Empathy Isn’t a Sin; It’s Holy Dynamite (TAW057)

Episode 057 – Empathy Isn’t a Sin; It’s Holy Dynamite (With Felicia Murrell)

Once again, influential Christian leaders are declaring empathy a sin. One influential Reformed theologian calls empathy “Counterfeit compassion” and names it “the greatest rhetorical tool of manipulation in the 21st century.” For people whose central ethic is to love the neighbor as we love ourselves, this seems an odd hill to die on. Why is this happening? Well, when you look behind the scenes, the answer is pretty obvious. Empathy has the power to blow up hierarchical power dynamics.

Show Notes

In this conversation, we explore empathy, its significance in spiritual growth, and why certain Christian leaders (from a very particular theological perspective) are warning Christians away from empathy.

Note: We had significant technical difficulties recording this, but the conversation was so good that I wanted to do my best to share it with you. The audio has been cleaned up as much as I can, and I have provided carefully edited captions on the video and a full transcription for you.

Takeaways

• Empathy is about staying present to pain without being overwhelmed and actively bearing witness to others’ emotional experiences.
• Empathy differs from sympathy in that it connects us as equals.
• Empathy is essential for healthy human relationships.
• The accusation of empathy as a sin comes from hierarchical systems because empathy naturally opens the door to seeing how systems of domination and control are exploitative.
• Personal healing is necessary for developing empathy so that we can face our selves truthfully, but empathy moves beyond personal feelings into tangible action that changes the work around us, including the systems we live within.
• Empathy is a key aspect of following the way of Jesus.

Mentioned Resources

• AND: The Restorative Power of Love in an Either/Or World (Felicia Murrell)
• Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience (Brené Brown)
• All About Love: New Visions (bell hooks)

• Scroll down for a full transcript of this episode.
• You can also watch and share the video version on Youtube.

More about My Conversation Partner

Felicia Murrell is a spiritual companion, speaker, certified master life coach, and former ordained pastor with over twenty years of church leadership experience. She’s an author and serves the publishing industry as a freelance copy editor. With a deep understanding of what it means to be human, Felicia is dedicated to empowering individuals to embrace who they already are and who Love is inviting them to be.

Find Felicia Here

• Website: https://feliciamurrell.com/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/felicia.murrell.9
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hellofelicia_murrell/
• Threads: https://www.threads.net/@hellofelicia_murrell

Today’s Sponsor

• Walking Otherward – My new book! Please pre-order it now. This is a 40-day devotional following the final weeks of Jesus’ life and inviting us to exchange our natural self-centered, ego-defending ambition for the other-centered, co-suffering way love Love.

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Transcription

Marc Schelske 0:05
Hey friends, I’m Marc Alan Schelske, and this is The Apprenticeship Way, a podcast about spiritual growth following the way of Jesus. This is episode 57. Empathy is Not a Sin; It’s Holy Dynamite.

SPONSOR

Today’s podcast is made possible by Walking Otherward. This is my new book. It’s due out in a couple of weeks. It’s landing on February 18. That means I’m up to my ears in Book Launch season. Look, I’m gonna keep this short. I want you to pre-order my book right now. Is this the right book for you? Well, here’s my pitch.

You already know it’s possible to be a Christian and not be very much like Jesus. Whether through your own study or your spiritual intuition, you sense that following the way of Jesus ought to be transformational for you and for your world. The urgent drive of our time to always be moving upward and forward has taken its toll on you. You suspect an inward focus is necessary for personal healing and growth but wonder if that makes any real difference for others in the world around you. And you definitely don’t want to go backward, whether to past ways of thinking that were destructive or back to a world that is more hierarchical, violent, and exploitative. Perhaps you feel homeless spiritually and wonder which way you should go. The Gospel narrative of Jesus’ life suggests a path rather than the climb upward, or retreating backward, or withdrawing inward. Jesus’ path invites us to walk otherward.

Walking Otherward is a 40-day devotional that follows Jesus in the final weeks leading to his crucifixion. Each reflection invites you to take on Jesus’ attitude, exchanging self-centered ego-defending ambition for other-centered, co-suffering love. So that’s the pitch. If it sounds like a good fit for you, then please pre-order the book today. It’s available in ebook and paperback in all the book places. You can find all the links to those places at www.WalkingOtherward.com.

INTRODUCTION

if you’re on social media and you pay attention to the religious discourse there, in the past couple of months, you may have seen a surge in posts and memes arguing over an odd controversy. The controversy? The accusation that many Christians–apparently deceived by the radical left or someone– are falling into the sin of empathy. Now, if that sounds strange to you, that probably means you are consuming an appropriate and healthy amount of social media. But what’s even more strange than this accusation is that it’s not new. In 2019, it first gained momentum when Joe Rigney, a prominent reformed pastor and theologian, wrote an article on the Desiring God website called, “The Enticing Sin of Empathy: How Satan Corrupts Through Compassion.”

He was making the point that empathy is really the emotional fusion between your emotions and someone else’s emotions, which will keep you from living in accordance with the truth. Even worse, Rigney posed that empathy was a tool for emotional manipulation. He wrote, “Rightly used, empathy is a power tool in the hands of the weak and suffering. By it, we can so weaponize victims that they (or those who hide behind them) are indulged to every turn, without regard for whether such indulgence is wise or prudent or good for them.” The topic came up again in 2021 when a well-known fundamentalist pastor, James White, wrote a scathing blog about the problem of empathy for Christians. These are his words. “So what is the problem with empathy today? We are, in fact, told to weep with those who weep, but that assumes those who weep have a reason for weeping that is in line with God’s revelation.” So I guess we’re gatekeeping grief?!

The topic resurfaced this year as Christians, in response to the elections and government policy discussions, have been debating the best way to relate to immigrants and the poor and trans people. So Joe Rigney comes back onto the scene, adding fuel to the fire with a brand new book that came out this year called The Sin of Empathy: Compassion and Its Counterfeits, where he claims that empathy is the greatest rhetorical tool of manipulation in the 21st century, and suggests that empathy is a satanic counterfeit to holy, Godly love.

Okay, I’ll be upfront here. I think this claim is not only absurd, I think it’s dangerous for the church and for society at large. I wanted to talk with somebody about it, and it seemed to me that a good conversation partner would be Felicia Murrell. Felicia is a former pastor, current spiritual director, author, and speaker. I wanted to talk with Felicia specifically because I recently read her book, AND: The Restorative Power of Love in an Either/Or World. This book is stunningly good. It weaves comfortably between memoir, essay, poetry, and prophetic challenge. The principle at the heart of the book is that the only thing that can carry us through the chaos of the moment we find ourselves in is love. So I asked Felicia to chat with me about this controversy; I started by asking her to define empathy and then to reflect on why it seems that this word is becoming a scare word for some folks,

Felicia Murrell 5:34
Empathy is staying present to pain, that of my own and that of others, without being overwhelmed by it. Empathy is actively bearing witness to the emotional experience of other people without taking it on. It’s not delving into despair or pity or anguish. It literally is what I would call mirroring. A question that I ask myself often is, “Can I reach back into my own memory bank and connect to something in my lived experience?” If that answer is no, because maybe I don’t have a similar experience, empathy listens and it believes the experience of other people, even when our experiences don’t match.

An example would be, say, someone is talking to me and they’re expressing about being lonely. Can I remember a time in my own life when I experienced this? Only not to center myself in the conversation and take over and start talking about when I was lonely and I can relate, but just to have that feeling, to know inside, to remember what it felt like to be lonely, and to allow that feeling to be a place of connection and understanding. Renee Brown offers us this really powerful question to consider. She says, “How can I touch within myself something that helps me identify and connect with what this person might be feeling?”

Marc Schelske 7:27
I like how you pointed out that we’re reaching into that resource of our own experience, not to generate relating words, like that common thing where you have this motivation to tell a similar story, right? “I know exactly what you’re feeling. This is what happened to me,” and now you’re off and running on three or five minutes of your own story, but instead to reach into the resource of your own experience as a way to get closer to knowing within yourself what that other person is experiencing and articulating to you.

Felicia Murrell 8:00
If it’s an experience that, you know, that you’ve not experienced, “I can’t relate to that,” then what I do is I take on a listening posture of believing this person’s experience and connecting to it as part of the universal body of humanity. What I’m reaching into is that shared humanity. That’s empathy.

Marc Schelske 8:27
That feels really essential to all human relationships. If I’m going to have a constructive relationship with anybody, it requires my capacity to think about the state that you’re in and why you’re in that state and to hone my ability to listen and all of that. So that feels like, you know… for partner partnerships, marriage, good parenting, leadership in organizations, it feels really essential, right? So if that’s such an essential core human function of healthy relationships, how do we get into this mess where it sounds scary to people?

The Anglican Archbishop in DC had an opportunity to preach a sermon in front of the new president and in the course of that sermon, actually made a call for empathy. That call was reacted to by a lot of people online as being inappropriate, which is crazy to me, given that empathy is such an essential part of human connectedness. Why is it a scare word for some people? What do you think about that?

Felicia Murrell 9:31
One thing that I want to get into that is so key with empathy is that we’re relating to people as equals in the partnership of our humanity, right? It’s not a savior kind of thing, where I’m reaching down to help the less-than or those who are pitied, or those who are inferior, or something like that. This is about how I relate to our shared humanity on an equal basis. That equity is important to establish with empathy.

When we think about people using empathy as kind of a “scare word,” first, I’m going to go to one of my own heroes, which is Brene Brown, and her book, Atlas of the Heart, which really goes into language around emotions. She says that, for some people, being a contrarian is seductive, and much of what we know about American Christianity is formed on ideas of protest. Right? Protestants.

Marc Schelske 9:34
Sure, right.

Felicia Murrell 9:35
So I think there’s some of that, but also, I think perhaps this idea of empathy feels scary because of our own fear. Our own fear of pain that mirrors someone else’s suffering hits too close to home. It hits too close to the things that we numb, the things that we repress, and if we have not sat in our own darkness, we will never be able to have empathy for someone else in theirs. And so I think perhaps this constant unconscious participation in comparison and competition has reduced empathy to a “scare word.” What I mean by that is in a caste system of Haves and Have-nots, when someone is higher or lower, we have this whole system of capitalism that works because we’re conditioned–really, from school age–where we don’t need to be the one on the bottom. And so perhaps then there’s a story that I’m unconsciously participating in, where to express care or to express empathy would require something of me that would force me to abnegate my position or my wins. I say “unconsciously” because not many people would admit aloud, not even to themselves, that this is something that they’re weighing or measuring. But whatever is unconscious owns us, right?

Marc Schelske 11:40
Right.

Felicia Murrell 11:41
So I think moving from that idea of contrarianism being productive to this idea of us not sitting with our own feelings and really running away from that just to have our wins, this leads us to “Us Versus Them.” When we have “Us Versus Them,” it creates Others. And anytime we have Others, that creates disconnection, and whatever there’s disconnection, there’s an unraveling of our shared humanity. So back again to the idea that if we’re not equal, then what are we? I see you as an opposition, or I see you as someone to pity or someone I can dominate or control, but definitely not someone I relate to, right? And so I think some of these interior places where love is beckoning to heal are reasons that keep us, you know, from being able to relate to someone empathically.

Marc Schelske 13:36
That’s really helpful to me. What I’m hearing as you’re talking about this is the intersection between two domains. So there’s this interior personal domain, right? And maybe empathy is challenging me to face things that I haven’t faced, that I haven’t healed from–you know, my own trauma story, or places in my life where I was treated unjustly, or perhaps places in my life where I exploited people, but don’t want to think about that, don’t want to carry the burden of that feeling. So anything that calls me to that opening of heart towards somebody else, that’s fearful for me individually, as a person. And the way out of that is going to be some kind of inner healing, maybe a spiritual process, maybe a therapeutic process, some way of coming honestly to face myself, right? So that’s one domain.

But what you explained suggests this isn’t a go-into-your-quiet-room-and-solve-this-problem kind of problem. There’s this system out there that we all live within. And what you said… I don’t think it’s even ever occurred to me before… was that maybe one of the reasons why empathy is scary is because empathy automatically challenges hierarchy.

Felicia Murrell 15:01
Yes, right.

Marc Schelske 15:02
So whatever hierarchy I’m in–whether that is a patriarchal marriage where I’m the man and I’m in charge, or whether I’m in an organization that’s very, very controlling from the top down, and I see what the organization is doing, and it kind of feels unjust or unfair to me, and I want to speak up, or whether we’re talking about a larger system like the country, or even, as you mentioned, an economic system like capitalism–empathy, because it’s connecting to that other human at a peer level, is inviting me to see them in a way that is outside of whatever hierarchy I’m a part of. And that’s then where it becomes dangerous, right? This would suggest that it’s not coincidental that all the people saying that empathy is a sin are within extremely hierarchical systems.

Felicia Murrell 15:01
Absolutely.

Marc Schelske 15:02
When they say it’s dangerous for you to feel empathy, the subtext behind that is, “Empathy might lead You to question the power system we’re in, and I don’t want you to do that. I have good biblical reason or or good whatever reason to not want you to do that. So we’re just, we’re not going to think about that.” Am I on track with that?

Felicia Murrell 16:14
Yea. You’re on track. Yeah, absolutely. As a matter of fact, Heather Richardson, who is a historian. I heard her go on a podcast where she gave this analogy. She said imagine ten people in the room. Eight of them just want to get by, but two people want to control everybody else. The way that they get that power is to get six people to turn against the two at the bottom. And they do that through stories. She calls it the Two-Six-Two rule. We have two people that want power, six people in the middle, and the two people at the top that want power. They get the six in the middle to turn against the two at the bottom through the stories that they tell. She said that the reason why this is so significant is because the stories we tell about who we are and the communities we are are the ways we understand power.

Personally, when I think about this, I lived so much of my life as a Catfish Christian. Coming from the south, the catfish in the river just suck up everything, whatever is there. They are bottom feeders, and they eat it all. And that was me as a Christian for a long time. I swallowed everything that came from the pulpit, and then I regurgitated it. And I did that without any critical analysis, without any self-examination. I just simply trusted with abandon and cult-like fanaticism. And now, I feel like I’m more apt to pause and I’m more apt to look for the thread of love. If I don’t hear the resonance of love and the story you’re telling, I’m much more likely to swim away from that, no matter how bright and shiny it is.

But we’re also talking about the system, right? And so, within the context of class, empire, capitalism, patriarchy. Another one of my heroes, bell hooks, talks about this system of domination as imperialist, white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy. That’s how she names the system of domination. And so I think as Christians, you have to really travel back in the biblical narrative to the Garden of Eden for this discussion and to the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. And thus, this whole idea about sin. Now, for me, where I am in life, when I hear “sin,” I immediately think “missing the mark.” I think behavior or action, not identity, right? But I also know that I haven’t always thought that way.

Marc Schelske 20:00
Yes.

Felicia Murrell 20:01
For a long time, sin was not an indication of misalignment. It was a stain. It was something to be ashamed of, something to hide, something to cover with fig leaves, like a dirty word. And so I’m thinking about sin in terms of purity culture as being everything that we don’t want to be. It becomes something that we have to root out of our lives, root out of our bodies, root out of our hearts and our cultures. In a sense, sin has to be annihilated, has to be conquered. And so anyone that’s position in this kind of cult-like thinking, when they hear the word “sin,” they immediately think–like from the tree of the knowledge–“oh, this is evil. This is bad.” And so now I have this label, “the sin of empathy.” And if your leader, who holds this external authority and power over your agency, when that leader, that pastor, said it’s bad, then you just fall in line. You disavow your support. You root out whatever this is. You annihilate it. And I think when you have leaders with that much power, have people doing the thinking for you, deciding for you what’s good, what’s bad, those people can name anything as sin. So, the conjecture, on my part, is that when we start with a system that says that to have faith is to never to doubt, to never to question, you see how easy it is for the two powerful people at the top to convince the six people in the middle to hand over their belief or worship and fall into fanaticism. So you can kind of see how someone in that position can throw this phrase out, and then it takes a life of its own.

Marc Schelske 21:53
That’s so clarifying. In that illustration of the 10 people, what tool exists to help the six in the middle see through the machinations of the two? Well, it’s your essential humanity. Those six in the middle look at the two that have been put in the under position and say, “Wait a minute. That seems odd. They’re not really that different from us. We need to make a change.” Then the empathy that connects human to human, that peer connection, is actually the dynamite that blows up that system. We can see that in any of those categories that you mentioned that you brought from bell hooks, right?

If we’re talking about patriarchy, anyone who feels empathy for the burden that a woman is forced to carry in society, that empathy is the open doorway to begin questioning patriarchy. What about White supremacy? Many folks who are of my complexion don’t consider themselves white supremacists because they’ve been programmed that that phrase means a certain kind of violent, hood-wearing, hatred-spitting person, and that’s not them. Authentically, it’s not them. But they haven’t been able to see how–or perhaps the fear around identity is so strong they’re not willing to see how–they have had certain advantages (even in the context of many disadvantages that they might have because of class or other things) they’ve had certain advantages that other people that aren’t white don’t have, and empathy is the key, right?

For instance, I’ve never had the experience of getting pulled over “While White,” right? Like every time I’ve been pulled over in my life, there’s been a good reason for it, and not only that, but I haven’t authentically felt fear for my life in those moments. And so that moment when I have a conversation with somebody who has had the experience of being pulled over for “Driving While Black,” and sat in the car with their hands on the steering wheel, terrified, wondering, “Is this going to go wrong?” I hear that story, and the empathy in me says traffic stops shouldn’t feel life-threatening. What the hell is going on?! And so now, that empathy is the key opening the doorway to questioning that white supremacist system, or the system of how we use policing or whatever. And there are people “in the room” that don’t want me questioning those things.

Felicia Murrell 24:22
Right. So my first question is, “Was there ever a time when I have been absolutely afraid for my life? Where I felt that energy surge through my body, and I was scared of going to lose my life if I moved wrong or I said something wrong? If there is I immediately have a sense of connection, right? And if I stand myself to remember, “Have I had this moment?” and I come up with the answer, “No,” I can touch my heart, express gratitude to myself that that’s not my experience, and at the same time express a deep sense of remorse and care that someone else did have to have that experience.

Marc Schelske 25:00
Yeah, right.

Felicia Murrell 25:01
Because part of our shared community is that we hold both triumphs and tragedies. We hold both joy and suffering. And I think the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil wants this to split the poles and divide them into binaries with a chasm in between. Empathy is the thread that we use together, right? We’re holding this together in wholeness, in the circle of life. Most people have done exactly what you were saying in the intro. They try to make empathy about walking in someone else’s shoes, taking on someone else’s feelings, feeling their pain. I just need to remember that we’re both human.

Marc Schelske 26:00
Yes, right, right.

Felicia Murrell 26:01
So, can I connect to a shared humanity? Can I remember what it was like not to have to be worried about, to experience betrayal, to lose a parent, or to have grief about something, and what does that feel like in my body? What was the visceral feeling of that thing? And then from there, I remember, and I can hold space. I don’t have to correct the feeling. I’m not trying to judge it. I’m not trying to analyze it. I’m not trying to fix it. I’m there to bear witness and to be with because, “ohhhh, there by the grace of God go I.”

Marc Schelske 26:43
Something just occurred to me while you were saying that. I want to see what you think about this. At the beginning of our conversation, when you were defining empathy, you talked about it being this mirror function where I’m relying on my own experience as a way to connect with this other person. All right, so if I’m in a system that is telling me that I can’t feel empathy for someone else who is being injured or treated unfairly, and it’s for “good reasons,” right? I shouldn’t feel empathy for them because we’re asking them to do the right, Godly thing, and they’re not doing it, and they should feel sad about that. So, you know, don’t feel empathy for them, right? If I’m in that kind of system and I’ve bought into that, because of this mirror function what also is happening is I’m being trained to ignore my own feelings of injustice perpetrated against me. Do you feel like that’s the right connection?

Felicia Murrell 27:36
Oh, absolutely. And any… particularly women inside of evangelical Christianity, have been trained to ignore. You’ve been trained to be a martyr. You serve your family. You serve your church. You deny what you’re doing to the to the death of you.

Marc Schelske 27:54
Okay, so the premise of this podcast is thinking about how we practice the way of Jesus. So, let’s bring the conversation of empathy into that domain. How does this picture of empathy you’ve talked about–this mirror connection between peers, depending on the resource of your own experience to understand the internal experience of another person, allowing that then to shape the way you relate to them–How do you see that fitting into the calling of what it means to follow Jesus and live that out in the world that we find ourselves in?

Felicia Murrell 28:27
So I think, for me, when I think about the way of Jesus, and I think about empathy, empathy is about emotional attunement. It’s about being moved, right? Understanding either what I’m feeling, what I’m experiencing, or what someone is experiencing, and I’m reflecting back that understanding. I’m not rescuing. I’m not fixing all those things.

And when I think about the way of Jesus, perhaps the most intentional thing that comes to mind is the story of the Good Samaritan. Think of this story from the perspective of what was most helpful to the person who was injured in a moment when they couldn’t necessarily articulate what they needed. So I want you to think about that. Also, think about who chose to pass this injured party by? Why did Jesus include those two examples of who was too busy to care, who was too busy to demonstrate love in action? So a good Samaritan stops… or a Samaritan. We don’t have to say, “good,” but a Samaritan stops. And this person is thinking, “What might I need in this moment?” I can take a beat. I can pause. If I were injured, I would need some rest. Okay, rest is important, so let me go pay the innkeeper the money so the injured party has somewhere to rest and recover. And, oh, they might need some food, and there might be some other things that I haven’t even processed or considered. So let me leave a little extra money with the innkeeper for whatever needs might arise that I haven’t considered. So what can I give in this moment to this injured party? I can give this person the means to recover and get well. By helping to provide a place for them to stay, I can give them aid to help them return to work. That is what empathy does, right?

Empathy is a skill. Compassion is the daily practice, but empathy is the skill. And I don’t think we get to empathy without holding that place within ourselves with Spirit, where we learn to develop the spaciousness to think about what I myself might need. What do I need in the moment when I get triggered, when I get anxious? What do I need for my own well-being? And when I can learn what I need for my own well-being, then I’m able to get out of that overflow, moving from how I tend to myself to someone else. So I think in that regard, this is the way of Jesus. This is mutuality. It’s reciprocity. It’s self-giving, Kenotic love–all these big words that really just explain relational understanding and action, right? How do I take action to demonstrate love and care toward myself? How do I demonstrate love and care toward my neighbor? How do I demonstrate love and care in the world around me? That’s the way of Jesus.

Marc Schelske 32:08
Yeah, yeah. I think that’s right. One of the lines that I underlined, I think, is appropriate right here. You wrote, “This is my Holy Sacrament: to fully and consciously participate with self-emptying love in this present moment.” And I think the connection there is that full participation is that the connection to empathy, right? If I’m engaging with a person who’s right in front of me, for me to fully be present in that moment, I’m reaching into that resource of my experiences to connect with them. If this is self-emptying love, I’m giving of myself. That might be the time to stop and listen. It might be the effort to be involved in a difficult, emotional conversation. It might be resources. It might be all kinds of things. The cost is that I didn’t have to be in this moment with this person. I’m opening myself up to be present to what is happening for that person and to what this moment is going to ask of me. That sounds an awful lot like, you know, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

Felicia Murrell 33:12
Yeah. I wrote in AND, “Empathy transcends the imagining of a life we never have to live, making the connection that allows our hearts to break open to the painful, fearful, or even joyous experiences of others. Intimate, empathetic knowing allows for sympathetic resonance, a melding forged in the weaving of stories and lives together until there is only THE story, which is the restoration of all things, as all embrace Divine unity and the encounter of love. Love is infinite, and in the bounty of love, we are held, and we are known.”

And I think when we come to know that knowing ourselves, when we can hear the sound of the genuine within, we have that space to tend to ourselves. Then what happens is that becomes the practice of how we tend to the world. I don’t think the two are separate. I think that word AND is very important. But I also think, as you were saying, I think it’s intentional that all of this is squashed within systems so that you don’t have the space to hear yourself or even really know yourself, right? And I think as we accept love’s invitation to come closer, to tend to these wounds, to know ourselves, to have Spirit heal those wounded places within us, you turn around, and with clear eyes, you see this invitation to participate with love in the world. That goes back to bell hooks. She was very clear that the only thing that could heal the systems of domination was a love ethi. She firmly believed that. She championed love as the remedy to the world’s social problems, and I agree with her.

REFLECTION

Marc Schelske 35:29
This conversation with Felicia really was a moment of dot-connecting for me. Certain people want you to be suspicious of empathy because empathy is the key that opens the chains of hierarchical control. The moment you think about and relate to the lived experience of the person on the other end of oppression is the moment you start to question the rightness of that oppression.

I guess that’s why the accusation of empathy as a sin always seems so strange to me. Of course, God wants you to feel empathy. How did Jesus open up his ministry? Luke, chapter four: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed Me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Following a mission like that evokes empathy. It requires empathy. Empathy for the blind, the poor, the captive, empathy for everyone who isn’t experiencing a year of the Lord’s favor but instead is experiencing the weight of another year of confusion or marginalization or exploitation or suffering. Empathy calls us to act. And if God gave us empathy, then God designed empathy to move us to act in ways that bring about God’s purpose of restoration and reconciliation.

So, I guess empathy really is dangerous. If you’re trying to control people, if you’re hoping to manipulate them, if you want to exploit and control others, then empathy must be fought against because empathy is the God-given dynamite that can blow up your carefully crafted system of domination. So, no, I won’t be praying for freedom from the sin of empathy for me or anyone else. I will be praying for the Spirit of God to raise up empathy in the church so that we can be part of God’s good work of liberation now and salvation forever.

May you find the deep connection between your empathy and the Spirit of God’s call to stand with and for those God wants to lift up. Thanks for listening.

END COMMENTS

If this conversation has intrigued you, I recommend Felicia Murrell’s fantastic book, AND. The full title: AND: The Restorative Power of Love in an Either/Or World. I very rarely reread books, and I’ve already reread this one twice in one year. It’s just so good. You can find it in all the book places. You can also learn more about Felicia and what she’s up to at her website, www.FeliciaMurrell.com.

Notes for today’s episode, the full transcript, and any links that are relevant will be found at www.Marc AlanSchelske.com/TAW057.

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Until next time, remember: In this one present moment, you are loved, you are known, and you are not alone.