Empathy is Not a Bad Word, Really

“Share each other’s burdens, and in this way obey the law of Christ.”

Galatians 6:2-3 is the foundation I use to introduce my research to students related to empathy. To me, the verse exemplifies empathy. Empathy is often defined as the ability to understand another’s emotions and experiences. What is often missing from this affective and cognitive definition, however, is what scholars call self-differentiation. In a more expanded definition, healthy empathy is regulated care of another, while I maintain who I am as I walk with someone in pain. I am motivated by God’s love in me, which moves me to compassion and to help when I accurately understand another’s suffering. In fact, God modeled this kind of empathy. When Jesus died, He took His scars unto Heaven, so I know He understands (e.g., pain of being human, betrayal, suffering) and I know He cares for me. Yet he also clearly self-differentiates from fallen humanity. I do not find this definition in one recent book.

Joe Rigney’s book title, The Sin of Empathy, is meant to provoke thought. In his interview I listened to not too long ago, Rigney (Former president of Bethlehem College & Seminary, Fellow of Theology at New Saint Andrews College) states, “So yeah, the provocative title is intentional, and I mean it. I mean that there is a form of empathy like anger, like desire, like fear and grief. There is an ungodly sinful form of it.” To unpack Rigney’s book, he explains why the wrong kind of empathy is sinful: “It’s a tool for manipulation, especially in media; It’s used for a progressive agenda.” Rigney is not against empathy when defined as “the ability to appreciate and respect the feelings of another.” However, “untethered empathy” is a sin.

He explained it as an “emotive connection that exceeds and overpowers reality and good judgment.” He rejects the popular notion that untethered empathy is a prerequisite for compassion. Instead, untethered empathy “renders Christian’s incapable of thinking through categories.” Untethered empathy is “unhitched from the truth” and “becomes an idol and a god.” He has further warnings on untethered empathy: it shipwrecks Christian’s lives, creates moral failure wherever it resides, and is not Christian love. He states, rightly so, “God’s love, truth, anchors our compassion.”

In citing all the dangers of “untethered empathy,” Rigney states that he has been criticized by friends for the title as unhelpful, confusing, and needlessly provocative. I agree with his friends that his title is confusing and, yes, provocative. I also have an issue with his description of empathy. Rigney admits that he is not concerned with the definition of empathy but its use. While he states this, he goes into the history of the definition of empathy and its evolution in the therapeutic field. He continues that he is not interested in a more accurate definition of empathy. While he says this, he goes on to describe it as affective (feeling) and cognitive (putting one’s self in another’s shoes).

Yet another scholarly understanding of empathy exists that adds an important missing component. Gerdes and Segal define empathy as affective, cognitive, and self-differentiation. To clarify, the empathic process is 1. Affective matching: Mirroring of emotions between an observer and the observed 2. Other-oriented perspective taking: Placing oneself in another’s situation (shoes) and staying focused on their experience or point of view. 3. Self-other differentiation: Clarity that we can share another’s experience in a connecting way, while still maintaining our separate identity, and not substituting our understanding of their experience. I’ve heard it as keeping your socks on or maintaining your identity and not substituting your emotions for theirs. Maintaining a separate identity and not getting overtaken by emotions takes good boundaries and self-regulation. When all three features are present, we experience empathy.

Rigney explained that too much empathy (care and understanding) is an issue with no boundaries, and thus, people suffer together in the pit. In my estimation, without boundaries, there can be dysregulation and not true empathy when walking with another. Brene Brown explained in a recent video, “empathy without boundaries is not empathy.” Personal distress can be an outcome of empathy when boundaries or emotion regulation fail.

Rigney goes on to set forth another problem with empathy: it was not originally in the Bible, and he reports that it changed in translations. Sympathy was originally in the Bible. Rigney calls empathy “emotion sharing.” He states it is not a virtue and that virtues go wrong with deficiency or excess. He then states empathy is excess compassion. Compassion and sympathy are sharing in the pain of another and are virtuous per Rigney, “True compassion has an anchor….True compassion is not a god, but an action inspired by God’s light and influence in our lives.” I can agree with his comments on compassion, but his rhetoric on empathy is confusing here, or limited, as empathy is feeling with and considering an emotional connection, while sympathy is an emotional stance of detached concern, not sharing pain.¹

In a Mohler interview, Rigney states, “You actually do need to care, but you have to remain anchored and more to the truth of God, to the reality of God. He has to be more substantive for you than anything else. And once that’s true, now you can afford to be compassionate. Now you can actually have real compassion for people. I don’t want to cede the word to the left.” Rigney continues:

Paul Bloom is a secular psychologist, [who] wrote a book a number of years ago called Against Empathy. And the quote that got me turned onto him was where he said, “When most people hear the word empathy, they think kindness. I think war. because it’s empathy for my in-group, empathy for the oppressed classes, empathy for these people, is coupled with intense rage, hatred, demonization of anybody that I think is threatening them.”

Maybe Rigney could use words like emotional manipulation instead of untethered empathy.

We are to see people in their struggles and help them, empower them, and not enable sinful behavior. Empathy helps us to see their struggles. Empathy with proper self-differentiation does not promote one side against another. And, empathy does not mean that we agree with a person. We can feel with someone and their pain without agreeing with their views or actions.

However, putting yourself in someone’s shoes intentionally means opening up to pain and connecting in a way that demonstrates you care about their struggle and can understand their views. One may or may not agree, but we can be human and extend compassion. Without empathy, we judge people negatively in a way that is condemning, rather than uplifting (my opinion).

I went to a doctor who had no empathy, and he left me feeling distant and hostile for his careless treatment of my rather serious diagnosis. I have been in groups growing up that were segmented by socioeconomic class, and I felt that I was treated disrespectfully, as if my voice did not matter. I am a Christian, and I have seen the pain that some in the church have felt when prayers turned into gossip over their sin or someone else’s, whether from addiction or adultery. Are we not to uplift others? I picture Jesus at the well as He spoke truth to the Samaritan woman, but only after He listened to her and her outcast status. He then offered her something better, empowering her and her family with His word. So, empathy with boundaries and wisdom is not so toxic empathy. Alison Stuckey argues in her book Toxic Empathy that empathy should be guided by love, truth, and justice, as in the Bible. I do agree with these comments.

Empathy with bias and overemotionalism are issues because these characteristics distort judgment. We see plenty of this division in the news and on social media, driven by unregulated feelings instead of being driven by fairness, truth, and appropriate boundaries. Yes, the resulting emotional outrage is a toxic issue driven by distortions of the truth. However, empathy should not be mischaracterized or distorted as toxic. Romans 12:15 states, “Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep.” Empathy is biblical when it is feeling with another, sharing in their emotions, while being tethered to God. Empathy is a part of love; therefore, it has the power to bring us together, not divide. I would say that empathy, which divides, is not empathy. Empathy that connects us is empathy, and so it’s not a bad word, really.

1. Karen E. Gerdes, and Elizabeth Segal. “Importance of Empathy for Social Work Practice: Integrating New Science,” Social Work 56, no. 2 (2011): 141–48, https://doi.org/10.1093/sw/56.2.141