Joe Rigney in his book “The sin of empathy” suggests that “empathy” is a difficult word to define. He observes that it is a fairly recent entry into the English language.
“The term “empathy” itself is very recent. It was introduced into English in the early twentieth century in the field of aesthetics. It originally meant “feeling in,” and it referred to the ability to project one’s own imagined feelings into the world (a definition that is almost the opposite of its contemporary meaning). In 1955, Reader’s Digest defined the term as “the ability to appreciate the other person’s feelings without yourself becoming so emotionally involved that your judgment is affected.”[1]
He then cites Judith Hall and Mark Leary as saying that:
“Empathy is a fundamentally squishy term. Like many broad and complicated concepts, empathy can mean many things. Even the researchers who study it do not always say what they mean, or measure empathy in the same way in their studies—and they definitely do not agree on a definition. In fact, there are stark contradictions: what one researcher calls empathy is not empathy to another.”[2]
They go on to suggest that the challenge affects laypeople as well as specialists:
“When laypeople are surveyed on how they define empathy, the range of answers is wide as well. Some people think empathy is a feeling; others focus on what a person does or says. Some think it is being good at reading someone’s nonverbal cues, while others include the mental orientation of putting oneself in someone else’s shoes. Still others see empathy as the ability or effort to imagine others’ feelings, or as just feeling “connected” or “relating” to someone. Some think it is a moral stance to be concerned about other people’s welfare and a desire to help them out. Sometimes it seems like “empathy” is just another way of saying “being a nice and decent person.” Actions, feelings, perspectives, motives, values—all of these are “empathy” according to someone.”[3]
There are three things to note here. First, many words can have a broad semantic range. Secondly, we shouldn’t be surprised at the way in which academics can get into all kinds of debates and discussions about the meaning of words, how else are they meant to get PHD projects? Thirdly, the examples cited above from how lay people understand the word may suggest different types of emphasis but hardly indicate contradiction or disagreement. Rather, those descriptors seem to build up to give a full picture of how the word works. It is also worth noting that being able to read “nonverbal cues”, being concerned, feeling connected, wanting to help or “putting oneself in someone else’s shoes” hardly amount to anything close to sin.
Again, Rigney references another article and comments:
“A recent article in the Journal of Social Psychology notes the difficulty of evaluating the success of empathy as a concept in social and personal psychology.4 Put simply, the term has no agreed-upon definition. In the article, the authors note a number of possible definitions: knowing another’s thoughts and feelings; imagining another’s thoughts and feelings; adopting the posture of another; actually feeling as another does; imagining how one would feel or think in another’s place; feeling distress at another’s suffering; feeling for another’s suffering, sometimes called pity or compassion; projecting oneself into another’s situation.”[4]
Once more, he seems to find contradiction where there is none. Why does this matter? Well, it matters in general terms when we have someone seeking to be a guide and teacher on Biblical matters who struggles to understand the workings of modern language. Greek and Hebrew words found in Scripture often have a semantic range and nuanced meaning within that. Greek and Hebrew words in Scripture have often provoked much debate and writing about their meaning.
Secondly, there are questions about pastoral awareness here. People are different and so their exact expression of empathy, or any other emotion, or indeed any gift will be a little different to how others express it. There will also be different degrees to which a person may be more or less empathetic.
It is also problematic when we come back to the specific debate about whether empathy is a sin. How is Rigney and how are we meant to make an assessment when he has so badly muddied the waters over meaning. Is Rigney going to, in fact define something else as sin? If so, he would do better to correctly define and label that sin. The danger here is that a word and therefore all of the associated, legitimate, good and healthy things mentioned above becomes contaminated. The vast majority of ordinary Christians, indeed even most pastors and theologians are unlikely to read Rigney’s book but may well here that there are scholars who think that empathy is a sin. To them, the sin is likely to be to do with connecting emotionally to others, wanting to help and putting yourself in their shoes.
[1] Rigney, Joe. The Sin of Empathy: Compassion and Its Counterfeits (p. 18). Canon Press. Kindle Edition.
[2] Judith A. Hall and Mark Leary, “The U.S. Has an Empathy Deficit,” Scientific American, September 17, 2020, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-us-has-an-empathy-deficit/. Cited in Rigney, Joe. The Sin of Empathy: Compassion and Its Counterfeits (pp. 18-19). Canon Press. Kindle Edition.
[3] Hall and Leary cited in Rigney, Joe. The Sin of Empathy: Compassion and Its Counterfeits (pp. 19-20). Canon Press. Kindle Edition.
[4] Rigney, Joe. The Sin of Empathy: Compassion and Its Counterfeits (p. 20). Canon Press. Kindle Edition.
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