Dear Editor,
Should empathy really be thrown out the window as my friend Bill James argues in his comment piece in March’s en (p.15)? Is sympathy sufficient?
Job’s friends had sympathy. They sat with him for three days without uttering a word. But they certainly did not have empathy, and their ‘comfort’ and advice for Job would have been far more helpful if they had.
What is empathy? It is identifying with another person so that you feel from the inside what they are experiencing. Is empathy enough? Of course not. Empathy alone can land you in the same bog that they are in. But it is an essential stepping stone to the understanding needed to speak wisely to their needs. It is part of genuine ‘listening’ to another person, a listening that identifies where they are really coming from.
A better word might be ‘attunement’. Hearts are deep and complex. The source of a person’s troubles may reach far below the surface issues they express. The greater our ‘attunement’ the more likely we are to ask questions that open their hearts to what God’s truth is saying, and in turn to repentance and healing.
In the case of Job, hear Eliphaz: ‘Your sin prompts your mouth… Why do your eyes flash, so that you vent your rage against God?’ (Job 15.5,12,13). For lack of empathy, Eliphaz has failed to pick up on the despair and confusion of Job’s soul. Much of what Job’s friends say is eminently true. But their failure to genuinely experience along with Job the suffering of body and mind that he is going through, leads them in their ‘sympathy’ to administer God’s truth as judgement, not mercy. Indeed, to speak truth untruthfully.
How then do we engage with the temptations and sinful compulsions we meet in others? According to Bill’s article, empathy may lead us to share in those sinful impulses, and give poor unbiblical advice by being overswayed by a desire to understand. That’s certainly a danger. But pause! What’s the goal of empathy? I would suggest it is to attune to the deeper heart motivations and desires that lie below the surface problem. Why, for example, is this person struggling with sexual temptation? What is their heart seeking that has set them off on this destructive track? Can we engage with those deeper soul longings, and recapture our friend’s heart for the loveliness of Jesus?
This is a big topic! But let’s not jettison empathy just yet.
Yours sincerely,
Esther Bennett
By email
en invited Bill James to respond to last month’s correspondence on this issue:
Dear Editor,
I am grateful to Dave Williams for his letter in last month’s en, raising questions about my article on “The Problem with Empathy”. He specifies a number of pastoral concerns about our care for those who are suffering, whether involving personal sin or not. I share that pastoral concern, and indeed the ultimate example of care for the suffering and needy is the Chief Shepherd, the Lord Jesus Christ. However, Biblically, that concern is described as sympathy.
We need to be careful with the word empathy, not least because it is relatively new, emerging in the last 100 years or so in the context of the new discipline of experimental psychology and already embracing a variety of meanings. Many Christians use the term innocently, simply to elaborate on the word “sympathy”, especially in relation to feelings. But we need to be aware that the word “empathy” is being used in a contemporary context to promote the idea that true compassion and care is only expressed when we identify uncritically with the feelings of an individual. To be empathetic is to help them to achieve what they desire on their terms (whatever their goals or desires might be).
We are on safer ground with the word sympathy, which is rooted in the Greek word in the New Testament and has been used historically to express the sense of standing with the one who is suffering, including in the sense of feelings. Because this word connects with the care of the Lord Jesus Christ for us, it excludes any sense of condoning sin. The word sympathy has served the church well in exercising pastoral care long before the word empathy was invented.
Yours sincerely,
Bill James,
Principal, London Seminary
