As Dennis Hiebert’s post recounted yesterday, Christians have been arguing about empathy. Usually, I find myself, as a Christian moral educator, disagreeing with most parties in this conversation, whether they hail from the theological/political right or left. In this essay, I propose an alternative approach to thinking about empathy that differs from the books and thinkers Hiebert mentioned in yesterday’s post, but also from what I think is Hiebert’s willingness to overlook the dark side of empathy (especially since those critics of empathy come from a political side he does not like). I clearly define empathy, celebrate its important contribution to moral development, but also recognize that empathy must be analyzed and practiced within the Christian story.
Defining Empathy
One major problem with the current conversation about empathy is that the concept is often poorly defined. As I mentioned in a previous blog post on empathy and compassion, I think the Oxford English Dictionary definition is a helpful one. It defines empathy simply as: “The ability to understand and appreciate another person’s feelings, experience.”
Based on this definition, I contend we should understand empathy as an important human capacity, given by God, that we should prize and seek to develop in our lives, similar to how we develop the ability to reason logically. Plenty of scriptural examples appear to support this view (e.g., “Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.” Rom. 12:15). We should want our children, youth, and young adults to cultivate the skill of understanding and appreciating another person’s feelings and experiences.
Empathy’s Role in Moral Development
In addition, we need to recognize how important empathy is for moral development and motivation. In my own scholarly area of moral education, scholars such as Lawrence Kohlberg tended to emphasize the importance of moral reasoning and neglected empathy. To be clear, advanced moral reasoning is an important skill, but as later studies have found, it is not the only moral motivation for action and is often insufficient to motivate one to take action.[1]
In her helpful summary of moral development during emerging adulthood, Laura Padilla-Walker notes, “empathy often results in one of two emotional responses: sympathy, defined as care or concern for another person’s emotional situation; or personal distress, defined as empathic over-arousal and apprehension in response to another person’s emotional situation” (p. 454). Sympathy is prosocial and associated with higher levels of moral reasoning, whereas personal distress is associated with the opposite. We must recognize both possible results from empathy!
Empathy-Inspired Sympathy Can Motivate Virtue, but It Is Not a Virtue
On the positive side, sympathy is important for spurring one to act on one’s moral reasoning and for even spurring other-oriented moral reasoning.[2] For example, in a major study of the moral reasoning of those who rescued Jews, more respondents indicated that they made their decision to rescue Jews more often from an empathetic orientation to others suffering (37%) than universal moral principles such as justice (11%).[3]
We should recognize that although empathy-derived sympathy can be a key ethical motivator, it is not a complete Christian virtue unless it is combined with action that furthers others’ flourishing (then it becomes compassion), nor is it the only source of moral motivation. For example, in that same study of Jewish rescuers, religious norms and the norms of one’s close social community actually proved more important for the majority of rescuers (52%) than both empathy and reliance upon universal moral principles. For Christians, the Christian norms or virtues of agape love and compassion must always be primary.
What do I mean by virtue? Some of my colleagues produced the following definition of virtue that I think is most helpful. They define virtue as
(a) dispositional, (b) deep-seated (c) habits (d) that contribute to flourishing and (e) that produce activities with the following three features: they are (f) done well, (g) not done poorly, and (h) in accordance with the right motivation and reason. (p. 2607, italics added)
Now, empathy-inspired sympathy can certainly fit the first three elements of this definition. When properly cultivated, it is a dispositional and deep-seated habit. Also, when the actions it motivates are done well and with the right motivations and reasons, it can contribute to the virtue of compassion and human flourishing.
How Empathy Is Misused and Abused
Unfortunately, empathy can also be used for the wrong motivations and reasons and ways that do not contribute to human flourishing (d). Since empathy is a skill, it can be used to manipulate people. I know men and women who are great at making you feel understood with their empathy, because they really do understand your feelings and experiences. However, they use that skill and their understanding to manipulate you to their ends. I also know others who manipulate undiscerning, but deeply empathetic people for their ends (and not for their or others’ flourishing). We call them grifters.
Furthermore, empathy-inspired personal distress can lead one to alleviate emotional or other types of suffering that short-circuit sanctification. On college campuses, as the book on The Coddling of the American Mind reminds us, empathy applied only to alleviate suffering without consideration of overall human flourishing can lead us to undermine the need for students or others to face and grow from suffering and ultimately, to flourish. At times, the highly empathetic person may want to help people avoid their phobias, problems, and conflicts and alleviate their suffering. In reality, we need to help people face them and move forward through them, which can entail suffering.
Furthermore, as Christ taught us, suffering is necessary to reverse the Fall. In other words, to practice agape love, humility, forgiveness, servant leadership, and Christ’s other redemptive virtues that reverse the Fall in life entails suffering. Unfortunately, the problem with many Christian college students today is that they want the outcomes of Christian moral and intellectual virtues without enduring the suffering that it takes to practice and acquire them.
Moreover, their overly empathetic parents or friends, who have a response of personal distress at their suffering, may help them seek to avoid suffering along the way. That’s where we get the names “helicopter” or “snowplow” parents. These overly-empathetic parents who want to help their children avoid suffering stunt their growth into flourishing human beings with virtue (as described in the process of growth from suffering toward character described in Romans 5:3-4 and James 1:2-4).
You Do Not Need Empathy for Virtuous Actions
A second mistake is to view empathy as necessary for moral virtue (versus simply conducive to some virtues). Frederick Buechner’s description of various forms of love helps us understand this point. He wrote:
The love for equals is a human thing—of friend for friend, brother for brother. It is to love what is loving and lovely. The world smiles. The love for the less fortunate is a beautiful thing—the love for those who suffer, for those who are poor, the sick, the failures, the unlovely. This is compassion, and it touches the heart of the world. The love for the more fortunate is a rare thing—to love those who succeed where we fail, to rejoice without envy with those who rejoice, the love of the poor for the rich, of the black man for the white man. The world is always bewildered by its saints. And then there is the love for the enemy—love for the one who does not love you but mocks, threatens, and inflicts pain. The tortured’s love for the torturer. This is God’s love. It conquers the world.[4]
Empathy often helps motivate one to engage in the virtue of compassion, the second kind of love that Buechner describes. Yet, it sometimes hinders the first type of love for one’s family or friends. We all know the empathetic person, usually in the helping professions, who is great at showing sympathy and then compassion to the poor, their congregation, their medical patients, or others in need, but is not great at loving their family. Their family does not trigger their empathy the same way as the needy, so they neglect their family. Their attention is given primarily to the hurt, helpless, or oppressed who trigger their empathy and is not directed by a proper ordering of loves. Of course, caring for one’s family is also not as morally glorious as caring for the needy.1
Furthermore, the last two advanced forms of agape love are often not produced or helped by empathy, since these are individuals for whom it is difficult or perhaps even impossible to have empathy. To love an enemy, whether it is Vladimir Putin, a mass shooter, or those closer to me, I do not have to have a deep understanding of their feelings and experiences. Plus, that may not help. That understanding may just make me feel disgust and revulsion more, like I experienced when reading a biography of Mao.
This reality leads to the problem we have today in our therapeutic culture. We think we need to find every perceived enemy or evil actor’s tragic backstory to give us empathy for them, so we can love them (or, in the case of fictional villains, we create a tragic backstory). In reality, this habit can lead the overly empathetic to excuse evil behavior (e.g., Stockholm Syndrome-type behavior). You should feel moral disgust at the actions of a racist, rapist, murderer, the violator of human rights, and not empathy. Yet, we still must love those committing those acts as image bearers of God.
In the early 1960s, Robert Coles, a Harvard psychiatrist, became fascinated by the moral heroism that Ruby Bridges demonstrated during the months she walked to school through heckling, racist mobs in a school desegregation effort in New Orleans. According to Coles’ retelling, Bridges was not motivated by empathy. When Coles asked Ruby why she smiled at the mobs and prayed for them, she simply said, “I go to church every Sunday, and we’re told to pray for everyone, even the bad people, and so I do.”[5]
Coles probed further and found more than simple obedience in Ruby’s actions. Ruby stated reasons for her actions: “The minister says if I forgive the people and smile at them and pray for them, God will keep a good eye on everything and He’ll be our protection.” When asked if she believed the minister, she replied, “Oh yes . . . I’m sure God knows what’s happening. He’s got a lot to worry about; but there is bad trouble here, and He can’t help but notice. He may not rush to do anything, not right away. But there will come a day, like you hear in church.”[6] Yes, Ruby, there will certainly come a day–that recognition comes from hope in God. Showing virtuous actions toward one’s enemies also does not mean you do not anticipate God’s judgment of them (or even human forms of justice).
So, I contend that we certainly should embrace and cultivate the skill of empathy, but we need to evaluate it, understand its limits, misuses, and dangers, and allow our practice of it to be shaped by Christ and the Christian story.
[1] For more on this topic, see my recent books: Perry L. Glanzer, Identity Excellence: A Theory of Moral Expertise for Higher Education(Rowman & Littlefield, 2022) and The Dismantling of Moral Education: How Higher Education Reduced the Human Identity (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022).
[2] Martin L. Hoffman, Empathy and Moral Development: Implications for Caring and Justice (Cambridge University Press, 2000).
[3] Samuel P Oliner and Pearl M Oliner, The Altruistic Personality: Rescuers of Jews in Nazi Europe (Free Press, 1988).
[4] Frederick Buechner, The Magnificent Defeat (Seabury Press, 1966), 105.
[5] Robert Coles, The Moral Life of Children (Atlantic Monthly Press, 1986), 23.
[6] Coles, The Moral Life of Children, 26.
Footnotes
- On a personal note, my wife, the most empathetic and compassionate person I know, recognized this weakness in herself early in our family’s life. She even commented to me that God used the chronic pain she experienced (and continues to experience) from Guillain-Barré to help her draw boundaries and not neglect her family in favor of helping others.
Exceptional essay Perry! I was wondering how you might engage with 2 Corinthians 1:3-7 on this topic. And I love Robert Coles! I don’t know how many times I’ve read “The Call of Stories”! Thanks for your work at CSR!
Just finished a re-reading of GKChesterton’s Orthodoxy. Here’s a quote:
The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and wasted virtues. When a religious scheme is shattered (as Christianity was shattered at the Reformation), it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful
Great quote! It certainly summarizes our problem and is a helpful reminder that we must pursue the unity of the virtues in our lives.
Excellent article. Empathy must always be considered alongside other principles, such as accountability. I’ve volunteered with nonprofits that assist low-income populations, and volunteers who only have empathy don’t last long. Sometimes you need to nudge people to make different decisions, like on spending, or to find work, or to get their adult children to go to work (instead of coddling). Along the same lines empathy must be balanced with reciprocity, as basic part of any human society. Without reciprocity, empathy can degenerate into a one-sided dependency, and resentments arise. Going from the personal to the political, this is why programs like UBI (universal basic income) often don’t work in the long run. Out of a misplaced empathy, you end up with dependency, resentment and political backlash from more extreme forces, as we see in our politics.
Thanks! Yes, accountability is an underrated and underemphasized virtue.
Fabulous essay. I will assign it in every class I teach.
I appreciate the Oxford dictionary definition, but would add one more noun: “The ability to understand and appreciate another person’s feelings, experience (AND PERSPECTIVE).”
I add perspective because this embraces not just our emotions but our intellect, and forces us to think, not only react. We need not agree with someone to empathize with their perspective, but we do need to respect it, to recognize why they hold such a perspective. We can disagree with it, but we can still respect it. That is, I think, an important part of having agape love for those we consider “enemies”.
Thank you, Perry! I deeply appreciated this post. This conversation on empathy makes me think of what C. S. Lewis describes in The Abolition of Man. Empathy can be a wonderful catalyst for virtue. But when we extract a single value–e.g. empathy–from the full scope of Christian morality and selectively ignore (consciously or unconsciously) other areas, negative consequences ensue. We need the full scope of traditional Christian virtue to ground us.
“There has never been, and never will be, a radically new judgement of value in the history of the world. What purport to be new systems or (as they now call them) ‘ideologies’, all consist of fragments from the Tao itself [the full scope of traditional morality], arbitrarily wrenched from their context in the whole and then swollen to madness in their isolation….” (The Abolition of Man, C. 2)
This is a well-argued essay, for certain. But there are no mentions of “Jesus” and only 3 mentions of “Christ.” The first two are in the context of Christ’s suffering. But no mention of how Christ’s earthly life (apart from his passion) informs a Christian’s understanding of empathy. For Christians, the biblical text should be privileged in this argument, particularly the Gospels. That would flesh out and substantiate your final – and most accurate – claim that we “allow our practice of [empathy] to be shaped by Christ and the Christian story.”
I cover some of that issue in my earlier post linked in the argument. Christ definitely shows empathy (“Jesus wept”), but the more common word we see associated Christ in this area is the virtue word, “compassion.” Whenever Jesus is described as having compassion, actions follow.
Thanks for this!