I heard the title on Joy's podcast: Joe Rigney. The premise, if I dare to wade in, is that empathy disables right-thinking Christian compassion and it's capacity to distinguish sinner from sin (thereby excusing and even enabling said sin). God said “X,” according to this thinking I guess, and anything that strays from His word and that lands the doer in crisis because of the choice to commit X deserves censure, not empathy. Whereas sympathy, recognition of suffering roots right-thinking in steadiness and allows one to lend compassion, pity while allowing for consequences. God's.
And here's what I struggle with--well, I struggle with all of it really, but this maybe more than anything. It's the presumption of hierarchy. That some are simply better, simply closer to God and understand His word better than others. That those true and right-thinking just happen to be white and have a penis and are heterosexual (at least in public) is just happenstance. Moreover, those true and right-thinking are above moral reproach by virtue of being cis white heterosexual male no matter what they do. No matter the abuse. They are inherently closer to God simply because a book written by men (the originals weren't white, by the way) said so.
These so-called true and right-thinking the impose their so-called superior virtue on Others by force when they have a yen to and whether we Others want it or not and then punish, even kill when we do not fold, concede and accede. I'm thinking of the dad who says the world is his to do with as he pleases because God said, sexualizes and abuses his daughters, terrorizes his sons, then expects to be welcomed for Christmas dinner and dismisses existential threat as just politics.
Border czar Tom Homan just said he's proud of the work ICE and DHS are doing. He says he would invite critics to strap on a gun and face the kind of hate his people do. The problem is his people are STOKING that hate. They are carrying put that hate, but don't want to be hated.
And therein lies my problem with the whole damned exercise in excoriating Empathy: the expectation of understanding, in fact, the demand for it. Put the shoe on the other foot. Understand my side, man. How dare you disinvite me from Christmas, distance yourself, shun me, they say. Basket of deplorables. That is the expectation of empathy. Understand me.
I don't claim to be a theologian, but “do unto others” seems to me pretty much to be empathy as action. “As you do to the least of these.” is not a hierarchical relationship. It's God in the form of Christ literally walking in our shoes in order to demonstrate who we are to Him/Her/Them. One and the same. A part of.
The knee-jerk “all lives matter” reaction to Black people having to actually speak that pur being is of equal value; men raging about women choosing bears instead of them--these are symptomatic of the demand for empathy by those who practice it least.
As the country convulses, storm troopers at the gate, the question of empathy looms large. How and where we go from here is anyone's guess. It shouldn't take getting shot in the face.
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Calling empathy a ‘sin’ is the moral rot of our times. When caring for others is framed as weakness, cruelty becomes acceptable—and injustice spreads under the guise of righteousness.
The magats hate empathy until something bad something to them. Than they want not only pity but hand outs they'll never give out to others. The most they deserve is rope to hang themselves with.