Empathy is not a sin

With Valentine's Day this week, the subject of love may be on people's minds more than usual. 

Unfortunately, the subject of empathy, often connected to and associated with love, seems to be under attack and up for debate these days. 

Empathy is simply defined as "the ability to understand and share the feelings of another." Merriam Webster goes into even more detail, defining it as "the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another." 

Generally, empathy is seen as a good thing, as an integral part of loving and caring for other people, and as an important skill that shows emotional intelligence. Growing up in a Christian household studying the Bible, I was taught the importance of loving others, which included seeing their perspectives and valuing their experiences. I was taught that love is patient and kind, that love "bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things." (1 Corinthians 13:7) 

So, it has been baffling to me that, recently, empathy has come under attack, and most of the attacks have been from Christians. 

"Do not commit the sin of empathy," Ben Garrett posted on X. Garret describes himself in his X bio as a "Christian husband and father" and "deacon at Refuge Church in Ogden, UT." He posted this on January 22 along with a picture of Bishop Mariann Budde, who spoke during a prayer service after the inauguration of Donald Trump. 

"This snake is God's enemy and yours too," Garrett's post went on. "She hates God and His people. You need to properly hate in response. She is not merely deceived but is a deceiver. Your eye shall not pity." 

Budde's sermon called on President Trump to show mercy to those who are scared in America right now, including LGBTQ+ youth and immigrant workers. Her sermon drew criticism from Trump himself and from many others, including many Christians, such as Garrett. 

While I could spend time discussing Budde's message and the response to it, I want to focus on the concept Garrett put forward of empathy being sinful, which became one of the talking points in response to this message and others like it. 

Unfortunately, a negative view of empathy isn't entirely new in certain Christian circles, but is becoming even more mainstream in how it is presented. A 2019 article on the website Desiring God is titled "The Enticing Sin of Empathy." Christian content creator Allie Beth Stuckey published her book "Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion" last October. These types of writings present the idea that empathy is simply an emotion that is not connected to the actions of love or kindness, that it just means feeling what someone else is feeling, and that it can lead to sympathizing with wrong ways of thinking and promoting or condoning what the writers believe to be sinful choices, therefore making the feeling sinful as well. 

I believe this perspective towards empathy is dangerous. For one thing, writers like Stuckey twist words like "empathy" and define them in their own way. However, their complicated definitions and ideas get conflated with the idea of empathy as a whole, to the point that people begin to refer to empathy itself as a sin.

This also leads to people being closed off from wanting to hear or even consider the perspectives of people they think they may not agree with. The refusal to hear other perspectives can eventually lead to a place where you don't view people you disagree with as human beings, which leads to much more dangerous places. 

Gustave Mark Gilbert was an American psychologist who interviewed Nazis on trial at Nuremberg after the Holocaust. In his book "Nuremberg Diaries," which described his studies and findings, he said this: 

"I told you once that I was searching for the nature of evil. I think I've come close to defining it: a lack of empathy. It's the one characteristic that connects all the defendants. A genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow man. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy."

For those who wonder what the Bible says, the word "empathy" essentially isn't in it. The only time you'll find that word in an English translation is in the Amplified Bible, which adds extra definitions and explanations alongside the text. In the AMP translation of Ephesians 5:2, it reads: "And walk continually in love [that is, value one another-practice empathy and compassion, unselfishly seeking the best for others], just as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us..." (The KJV verse I grew up with says "And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us...") 

This verse does sum things up, because while the word "empathy" isn't in the Bible, the concept is all over, from the verses about love to the example of Jesus. And nowhere is it said or implied to be sinful or toxic. If anything, I believe the Bible backs up G.M. Gilbert's claim from the "Nuremberg Diaries," and shows that the true "sin of empathy" is not having any.