The American Crisis of Selective Empathy

And how it reaches into the church.

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I’m going to tell you a true-life story, one of many virtually identical stories I’ve heard these past few weeks. Be honest with yourself as you consider how you feel.

Brian (not his real name) was a kind Christian man. He and his wife were always there to help a friend in need, and in the local business community, he was known for his relentlessly cheerful disposition. He was Republican—like virtually everyone else in his church and community—but he wasn’t defined by his politics.

Then the pandemic hit. Brian hated the lockdowns, and he also hated masks and especially mask mandates. He hated them so much that he boycotted services until the church allowed unmasked people to worship. 

Brian also refused the vaccine. It’s not that he thought that COVID was a hoax, but he didn’t view it as a meaningful risk. He wasn’t young, but he wasn’t quite at retirement age either. His health was good. He was willing to risk the disease and unwilling to take a vaccine that felt rushed.

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  1. Chris.Whitford

    It's taken me a few weeks to return to this article, because I've been pondering it for as long. I think the heart of the "empathy problem" is that we have believed the new postmodern definition of love which is 'agree with and support,' and it's a very weak, cost free counterfeit to the Judeo-Christian mandate to love your neighbor as yourself. Love is sacrificial action: "my life for yours." If you have young adult children who have made choices you don't agree with, then you can very easily see how one can love and serve and demonstrate empathy towards someone whose choices you don't agree with, even think are destructive, even evil, and in so doing, remain an anchor able to get them out of quicksand. To validate someone's feelings, to sit in sorrow or pain or suffering or misery, even that which is a natural consequence to bad choices can co-exist with disagreeing with someone. Being present with others is imperative in the mysteries of unjust and even simply unexpected suffering- of which there are plenty of opportunities in this broken world.
    One is not threatening the "moral order" by doing so, even when the suffering is from one of the "leading lies" of the present cultural moment. Pick whatever one you want, left or right, religious or irreligious. One is not throwing out standards or calling evil, good. Consider Jesus, who said, "Father, forgive them. They know not what they do." The irony of that is that they did know what they were doing- mostly. But, Jesus, empathizes with their blindness, even while HE was the direct recipient of its outrageous injustice and affirms that indeed they did not know the full extent of their error. It was the most important, "My life for yours." act in human history.
    Or consider Paul in Galatians 6. 6:1-10 is relevant to this whole discussion. Paul tells the Galatians,"If someone is caught in sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently. But watch yourself, or you also may be tempted. Carry each other's burdens, and in this way fulfill the law of Christ. If anyone thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself. Each one should test his own actions. Then he can take pride in himself, without comparing himself to somebody else, for each should carry his own load." The point here is that when someone's sin becomes apparent, be sure to be gentle in your restoration of that person. In fact, bear their burdens, perhaps the very consequences of their sin. Oh, and by the way, don't be tempted to sin, which is really easy to have happen in this moment, because the sin the person was caught in and the one you so easily see, is not usually your big problem. (That's why you saw it, duh.)So, then, what's the temptation? Thinking you are something when you are nothing. Oh, you say, you are just upholding the law? But, Paul says, carrying other's burdens is upholding the law of Christ. And that you should test your OWN actions by that law. What was that law? Read Matthew 5-7; Philippians 2. Careful, calling someone "fool" means you deserve what murderers deserve. But, you say, you are right about your moral standards. Ok, good! Just don't compare yourself to others, but to Jesus' standard. Then you can take pride in yourself without reference to anybody else. It will make you really useful. You'll carry your own load. Basically, love others well and pick your own weeds. "Do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God."

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  2. Brendan Bossard

    The Brown video reminded me of Job's friends. They empathetically sat with him for many days after his afflictions hit. This helped. They erred by opening their mouths and lecturing him about sins that they thought he had committed that brought tragedy upon him. Granted, Job did not do anything deserving of his trauma, but this still illustrates David's point. Empathy is an essential part of Christian life. I add that it is an emotion like anger or joy. We all have empathetic reactions that each of us feels to a greater or lesser degree. Snuffing that reaction can lead to Pharisaism that harms our relationships with each other and the world.

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  3. Scott Watson

    I have a son and daughter-in-law who are young, have two young children. They just moved away to a new job. We tried to have a decent conversation with them about vaccination-they are choosing not too based on religious reasons and the feeling that the vaccines were too rushed.

    Ironically, I am also a rotational lay preacher for two small churches who do not have a regular pastor. I recently did a coup!e of messages based on Dallas Willard's ideas on anger, contempt and condemnation in his amazing book "The Divine Conspiracy". They were immensely helpful in preaching to myself, as well as to the members of the churches.

    I also got good material from Adam Grant's chapter in "Think Again" on vaccine whisperers, on the technique of motivational interviewing. A powerful tool that takes time to use and it struck me how Jesus used similar methods asking questions and connecting. " Why do you call me good?" "Whose face is on the coin?" "Do you want to be healed?""

    I still wake up at night with worry about what will happen, and I have burned ground to repair after initial arguments with them, but the connection with Willard's and Grant's writings have been immensely helpful.


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  4. Sue Sylvia

    So I finally checked out the Brene Brown video and I learned something: if you asked me before watching it, I'd say I was an empathetic person. Turns out I'm actually super sympathetic! D'oh! Gotta work on this. PS: I am Christian and while I don't tend to click with many of the self-help people, I did like the video.

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    James McQuivey

    The conversation here has been very engaging and insightful, thanks, all. A lot of discussion about the finer points of empathy, whether David's application of it to Jesus is apt (it's not, but that's okay -- an infinite being giving an infinite act of love does not help us understand what type of empathy we can bring to the table each day, any more than learning that greater love hath no man than this, that he would lay down his life for his friends, isn't really an injunction to each of us to try to die for the people we love).
    The conversation that's missing -- and one that I suspect most aren't ready to have -- is that empathy is merely this decade's self-esteem mess. If we're not careful, we'll overinvest in empathy as the solution to people's problems exactly the way policy makers did with the self-esteem movement (see Singal's The Quick Fix for a sad history here). Indeed, watching Christians torture themselves to explain how Jesus taught empathy when he clearly didn't show empathy to everybody he dealt with each day -- crumbs from the table, anyone? -- is like the 1980s when Christians infected by the self-esteem movement tortured themselves to argue that implicit in the second great commandment, "love thy neighbor as thyself," was a commandment to first love yourself. We could just skip all of that overinvestment and get right to the nut of how empathy is one useful tool among many.
    Probably will take a decade, though, over which the empathy uberalles movement will slowly crumble. Paul Bloom's book, Against Empathy, has already compiled the evidence that empathy can be harmful to people who give it as well as those who receive. That people can claim to need empathy as a path to social rewards and others can claim to give empathy as way to signal virtue or demonstrate affiliation. Or that people who experience the strongest tugs of empathy actually often do the least to address the sorrows and pains of others because they have to manage their own despair. None of this critique implies that empathy doesn't exist or that it can't be used in positive ways. But it certainly means our current obsession with imagining empathy contains mysterious powers that will heal all of us all the time will pass.
    I appreciate empathy when it is given. And I give empathy when it can help, which is often in my experience. But I won't pretend it is an absolute virtue (or conversely, that is is a sin? bizarre) when it is not. I work to not be unhealthily dependent on signals of empathy in order to feel right and manage my own circumstances. And I will even deprive people expressions of my empathy if I believe I don't have the wisdom to manage it properly for their benefit.
    A thought to end on. Jesus made no mention of the Good Samaritan's empathetic style, just his actions. The commandment to love god and our neighbor is woefully incomplete in its description of just how that love is best expressed. And yet we, woefully incomplete as we are, do what we can.

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    KAM

    Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

    Seems relevant.

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  7. Ted

    Selective empathy example for the day: https://twitter.com/SykesCharlie/status/1437604755224805379?s=20

    It truly is difficult to feel empathy for this person. I feel empathy for his family and friends though.

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      KAM

      Difficult, but not impossible: Who would want a heart so hard and calloused as that? What a miserable wretch of a human being, once a child.

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      1. Ted

        I know. You have to wonder what makes people be so callus. I do feel bad for him and for whatever made him the way he was.

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  8. Foster

    Thought exercise: how is the current situation of anti-vaxxers dying from COVID similar to or different from people having unprotected sex dying from AIDS during that epidemic? How is/should the response to those people be different?

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    Johnw

    I'm late to this discussion and I suspect that what I'm about to say has already been said, but here goes...

    To David's question of why am I not feeling much (if any) empathy for those who are dying after refusing vaccines? Because the people who are unwilling to look past their own selfishness are creating these conditions:
    1. Every child age 12 and under is at heightened risk. Don't bother telling me that most kids survive covid. Too many are getting sick, some are dying, and almost all of it is unnecessary. If everyone (without a good excuse such as a medical condition) had been vaccinated, cases would be far lower, and risk would be far lower for everyone, vaccinated or not.
    2. The situation for vaccinated elderly is not entirely safe, again because of the ongoing high number of cases. Therefore, my siblings and I have to constantly think about what is safe for my elderly mother, who lives alone. She and I have taken trips together several times since her main traveling companion of five decades, my father, died seven years ago. Now we have to consider whether the risk is worth it. Why? Because of selfish unvaccinated people.
    3. The survival of my small business, four employees, and a dozen or so contractors and major suppliers continue to be threatened because of ongoing economic disruptions due to covid.

    When Biden said something like "our patience is wearing thin" he got a lot of flack for it. As for me, he couldn't have said it better. My patience is wearing thin, because selfish people are threatening my livelihood, and the lives of people I care about.

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    Jordan

    Wow, certainly seeing the lack of empathy realized in these comments.

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