When Did Empathy Become a Sin?

Everyone counts. Kindness matters. Love wins. Simple principles many of us try to follow. Few people would consider them radical.

Until recently.

Something has shifted in our culture, leaving many of us feeling bewildered, numb and exhausted. Politically-charged animosities have fractured our communities, neighborhoods and families. Efforts to try to understand one another are threatening.

It feels like our social fabric is at risk. Also our long-held tradition of caring for one another. Cutbacks in humanitarian aid have caused more than a half a million deaths in just a few months, two thirds of whom are children. Refugees and immigrants are not just being turned away at our borders, they are being hunted, dehumanized and incarcerated without due process. Kids are being separated from their parents.

As someone who wrote a book about empathy, you might imagine my shock when I learned how some politicians, and even some Christians, are calling empathy a sin.

Their agument goes something like this.

Empathy is the state of “feeling into” another person’s reality. It requires us to find the place in ourselves where we connect with others’ experiences, their thought-space, their level of emotions. Researcher and popular author Dr. Brené Brown defines empathy as the ability to join others in their space, essentially telling them they are not alone—in joy or in suffering. Roman Krznaric, a sociologist at Cambridge University, defines empathy as “the art of stepping imaginatively into the shoes of another person, understanding both their feelings and perspective, and using that understanding to guide your actions.”

Engaging empathy can be painful or joyful, discordant or harmonious. It’s almost always full of ambivalence because not only do we bring our own emotions to the space, we also share in the emotions of those with us. As dissonant as this can be, it is the only way empathy works. In order to connect with another person, we have to connect with something in ourselves that knows, at least in part, what she is feeling. To know her pain is to also know her joy; to feel her confusion is to recognize her clarity. Those are the rules. Empathy is a sacrifice for the sake of someone else, and sacrifice always involves risk.

There are two primary scientific camps regarding empathy: some lead with the head and some lead with the heart. And too often, never the twain shall meet. One group views empathy as primarily cognitive, the ability to know or understand how the other is thinking and feeling, similar to seeing their point of view. The other group views empathy as primarily affective, the ability to feel what the other is thinking and feeling, almost like an emotional contagion. Each view has its own theories, supporters, and detractors.

Thank God, empathy is both—a very soulish kind of space. At creation, God breathed the breath of life and formed humans—not with a soul but into a soul. A soul is not what we have but what we are: a mind for knowing, a heart for feeling, and a will for acting. Empathy as a way of thinking and feeling is the most truthful definition of the brave soul God intends for each of us.

But empathy in all its facets is at risk of becoming extinct. Why? Because empathy, at its core, is controversial.

Blame it on Jesus. He came to us as a baby with a body and needs, born in blood and water. Sometimes it’s tempting to cede his humanity—that he actually took on our skin—in order to ruminate on his more divine aspects. Sometimes we forget that Jesus temporarily gave up his place beside God to take on the misery and helplessness of those he came to rescue.

With the arrival of Jesus came the advent of empathy. Jesus became human, one of us—approachable, understanding, listening, and ready to know and care about both our joy and suffering because he was there—fully human, fully aware, fully vulnerable, not distant or removed, but walking among us, giving his life away. The incarnation is the fullest expression of the empathy of God.

Why would Jesus give up heaven, with its joy and peace, for the squalor of Bethlehem, the suffering of Gethsemane, and the torture of Jerusalem? Jesus was—is—a brave soul. The incarnation reverberates throughout history as the seismic event that forever links the Son of God with the people he created. It announces the arrival of a “new commandment,” the command of Jesus to live a life of empathy with and for others. Far from simply “walking a mile in our shoes” or “loving us as he wanted to be loved,” Jesus chose to know us fully and to care for us deeply—mind, heart, and will—making him our ultimate example.

Consider the opening line of the parable of the good Samaritan, one of Jesus’ most famous. “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers” is widely accepted as the opening salvo to one of the most compelling stories about empathy in history. It is couched in the context of Jesus sending his followers into the world as “little Christs” with the words “go” and “whomever rejects you rejects me” (Luke 10:16). The story is a response, actually, to a timeless question by an “expert in the law” (Luke 10:25):

Expert: How do I get eternal life?

Jesus: What does the law say?

Expert: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.

Jesus: Do this and you will live.

Expert: But who is my neighbor? (paraphrased from Luke 10:25-37)

And there it is—every question ever asked rolled up into one enduring and universal conversation: What matters most in life? What matters most is others. This is where we as humans always trip up. Even if we know the rules—love God, love yourself, love others—we have trouble with the “others” part. Put a face on the “other,” and empathy becomes controversial. The problem is those others are just so other.

So Jesus helps us out. He chose to flip the switch with an example of empathy so radical, so real, that it makes loving even the most irritating relative, weird coworker, or scary neighbor a breeze. He went right for the jugular—where the artery of what we know joins with the life blood of what we care about. In this case, “the other” became the hero of Jesus’ story.

“A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.”

Wait for it . . . “But a Samaritan . . .” (Luke 10:30-33)

Remember, Jews despised Samaritans so much that they wouldn’t even say the name. It’s fair to say they dealt more in shades of antipathy. They never expected the hero of the story to be the one they were trying to ignore, to un-see, to do away with. So, pick your poison. What “other” would set you off?

But a . . . But an immigrant? But a refugee? But a Muslim? But a Democrat? But an evangelical?

And what about the hero of the story:

“But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’ 

“Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”

The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.”

Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.” (Luke 10:33-37) Likewise to my neighbor.

Likewise to the orphan, widow, wandering refugee, evangelical, Muslim, immigrant. Likewise to Esperance. Likewise to you. Likewise to me. Empathy is tantamount to living a likewise life.