts. People who allow themselves to be paralyzed with another's suffering. And, among the worst, are those who rely on empathy so much that they use it as a weapon against those they can't empathize with.

Empathy's Damage

    I can't count the times that empathy has been used to damage me. I've been called a monstrous psychopath for not being able to feel it. I've been abandoned because the empathetic have defaulted to supporting those being cruel to me simply because they were closer to that person. I've had to switch to consoling others when I was suffering because they couldn't help themselves. Empathy is used to enable help, but just as if not more often, it's used to justify harm.

    Enabling your own suffering only leads to burdening everyone around you. Weeping with another isn't truly for anyone but yourself. Their pain becomes secondary to yours. Rational compassion fails when the mind is transfixed on its own wants. You don't take their suffering onto yourself, and you don't comfort them. You indulge their worst impulses, you fail to help them cope, and you only create two sufferers.

    This selfishness cannot be productive. Selfish empathizers will demand comfort, because now they themselves need it. Only masterful discipline allows one to suffer and demand nothing, the kind of radical awareness exemplified in the Savior Himself, who bore our sins for us without concern for His own wellbeing.

    Indulgence in selfish comfort manifests as outside cruelty. When you recede from and ignore the sufferer to alleviate your own suffering, you are cruel. When you demand their comfort when they themselves need it more than you, you are cruel. However, it's impossible to expect yourself to simply not indulge this cruelty when you've already indulged your emotions. When you're choked by tears, you can't recognize that you're taking when you should be giving. Empathy is the horse that is impossible to tame: no matter how hard you try, it will buck you into the mud.

    Not only will you harm another by your suffering, but you will harm those who inflict suffering. We're all sinners, and we're all evil by nature. Temptation is present in all our souls. We are all equally Christ's murderers. Empathy is the shortcut to understanding, but it's absent of actual truth. When you indulge in one's suffering, you indulge in the hatred of those who inflict it.

    This is seen in our society's awful treatment of criminals: we hate the rapist and the murderer as inhuman. We inflict the suffering we believe they deserve. We are so wrapped up in sadness for the victim that we create another victim. This wicked desire for retribution becomes a core part of empathy. If someone hurts your friend, and you indulge in their suffering, your ability to help is encumbered by your desire to inflict pain on the perpetrator, no matter the severity of the charge.

    Empathy incapacitates your ability to help someone. You don't want to make them happy, you want to alleviate your own pain. Even when you try to help, you fail to see the forest of the issue through the trees of your mind. You can't determine what someone needs to hear when you focus on what you need yourself. You have to detach to know what will make things better, otherwise you only dig their hole deeper, and you bury yourself with them.

    As with any shortcut, this leads to poor execution. Empathy is inherently predicated by the need to understand someone and put yourself in their shoes. If you can't understand, you can't empathize, and when empathy is your shortcut to kindness, you're unable to be kind to people you can't understand. Not only is this limiting your reach, but it enables cruelty.

    When your perception of who is human and who needs help is determined by how you feel, it makes those you feel nothing for become inhuman. If you've never begged, you view the beggar as scheming, desperate, lying trash. If you've never stolen, you view the thief as selfish, greedy scum. If you've never been a stranger in a strange land, you view the traveler as a lost failure.

Empathy's Sinful Nature

    Empathy is itself the problem. Not its overindulgence or misapplication, but its inherently corruptive nature. Buddhists are correct in their assertion that suffering creates selfishness, and that selfishness is the creator of suffering. When you indulge in empathy trying to help another, you're also constantly resisting its temptation. Resisting that constant draw to feel more, to be more selfish, is nearly impossible.

    Virtue is resisting yourself at every turn. It's refusing temptation and indulgence in our sinful and corrupt nature. Empathy, by contrast, is indulgence in those feelings. Whether you indulge less or more, you still indulge them. The problem with a sin isn't merely that you are lustful and enjoy sex, or that you're wrathful and enjoy hurting others. How you feel about those things is irrelevant. Sin is sin because they lead you down the path of hurting others, and once started down that road it's impossible to stop yourself unless you stop the sin altogether.

    We're creatures who have the free will of God, but lack His infinite knowledge. We don't have the wisdom to experience without indulgence. You are trying to ride the mad, raving horse. It's better to not ride at all.

And Yet, Jesus Still Wept

    The question remains, what do we do? If we aren't empathetic, how do we be kind? What does God expect of us? I can't have a sure answer. It's possible that I'm entirely wrong with everything I've said here. I pray that God will forgive me if I am. But we can try to be good in more productive ways.

    Your compassion doesnt have to come from empathy, but from understanding of certain truths. That you are not any better or worse than anyone else, and that nobody is less deserving of kindness. You can understand someone's needs without empathizing. It's better to, actually: by removing your own emotions, you can see more clearly what will actually be productive to say and do. By doing so, you make their suffering and recovery about them, not yourself and your own desire for comfort.

    When you embrace detached compassion, you stop needing a reason to help. It becomes your second nature. You merely know that you're with God when you help, and that's enough. You make no demands and you don't become burdened by helping. You extend your hand not because it makes you feel good, but because you know you're supposed to.

    It's also important to note that, as with any other sin, just feeling it in your heart isn't anything wrong. You don't hurt people just by feeling things. You hurt people when you expect things from them based on your feelings. Empathy can be privately felt, the same as rage, or lust, or want, or jealousy. It becomes sin when you indulge it.

    Rigny's warning against empathizing with "the Enemy" is itself the darkness of empathy. You proclude yourself from helping someone because you can't understand them. When you don't need to understand to be compassionate, you help many more people.

    If Christ was perfect and virtuous, and acting empathy is sin, then Christ's compassion came from elsewhere. His love and kindness came from a greater understanding and the knowledge to do right. When He did feel empathy for Lazarus and his loved ones, Christ didn't make the death about Himself, and He didn't expect comfort in it. He only wept.