Current Contemplations: Empathy is Not Charity

A frame from Scorsese's Silence which inspired the original article

Recently on Facebook this article has been circulating amongst my beloved Christian friends.  The most troubling thing to me was that I both agreed and disagreed with the argument.  And the parts I disagreed with were invalidated insofar as they could be written off as someone who has "bought in", as it were, to the culture of modern empathy the article denounces.

To make matters worse, the audience this is written to is muddled at best.  Is it to the modern Christian? Or someone who is considering wondering about what this "Jesus Thing" is all about? These audiences, and the consequent goal of the article further than "I'm just highlighting a problem", are vastly different.  So, after reading this lovely piece over my cup of tea in the morning, I've been mulling it over all day and these are my thoughts are portions of the article:

"But the truth about Ferreira’s and Chiara’s actual apostasy is straightforward. They were tortured, and they broke. They denied Christ not because of a manipulated, unbearable pity for the sufferings of others, but because of their own unbearable suffering.  What this means is that the deeply disturbing, polarizing drama at the heart of Silence is an anachronism. It is a projection of the modern mind, a hallucination of an anxious, confused, and codependent imagination....not the language of seventeenth-century Jesuits, but the language of Thomas Altizer and William Hamilton, twentieth-century Death of God theologians who believed that not only Christ but Christianity must die, that it is not finally Christian to be Christian, and that in the name of Christian charity, Christians must reject Christian truths."

To point out the modern philosophy leaking into the movie is a helpful starting point.  However, without further insight into the "Death of God" theologians the author is referring to, I can not offer more insight into the truthfulness of this interpretation.  I understand the concept of "Christian charity" being to, in this framework, reject Christian truths.  However, does this imply that the Death of God theology holds Christian charity as the highest virtue? Or, more accurately, does it confuse Christian charity with Christian love (in the largest sense of the term)? And as such, how does the idea that to be a Christian means to reject Christian truths due to supposed "charity" connect with the desire to stop the suffering of others in comparison to the desire to stop the suffering of ourselves?

Here, I'm attempting to highlight the crossed wires of the theology and the article concerning what it looks like to have a healthy Christian relationship with others (ie friendship/discipleship/etc are not contingent solely upon Christian charity) and within oneself and God.  The article later goes on to define its views about what it thinks the "correct" relationships should be, however, I do not think that it elaborates with enough Scriptural support.  Additionally, although the problem is outlined, a prescription for a solution is vague at best.

"In 1937, in Germany, near the end of a vanishing age, Romano Guardini wrote in The Lord:
Man’s desire to share in the life and the destiny of another certainly exists, but even the profoundest union stops short at one barrier: the fact that I am I and he is he. Love knows that complete union, complete exchange is impossible—cannot even be seriously hoped for. The human ‘we’ capable of breaking the bonds of the ego simply does not exist. . . . My every act begins in me, who am alone responsible for it.
Guardini goes on to describe the economy of the Triune God, and the way the Holy Spirit, mediating the relationship of the Father and the Son, makes possible a life characterized by both individuality and union. Only by the mediation of the same Spirit, he argues, can man’s longings for selfhood and intimacy be realized. Only with the help of God’s Spirit can his needs for both autonomy and community be met.
There is wonderful writing in the late chapters of The Lord, and wisdom for the ages, but by asserting as a given that, apart from God’s Spirit, man’s intractable separateness can never be overcome, Guardini failed to anticipate all the ways man would attempt to overcome it nevertheless. He failed to imagine the astonishing lengths to which man would go, and all the means he would employ—political, ideological, juridical, surgical—to try to break the barriers that separate him from other people, and to achieve, apart from God’s Spirit, the happiness for which he was created."

An excellent point regarding the blurred lines between individuality and unity that we have created for ourselves, but I fail to see how placing God at the centre for our need of autonomy and community completely invalidates the idea of finding meaning in and meaningful relationships with other people.  If anything, it gives the meaning of our relationships with others a corrected context.  That our need for community is met in Christ does not mean that it can not exhibit itself in our relationships with others.  I do not tolerate my relationship with my sister (a non-Christian) solely in the hope that she too will one day become a Christian.  I cherish my relationship with her because loving others well is part of the joy I receive as a Christian.

Moreover, I believe that to say that one can find all the solace the soul needs in a relationship with Christ is too simplistic.  Perhaps it's due to my extreme isolation on the other side of the country, but the pure knowledge that I have a connection with Christ still fails to fulfil my desire for emotional intimacy with other people.  Wanting to have friends in a new city does not invalidate the fact that I am fulfilled in Christ and vis versa.

"Transgender experiments are only the tip of an iceberg. Underlying them is a widespread, largely unexamined assumption that has been gathering strength for some time: a conviction that we should be experiencing the feelings of others (which in practice turns out to mean their sufferings rather than their joys) as if they were our own, that this exercise is now morally obligatory."

The article's example to illustrate its point about the lengths man will go to break barriers is to discuss a couple from the early 20th century who undertook transgender identities and generally practised gender-fluidity.  But I don't think this is a good example.  If anyone truly knows someone (or is someone) who identifies as Trans*, then they know that it is not a simple matter of "experimentation" and "choice".  Although I am not familiar with the couple who engaged in the study, for the article assume that a person's real (and often psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually taxing) struggle with understanding their gender identity is a mere "choice" like what breakfast cereal to eat (or a scientific study to partake in) is grossly mistaken.  Thus, the connection with the struggles of the Trans* community to that of a desire to experience the feelings of "others" appears to me to be a non-sequitur.

Additionally, although I do not believe it is a moral obligation to "experience" the suffering (and joy) of others, I can not help but see no other way to connect with an individual.  Perhaps I am too much a product of this modern empathetic culture the article decries, but I think that a part of what it means "to know" another is to be able to empathize with them (to a certain extent).  For instance, when I express my sorrow to my best friend, he can not help but also participate in it to some degree.  And I think there is Biblical precedent for a sharing of emotion in the way that Paul expresses his longing and yearning for seeing other churches thriving and company on his journey.

"In a world without God, the new commandment of empathy might have been foreseen. Once God has been pronounced dead and the loyalty we owe him void, the question of what we owe to others and what we can expect from them becomes urgent. Unable to locate our life’s meaning in God and his eternity, we seek it in our relationships with other people. This is the eventuality the Death of God theologians anticipated: a horizontal, desacralized world that has broken down every barrier to inclusion, a world in which, undistracted by an outgrown God, we can finally give our full attention to one another.
Empathy, in this secular kingdom, does not mean simple kindness, consideration, or compassion. It means actually feeling what you believe someone else is feeling at any given moment. If I am sorry that you are suffering, I am compassionate, but if I am suffering what you are suffering, I am empathic..."

Here, I appreciate that the author has outlined their meaning regarding "empathy".  It's a state of emotion which is later outlined as separate from, "a proportionate, constructive pity and a pity that we merely suffer, [it is] a Passion (Lewis’s word)...that impairs our judgment and destroys our peace, and may persuade us to concede what we would not otherwise concede."  However, I dislike that it later goes on to state:

"For many years now, we have been living in what Frans de Waal called an age of empathy, an age not of reason but of overflowing emotion, as if the sea, that great universal symbol of ungoverned passion and seething affective life, had burst the bounds God laid down for it in the beginning (“so far and no further”) and covered the whole earth with its waves."

To pit reason against empathy, or emotion, is one of the most frustrating dichotomies I've found in contemporary Christian writing.  Perhaps I am reading too much of my own bias in the choice of phrasing rather than the defined terms as per the article.  But the article later goes on to say, "Indeed, given a choice between reason and emotion, or sense and sensibility, as a culture we incline to emotion and sensibility more and more, and we are proud of our choice, as if it were evidence of our evolving humanity."  Therefore, the alignment of empathy with emotion seems justified per the other uses in the argument.  Moreover, Reason here is assumed to be defined as something that it is related to absolute truth and morality, impeccable judgement, and an inner peace at knowing the difference between right and wrong.  It is something to be sought after and desired since it relates closer to the ideal Christian life.

Yet, to tell an individual to only aspire to reason without emotion is a failure to recognize the complexity of both the individual and the impossibility of such a request.  Of course, this article specifically calls out the empathy it earlier defined as one that goes beyond "simple kindness, consideration, or compassion" to one that is the enemy against Reason.  However, the connotation of the language leaves little room for question that emotion and "un-reasonable passion" is seen as a negative.

Additionally, the statement about emotion and sensibility also fails to give validity to any type of emotion (pity or otherwise).  To tell a person in the midst of suffering to "choose reason" is clearly not the best course of action.  Of course, it will "get better", (or more accurately, we can look to the greater glory that will be revealed to us as per Romans 8:18 that the article cites) but the fact that it hurts now does not invalidate either the present or future reality of Christ's Glory - even Jesus wept (John 11:35).

"Sadly, it turns out to be an exhausting, counterproductive business, this business of trying to participate in the sufferings of other people. In his recent book Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion, Yale psychologist Paul Bloom summarizes the experimental evidence and concludes that empathy, strictly defined, “[corrodes] personal relationships; it exhausts the spirit and can diminish the force of kindness and love.” Far from being kinder and more supportive of others, overly empathic individuals are so overwhelmed by the sufferings of others that they are finally helpless to help them, and may even actively avoid them."

The link between attempting to be more empathetic and our constant state of anxiety is a good point.  However, it is here that I believe the article fails to offer a helpful solution as it goes on to say:

"This ability to take the long view [Romans 8:18], this far-seeing eye that fills the whole body with light, is a distinguishing mark of the saint. The saint is not empathic; he is charitable, which means that he always wills the ultimate good of his neighbor. Because the saint’s emotions are ordered to faith and to reason, he is neither particularly manipulable nor unduly afraid of suffering, his own or anyone else’s."

All of this uses excellent, Christian language (and terms), but what does this LOOK like? What does it practically mean to have Christian charity - to "will the ultimate good" of someone? What if what I believe to be the ultimate good of someone disagrees with their own idea of it? Here I think of my secular friends who believe an ultimate good for them involves seeking happiness in ways that I believe are not their ultimate good (ie going out and getting wasted every night - specifically looking at the abuse of alcohol rather than the substance itself).  This is not to say that an objective good doesn't exist, but how do I discuss that ultimate good with

Moreover, I would appreciate more Biblical evidence for this claim other than Romans 8:18.  The author should have more examples for such a large claim, even if it seems reasonable and true.

"Christianity is not a cult. Its stated goal is not to control others but to set them free, even from the person evangelizing them....Christianity’s ideal method is to preach to others a word that has the power to put them in touch with the Source. Its goal is to introduce others to the God who alone has the power to confer identity and individuality on human beings.
Our age’s obsession with individuality is expressive of a crisis of individuality; it is symptomatic of a deficit rather than a surfeit. People today are no more selfish or egotistical than previous generations; rather, their selfhood is more genuinely imperilled. Unacquainted with the Holy Spirit, which introduces into human relationships the same kind of spacious, identity-enhancing intimacy that characterizes the Trinity itself, and far from the Church, whose sacraments, the Eucharist especially, “[enable] us to break our disordered attachments to creatures and root ourselves in [Christ],” too many people fall into binary, diminishing relationships; thievish relationships in which, in Guardini’s words, “always the one must live at the cost of the other”; mutually destructive relationships from which people eventually withdraw in dismay.
Put another way, in a world without God, man attributes too much agency to himself. This may exhilarate him for a time, but in the end, he cannot bear so much responsibility. There is a reaction, and, across the culture, a collective retreat, as unprecedented numbers of people lick their wounds in solitude, or seek comfort in drugs, legal or illegal, or in pornography, or in the soothing, impersonal ministrations of electronic devices."

I fail to see how this point links with the larger idea of empathy not equally charity.  I agree that one's idenity is found in Christ and that as a society we have attributed too much agency to ourselves.  However, I don't understand what this has to do with reordering our relationships with others through Christ first.  Perhaps this is my own failing as the audience, but I would like a clearer link established between individual identity found in Christ and its relationship TO our relationships with others (ie proper Christian charity of "willing ultimate good").

"In an age of empathy, the more pedestrian temptation is to become faux Christs ourselves, false messiahs who promise more than we can deliver. Thinking along these lines, we can understand, finally, why empathy is preoccupied with the sufferings of other people, rather than with their joys. In the spiritual economy of modernity, the place that remains vacant is the place that belongs by right to Christ alone: “Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.” Our culturally sanctioned practice of empathy is an attempt to fill Christ’s shoes; it is a reiteration of the sin of Eden in a fresh guise. In place of Christ’s fearless, definitive Passion, we offer others our problematic, uneasy pity, a passion from which no one rises incorrupt."

Again, perhaps my biggest problem with this article is that it offers no practical insight for what to do in regards to the "day-to-day", as it were, relationships and life of Christian (and non-Christian) people.  This may be an excellent insight into the problem with empathy as we conceive of it today, but if we overthrow it, what is our next step? To dismiss the value of the statement "I feel your pain" means that we need to find another way to express that we have compassion for our fellow humans.

Not to mention that the pain others feel cannot simply be solved by saying "glory later".  Christ also has glory (to spare, even) for the now, and if it does not take the form of empathy what should it look like? Alt-right conservative Christian culture today is not shown in the kindest light.  Although the question of if the people "truly are" Christians may come up, the fact of the matter is that Christians can't afford to brush off what the media says about them.  This is not to say that the media should be the ultimate informer to the conduct and standards of the Church, but the perception of the world says that the Church lacks compassion.  And how can you say it doesn't to your friends of marginalized groups that the Church has failed to help? (Here I think of my LGBTQIA+ friends, my Middle Eastern friends, my Mexican friends, etc. etc. etc.)

In short, I think my biggest problem with the article is not the idea that modern empathy is not Christian charity.  But rather, if it is not, then what should we do moving forward? Does this mean we should throw out empathy (that darn, useful "tool" of compassion and kindness) altogether? And if so, then in what way/how are we going to access our desire to be charitable? Perhaps this article isn't exactly a "call to action" in the problem/solution variety, but merely outlining the problem isn't as satisfying to myself as a reader.