Do You Feel My Pain? Empathy, Sympathy, and Dangerous Virtues
- Author(s): Joe Rigney
- Date published: May 2, 2020
- URL: https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/do-you-feel-my-pain
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- Date accessed: September 24, 2020
This article talks about why the trend of empathy over sympathy is not good. Sympathy is often viewed as compassion from a distance, whereas empathy involves entering into and sharing emotions. Empathy seems more compassionate, but it can also leave us vulnerable. Our goal should be to do good to people, and empathy can actually get in the way by preventing us from making wise decisions that would be for that person’s good. And by elevating empathy to a high degree, one may simply view empathy as the ultimate good, at the expense of other good. Empathy “takes over the agenda” when other wisdom might otherwise prevail. When we empathasize strongly, we can end up joining the other person in the pit, rather than helping them out of it.
Prioritizing emotions wrongly also gives it priority over truth, and can lead to problems such as emotional blackmail. Emotions become “their reality.” Abusers can draw on empathy to shield themselves from punishment from others. This is a problem even in the church.
Empathy also makes us more tribalistic. We tend to empathasize with certain groups and demonize others. Some secular sources also highlight this fact, that empathy actually has increased polarization.
Empathy is not categorically bad. After all, we’re called to weep with those who weep. But far from being better than sympathy, it is a servant of it. We seek to do good to others, while resisting being controlled by their emotions.