The following is from The Pastor’s View in the February 2025 issue of “The Window,” the newsletter of the United Congregational Christian Church of Eureka.
Most people have heard of the interaction between the Bishop at the National Cathedral and the President of the United States of America. Many Americans support the Bishop’s call for mercy, while many others are decrying her divisive, anti-Christian words.
One concept being referenced is the “sin of empathy.” In 2019, Joe Rigney wrote a post on the Desiring God website about the dangers of empathy. Put simply, sympathy is concern or compassion for those who are suffering, while empathy goes deeper to feeling the emotions of the persons suffering. Assuming that suffering is due to sin – also a problematic theological position – joining in the suffering of another risks joining in the sin of another.
For those who see empathy as sin, the proper Christian position is to recognize that people who are undocumented immigrants, who have a non-heterosexual orientation or a non-cisgender identity, non-Christians, and others are in a state of sin. One can care that these people suffer while recognizing they need to come out of their sin as part of their recovery. The danger of empathy is thinking how these people might feel or to put one’s self in their place and by doing so, enter into the same realm of temptation that has trapped the person about whom one is concerned.
This theology (or more properly harmatiology – the study of sin) has the Christian morally above and superior to the fallen, non-Christian. Empathy would only lower the faithful Christian into the filth of the pit in which the suffering live. It very clearly draws a line between the righteous and the sinners.
However, the prophets of the Hebrew scriptures most often side with the outcast over the powerful. Rather than call out homosexuality as the reason for the fall of Sodom, for example, Ezekiel writes this about Jerusalem:
48 As I live, says the Lord God, your sister Sodom and her daughters have not done as you and your daughters have done. 49 This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease but did not aid the poor and needy. 50 They were haughty and did abominable things before me; therefore I removed them when I saw it.
Ezekiel 16:48-50, NRSVue
In this passage the prophet calls out the popular and prosperous as the sinners, not the ones who are suffering. If empathy might cause the righteous to fall into sin, it would be the poor and needy who should be wary of falling into the pit of success.
It is this tradition into which Jesus is born, who calls for mercy for the woman accused of adultery. Jesus preaches sermons calling those who struggle blessed:
3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 4 “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. 5 “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. 6 “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. 7 “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. 8 “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. 9 “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. 10 “Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 11 “Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. 12 Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
Matthew 5:3-12, NRSVue
Jesus is also quoted as saying “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you, for this is the Law and the Prophets.” – Matthew 7:12, NRSVue. Doing for others as you would have them do to you is arguably a form of empathy, understanding how they would feel by understanding how you would feel. And this is the the contrapositive of the teaching of Rabbi Hillel the Elder: “That which is hateful to you, do not do to another, that is the whole of the law. The rest is its application.” – Babylonian Talmud Shabbat 31a.
And if we are to believe that Jesus is God who walks with us, how sinful would it be for God to take the empathic action to live as us, among us, and suffering as we do?|
I do not believe it is sinful to have empathy for another person. Nor do I believe that many of the situations in which people are suffering are caused by sin. And even if it were sinful to be transgender, for example, having empathy for a transgender person would not cause the person with empathy to become transgender.
I am trying to have empathy for people who are judgmental of others, to understand how and why they came to the place they are. They may have been affected by upbringing, by environment, by challenges and setbacks in their lives. I don’t find that sinful; I find it compassionate and merciful.
May we be merciful to others as God is merciful to us.
Scripture quotations marked NRSVue are taken from the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition. Copyright © 2021 National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. https://www.friendshippress.org/pages/about-the-nrsvue
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