You may recall a little hoo-ha a while back (I think it may have been a couple of years ago even when a prominent US Evangelical said that empathy is sin. I engaged with the issue here and here.
Well Evangelicals Now have decided to rake up the issue again in this article. I hope that you won’t mind an unusual level of bluntness here but the article, as with the original take is frankly both theologically and pastorally illiterate.
I suspect that many readers will be confused as to how someone could even reach that conclusion, it seems to misunderstand even what the word means. It does look like the presumption is that the only reason why we would be sympathising or empathising with someone would involve them being in sin, so that our empathy would mean an endorsement of their sin. That would in effect suggest that either their emotional experience and expression of suffering has been caused by sin or is itself sin.
I wonder, first of all if there is a connection here with the original purist Jay Adams’ nouthetic counselling approach. Adams believed that all mental health issues were a result of sin and so that sin had to be confronted. Additionally, we might note the recent push of an approach to concupiscence where all desires and even temptation itself are seen as sin.
It should be fairly obvious that there isn’t a direct link between sin and suffering. This is crucial to our rejection of prosperity teaching. Therefore, it should be both pastorally and theologically obvious that although it is possible for some specific sins to lead to specific suffering and whilst sometimes how we express our emotional response to suffering can be sinful, in many pastoral contexts we are seeking to bring comfort to sufferers, not rebuke to persistent sinners. I am concerned that the default assumption seems to be the opposite.
I wonder too if this reflects a general distrust of “emotion” in some quarters. There are, as someone explained to me recently from their experience, those who experience such a level of “empathy” that they literally feel the emotions of others to the point where it becomes overwhelming. In fact, I’ve observed personally that some people seem to draw upon the emotions of others to the point where they experience physical pain. I suspect that there are some people who experience this and so have needed to learn how to cut off the emotion, in effect to shut down their empathy. There are of course those at the other end of the spectrum who struggle to read emotions and feel emotions.
I wonder if this feeds into ministry life. What happens if you have pastors who either have had to shut down their over empathetic response system completely or struggle to read emotion? What happens if instead of accepting the strengths and challenges of different people we end up seeking to theologically justify it. And what if that then lines up with a misunderstanding of the doctrine of God which leads to a general suspicion of emotions? What I mean is that there is a fantastic bit of doctrine known as “God’s impassibility.” God is without passions, meaning that God is not subjected to the whims of emotions. It feeds into the truth that God does not change. This is wonderful good news because it means that God isn’t going to suddenly lose his temper and stop loving you. Yet this isn’t meant to diminish God’s love and joy. God is maximally alive. However, at times the doctrine has become confused with an approach that suspects emotions and gives us a cold God. I think too that this kind of thinking can feed into an unhelpful attempt to justify how people are, instead of just accepting that this is how they are.
I appreciate that I’m being a little bit speculative here but I am trying to understand how we could arrive at such a mess where the principal of one of the main UK Reformed seminaries is talking and the main house journal of conservative evangelicalism have got themselves into such a muddle. Does what I’ve said here strike any chords? Or have I got completely the wrong end of the stick. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Faithroots 