retroGRAD3
Puritan Board Senior
What is everyone's take on this? In the video, the pastor makes the argument that empathy is a sin and that Christians should be sympathic instead. He also quotes some scripture in support.
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Not only do I see gravity and modesty and pride and courtesy and stateliness, but I feel or act them in the mind's muscles. This is, I suppose, a simple case of empathy, if we may coin that term as a rendering of Einfühlung; there is nothing curious or idiosyncratic about it; but it is a fact that must be mentioned. [Edward Bradford Titchener, "Lectures on the Experimental Psychology of the Thought Processes," 1909]
... there is no doubt that the facts are new and that they justify their name: the art work is a thing of "empathy" (Titchener, Ward), of "fellow feeling" (Mitchell), of "inner sympathy" (Groos), of "sympathetic projection" (Urban), of "semblance of personality" (Baldwin), all terms suggested by different writers as renderings of the German Einfühlung. ["The American Yearbook," 1911]
This is essentially the same argument the video makes. I agree with you.I think the idea of joining in with another's suffering is wrong. Christians should be able to be gentle and kind toward someone, but being able to stand outside their suffering and judge the situation according to Scripture, and other participants.
Example: If someone told you they were wronged by someone else, I believe it would be sinful to "suffer with them". We should be charitable with them, but assess the whole situation from an outside perspective. If someone fell into a body of water and was drowning, you would keep yourself anchored to something and help them out, not jump so you can drown with them.
I guess I see a greater correspondence between empathy and compassion than these fellows. They seem to be drawing a sharper distinction than is warranted. To me, empathy, sympathy and compassion are all aspects of Spirit-wrought fruit in the believer and to tease them out so forcefully and dogmatically seems like a tempest in a teapot.
What is everyone's take on this? In the video, the pastor makes the argument that empathy is a sin and that Christians should be sympathic instead. He also quotes some scripture in support.
Thanks. That's what I was planning to do anyway!The notion that empathy is a sin is really silly. Move along. Nothing to see here. (Self-plagiarism from an earlier thread on the same subject.)
Based on some of the feedback, I would have to agree that it is not possible to give a definite answer either way all of the time.I watched the video and cannot say I agree with the methods or conclusions. For one, Merriam-Webster, in distinguishing sympathy and empathy, actually defines the words such that sympathy is closer to the meaning of empathy as presented in the video.
"The difference in meaning is usually explained with some variation of the following: sympathy is when you share the feelings of another; empathy is when you understand the feelings of another but do not necessarily share them."
Secondly, I think this is straining at a definition that cannot be consistently applied across all circumstances, thus rendering all efforts to emphasize as sinful. In medicine, for example, empathy is framed as the process of coming along side a person in need with efforts to understand their feelings or circumstances without actually having experienced them. We cannot truly say "I know what you're going through", because we have not gone through their exact experience, but we can say something like "I understand that you're feeling afraid". Sympathy is actually closer to the first meaning than is empathy.
Anyway, I do not think that empathy, or sympathy for that matter, is always a sin and I would not wish to bind the conscience of a believer on the matter.