Empathy

[Godcrazy]

Empathy is not bad. It is one of the most positive words in the English language. As a Christian, I consider empathy one of the fruits of the Spirit. The New Testament in the Bible and the life of Jesus is full of empathy.

Examples:
Rom 12:15 Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep.

1Pe 3:8 ¶ [fn]To sum up, all of you be harmonious, sympathetic, brotherly, kindhearted, and humble in spirit;

Phl 2:4 do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.

Gal 6:2 Bear one another’s burdens, and thereby fulfill the law of Christ.

Hebrews 4:15 states that Jesus can "sympathize with our weaknesses" because He was "tempted in every way".

God the Spirit shows empathy

Rom 8:26
In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans.

I don't believe one can truly live a Chrisitian life if there is no empathy.

I added this to my signature:

"In my work with the defendants (at the Nuremberg Trails 1945-1949) I was searching for the nature of evil and I now think I have come close to defining it. A lack of empathy. It’s the one characteristic that connects all the defendants, a genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow men. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy."​

Captain G. M. Gilbert, the Army psychologist assigned to watching the defendants at the Nuremberg trials​

​

Some will whine that the Godwin rule is in play, but with the quality of empathy is under attack, and by Christians too, it badly needs to be remembered.

It sure is among many criminals and narcissists psychopaths. They are characterised by lack of empathy or very low. A default from birth or learned through growing up or and bad circumstances where they learn the false self and not build their own. Someone that learn empathy and has the genetic can turn out well. They have done research on criminals in jail their brains compared to normal and it turned out the centre for empathy-yes there is a centre- is as good as non existent or very little like peanut size. Plus the frontal lobe issues so you cannot reason well or at all and combined with no real self developed, leaving you emotionally and mentally on forever toddler. Is there hope? Depending on how far the traits have gone, there is a scale they can learn by mimic and rebuild the self, which at the base have a lot of shame and blame. And otherwise learn right from wrong might not feel it, but can learn act it. This is generally, I am sure there are individual circumstances and behaviour.
Seen from all this, empathy and the learning of it is crucial it is learned from mirroring and learning early.

 

[Godcrazy]

for those interested in lack of empathy and narcissism psychopathy I recommend Prof. Sam Vaknin on youtube a self professed narcissist and professor teaching many and very good about these things. He said for someone like narcissism they have to be left totally without "supply"(everything they do is fake) to then have a mental collaps and rebuild from there turning bi polar instead from there you might be able to treat them.

 

[MehGuy]

Empathyy is not something you turn on and off.

The reason some do not feel empathy is because they are dead, stone dead.

As a corpse, cold and hard hearted.

It is not pleasant to feel empathy,

Empathy is often involuntary, but it can also be a practice. Also something one can choose to shy away from.

 

[Godcrazy]

Hello Godcrazy, you make a very important point. How can we possibly know what Charlie Kirk meant (or what any other person means, for that matter) from a single sentence or two taken out-of-context

Of course, if we knew the context and understood what he really meant (& why he said what he did in the way that he did) that would all but eliminate the opportunity for conjecturing and judgmentalism, etc., and what fun would that be

God bless you!!

--David

edit - here's a Snopes article about the OP quote. It includes a bit of context, though more would have been helpful (see the typed quote in the larger yellow box towards the bottom). However, I think that it's enough to understand that his comment about empathy was specific, rather than general in nature (as it concerns political discourse).

The little quote of his from "X" just below it may be helpful, as well (I believe they were both made on the same day in 2022), but again, more context would be nice.

thank you
we should always be careful especially as christians to always give the full context or refer to. At least try to. It pains me to see how someone can be against Charlie or anyone without the full scope. I mean as he was a christian, is as he is alive in heaven, is good enough for me. I rather focus on unity i think that was his real message by the way

 

[Robban]

Empathy is often involuntary, but it can also be a practice. Also something one can choose to shy away from.

I doubt that very much.

Story time,
the Rebbe of righteous memory was having correspondance with a young girl who was on the point of giving up.

He wrote and told her he knew how she felt.

She wrote back and said, "How can you know how I feel?"

The Rebbe wrote back saying, "When a child is teething the mother feels the pain too."

 

[rambot]

Hello Godcrazy, you make a very important point. How can we possibly know what Charlie Kirk meant (or what any other person means, for that matter) from a single sentence or two taken out-of-context

Gotta say, if you think about what he says and how off his understanding actually is, it seems weird that he'd condemn it....and label it as destructive. He thinks it's "made up, new age term" but it most certainly is not.

I mean it makes sense to condemn something you don't understand but why didn't he instead just learn what it was?

It seems like a strange way to live a life....

 

[MehGuy]

It is not pleasant to feel empathy,

Are you sure? Have you given this matter serious reflection before?

 

[MehGuy]

I doubt that very much.

We can invoke empathy from meditation. We have some ability to block and curb empathy, even if simply consciously choosing to leave situations where it is harder for empathy not to be triggered.

Perhaps the more intelligent an animal such as humans evolve and are able to think and subvert instinct, the more evolutionary pressure for positive emotional incentives to encourage behavior.

 

[partinobodycular]

The reason some do not feel empathy is because they are dead, stone dead.

For some reason people seem to think that empathy is a good thing. It's also the source of envy, jealousy, and resentment. That which allows you to feel sympathy for others also allows you to feel hatred for others. To know when others are suffering, also means that you know when they're being pompous, self-righteous, and self-centered.

As someone lacking it I would argue that empathy isn't the wonderful thing that people make it out to be.

As a corpse, cold and hard hearted.

You know not of what you speak.

It is not pleasant to feel empathy,

I can only agree, judging by the evil that I've seen people do because of it.

 

[rambot]

It is not pleasant to feel emempathy.

Couldn't disagree more.

I feel empathy for positive emotions but even when I feel empathy with negative ones it still feels good to conn3ct aith people.

I used ro do social work. It's a hard job. But my high empathy helped name.ofnmy clients a lot.

Quite a few of these people have never really had a cheerleader and someone who listenned to thwir struggles and gave them hope.

I believe that my empathy drives me to work with people like that. Now I teach behaviour kids and do very well with their behaviours.

I CANNOT do that work without empathy.

 

[Robban]

We can invoke empathy from meditation. We have some ability to block and curb empathy, even if simply consciously choosing to leave situations where it is harder for empathy not to be triggered.

Perhaps the more intelligent an animal such as humans evolve and are able to think and subvert instinct, the more evolutionary pressure for positive emotional incentives to encourage behavior.

Either we are not on the same page or we are not even in the same libary.

What I call empathy is for example, a while ago an elderly lady was getting off a boat and fell on her knees,

at that moment I too felt the pain.

 

[linux.poet]

As a Christian, I consider empathy one of the fruits of the Spirit.

The Fruits of the Spirit are clearly defined by this passage of Scripture.

By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. And those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

Frequently, as part of the Christian life, we have to fight our own fleshly emotions and the fleshly emotions of others. Therefore, empathy is an mixed bag at best and a liability at worst. The anger, fear, and sadness of others can quickly overpower us and drive us into sin if we are not careful. The actual fruit of the Spirit, self-control, involves NOT letting that happen. You are to be in control of your emotions, not others. (Blaming other people for your emotions is not Christian behavior, I believe. If another person has control of my emotions, there is usually an anchor, something that I’m holding onto, that is allowing them to push me around. Let it go. This world is garbage and will all be burned up.)

I’ve also read teaching that identifies extreme emotions as evidence of idolatry in your life. When my years of traumatic mood swings would contest this teaching as false, there is some credibility to it. If you are idolizing something, you will emotionally react when your idol is threatened, running over other people to preserve whatever junk your heart is worshipping. I have to hold both forum moderation AND my own body and personal safety with a loose hand, letting God guide me through, and avoid getting too attached to either. Otherwise, my empathy will leave me filled with rage all of the time. Everyone around me IRL is angry at me on some level all the time. I can’t let THAT control me, I have to shut it off.

At the same time, I cannot let other people get away with bad behavior that violates Scripture, I must counter it. That is the other hand, and I cannot meet sin with sin, and fire with fire, which is what anger autosuggests.

Gentleness, peace, and patience are also indicators that the Holy Spirit is restraining one’s fallen emotions and one’s emotional response to emotional attackers. A good sign He is not there is someone’s emotions being controlled by an idol or another world system.

Examples:
Rom 12:15 Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep.

1Pe 3:8 ¶ [fn]To sum up, all of you be harmonious, sympathetic, brotherly, kindhearted, and humble in spirit;

Phl 2:4 do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.

Gal 6:2 Bear one another’s burdens, and thereby fulfill the law of Christ.

Hebrews 4:15 states that Jesus can "sympathize with our weaknesses" because He was "tempted in every way".

God the Spirit shows empathy

Rom 8:26
In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans.

These are examples of compassion, not empathy, for us mere mortals. The Holy Spirit and Jesus have perfect emotions, therefore, for them empathy = compassion and they are one and the same. For fallen human beings, therefore, the intellect must be used to restrain fallen body emotional reactions and control them, using Scripture and the power of the Holy Spirit. There isn’t a better option I know of. Understanding how someone is feeling and responding Biblically is a mental operation. As this is done over time, the emotions “even out” and become less intense, heading toward a “dull but mildly happy” phenomenon.

To be fair, empathy is probably part of the image of God, we’re supposed to be able to relate to one another emotionally and understand what each other are feeling. But it only really works if we’re perfect.

I don't believe one can truly live a Chrisitian life if there is no empathy.

David Wood, Christian psychopath, would like a word with you:

And given the fact that he ran an apologetics ministry for years, nope. Christ has saved thousands of emotionally disordered people.

I won’t claim to have no empathy. If I do that, almost every single prayer I’ve prayed on the Prayer Wall would testify against me, and they would be right. But in real life, I have to fight that part of myself every day. I’m the kind of dumb person who will cry with her abusive dad in an a hospital room, only for that to be used against me a month later with the false claim that I care about him in order to manipulate me into doing something I will never do. I’m not allowed to have empathy in real life. So I don’t. Any sort of empathy is weakness, so I just put on my tough girl mask and keep on trucking. And I have no doubt as to my salvation or the fact that I live a Christian life. Given that I do have empathy, that was never at stake in the first place, but it’s not a sin to shut it off when it isn’t welcome or useful.

Nothing personal is meant, this is just debating as usual, since my debate position has been contested.