Article Excerpt on Empathy by Joe Rigney Teacher, desiringGod.org
Empathy and Tribalism
The possibility of misplaced empathy raises a final danger. Paul
Bloom, a professor of psychology and cognitive science, has written an
entire book called Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion.17
Bloom notes that, because we are finite and can feel the feelings of only a limited number of people, empathy is highly selective. Empathy, therefore, behaves like a spotlight, linking us to the suffering and feelings of particular people or groups and not others. This empathetic myopia results in competing empathies, with some identifying with the suffering of one group, and others identifying with the suffering of another group. This built-in bias inhibits our ability to see the big picture. We struggle to maintain an appropriate measure of objectivity. We find it easy to demonize those that we don’t feel empathy for. Thus, empathy for our in-group often goes hand in hand with intense anger (and even hatred) for our out-group. Thus, a recent spate of articles has noted that an increase in empathy, far from building connection, seems to be joined with increased polarization and tribalism.18
In other words, we are often selectively empathetic, turning our opponents into devils because they’re easier to hate.
The Virtue of Empathy
In the end, it’s the dangers and dynamics described here that I’m
mainly concerned about, not the labels. I don’t want to be a stickler
about words. The word empathy can be employed in ways that are perfectly good and right.
Abigail Dodds, as one good example, has given a compelling account of empathy’s natural goodness, while also highlighting its significant dangers.19 What’s more, her article highlights how a clear understanding of empathy’s proper place can help men and women serve together in the home, the church, and the world. If empathy simply means “understanding the perspective and emotions of another,” then not only is it good, but it’s essential in order to love people. And even some kind of emotion-sharing is demanded by the call to weep with those who weep and to rejoice with those who rejoice, as well as by Paul’s words about the body: “If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together” (1 Corinthians 12:26). Empathy in this sense is an aspect of love.
This is especially true for counseling those who are suffering. As a friend of mine who is a Christian psychologist puts it,
For me, good Christian therapy — the kind that promotes God-centeredness — requires connecting empathically with people where they are (without necessarily endorsing all that they are experiencing). We do this in order to help them grow in self-awareness so that Christ can enter into their unresolved and redeemer internal world in order to bring healing.
In this way, empathy, rather than being superior to sympathy, is the servant of sympathy (or compassion). By sharing the emotions of the afflicted (including their negative and painful emotions), I am able to build connection, to build trust, to cross the divide that so often isolates the sufferer from everyone else. The ultimate goal of that emotional connection is to bring the sufferer to Christ so that he can comfort and heal. Empathy serves sympathy, and sympathy moves us to loving action, just as sympathy so often moved Jesus to act to help the hurting in the Gospels (Matthew 9:36; 14:14; 15:32).
Weeping For Good
While we maintain our fundamental identity and allegiance to Christ, we weep with those who weep, we listen to their lament and their pain, we consider both their immediate feelings and their ultimate good, we learn to humbly and wisely distinguish between their felt reality and actual reality, and we use wisdom in bringing such distinctions to bear for them. We communicate with our words, our tears, our faces, and our presence, “This is hard. I know you feel that way. I’m with you in this, and I have hope.”
In all of this, my main concern is not to correct sufferers in the moment of their pain, nor to call into question the deep distress of those who are suffering. Instead, I simply want to insist that comforters maintain their integrity while joining others in their pain. Call it maintaining boundaries. Call it preserving self-differentiation. Call it avoiding enmeshment. Call it rejecting corrupt and unhealthy empathy. Call it resisting the idolatry of feelings. Call it remaining tethered to the True and the Good. Call it maintaining allegiance to Jesus.
Whatever you call it, it’s refusing to be totally immersed in the feelings of another. It’s refusing to allow other people to steer our emotional vehicles. It’s refusing to concede what should not be conceded, and resisting attempts to subordinate truth to the feelings and sensitivities of the most reactive and immature members of a community. It’s moving deliberately and intentionally into the pain of others while clinging to Jesus for dear life. It’s maintaining hope in the face of another’s despair, even as you wisely choose the timing of encouragements, exhortations, and corrections.
As Christians, we must have deep feeling for the hurting, the broken, and the suffering. We are, after all, called to clothe ourselves with “bowels of mercies” (Colossians 3:12 KJV). But our feelings, and our sharing in the feelings of others, must be tethered to Truth, to Reality, to Christ. May God help us to do so.
Father God, keep me on Your narrow path as I reach out to my friend on the despondent path. Help me to avoid walking under his umbrella. Give me Your words to comfort him and show him that I feel his pain. I pray that he will soon understand that You feel his pain and that you really love him and care about him in every way. In Jesus' name. Amen.
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