An unusual and interesting read.
- By elevating empathy over compassion as the superior virtue, there is now an entire culture devoted to the total immersion of empathy. Books, articles, and social media all trumpet the importance of checking one’s own beliefs, values, judgments, and reason at the door of empathy.
People of devout Christian faith often have a different definition of the word 'Love' than the average person. Your average person would not consider it loving to tell someone that they are corrupt, evil, damned or an abomination for having a same-sex attraction. It is a loving, Christian thing to do to help make sure that people don't end up in Hell. In this example, that means making sure that LGBT+ people are reminded that they are unclean and unwelcome in the eyes of God as they are. But I'm just a sad, hate-filled, burned up former fundie, what do I know.
Except for the fact that we're all evil, damned, and an abomination in the eyes of the Lord without the saving grace and cleansing blood of Jesus, without exception, and thus are all unwelcome in the eyes of God without it. So to point your finger at that particular sin? Well, Jesus had something to say to the Pharisees about the woman they pointed the finger at and were about to stone for something as heinous as adultery. But, I'm just a miserable wretch of a sinner without Jesus, what do I know
I'm in the south and recently went on a "church tour" with my wife. We found our fair share of hellfire and brimstone evangelicals, but we were also pleased to find a strong counter culture of small and actually loving churches. In that tour, I really started to believe that the sin of man was in the fact that we only have half of what it takes to be gods. We ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, but we don't have the immortality required to put good and evil into context. To me, that defines the center of Christian love - we all have our own beliefs, our own habits, and our own lives, and we all want to weigh the world on the scale of good and bad. The good Christians that I know can see the limitations of their judgement, put little stock in it, and can lean into being in a community with people who are different. This is the value of empathy to me. It's not the distanced condolences of sympathy, but an earnest desire to understand the feelings of a person whose life you haven't lived, but which rhymes very neatly with your own. Empathy is not the enemy, it's the belief that you wield god's judgement of a person's value.
Yeah. So true on twisted definitions of love. You know a boatload more about what works than any of the Christian fundamentals you describe. It sucks how we human beings can allow our fear of the unknown, or unfamiliar rationalize our actions as we jack up the lives of folks that would otherwise be doing fine. I’m a recovering Catholic myself. I’ve attended a local Methodist church with my wife and kids on occasion with good results. That is, until the Methodist Church leadership recently made it clear they had no interest in gay clergy members. Our local church, although located in a fairly conservative area, does not want any part of this policy. The pastor was very clear with his disagreement of the policy, yet no action has been taken yet. Turns out the Methodist Church leadership somehow owns all of the deeds to all Methodist Churches, and therefore appears to hold the trump card in this game
Agreed. Very unusual. How’d you come across this? This guy could have provided more and better analogies to get his point across. Strange xenophobic vibe going on here. The “Enemy” seems to be all around this dude. It’s as if he’s refuting the idea of “walking a mile in someone else’s shoes” as being Satanic.
It's written as an homage to The Screwtape Letters in which a senior demon, Screwtape, writes letters to a lesser demon, Wormwood. It's about leading someone to sin. The argument put forth, couched in enough conceits that if you aren't already halfway up your own navel you'll never find it, is that "feeling" empathy can prevent people from "doing" compassion. If you remove the conceit it gets clearer: God aims to produce a fellowship of sufferings with Jesus at the center of it. Fellowship requires fellows; it requires distinctness. Fellows say "we are together yet individual." This is a union where people are united but still distinct. In fact, humans become more themselves when united. The devil would rather stoke empathy than compassion because instead of union it creates fusion, where people are no longer distinct. Which is fucking nonsense. But this is the way seminarians often argue - take a nonsense assertion, put it on the lips of the devil and use it to make a different nonsense assertion look sensible.As in many things, we must always keep in mind the Enemy’s goals and ours. The Enemy aims to produce a fellowship of sufferings, with his Accursed Son at the center of it. But fellowship requires fellows; that is, it requires distinctness. Fellows say, “We are together, and yet I am still I and you are still you.” This is a kind of union, where one thing is united to another thing while still being itself.
In fact, if the Enemy is to be believed, creatures become more themselves when thus united. Of course, it is all lies, and in stoking empathy we are simply cutting with the grain of reality. Empathy goes beyond union to the more potent and dynamic truth of fusion, the melting together of persons so that one personality is lost in the other. Empathy demands, “Feel what I feel. In fact, lose yourself in my feelings.”
I’m now wondering if this is the mindset that drives so many missionaries. If I can avoid really understanding you and what I perceive as your problems, then I never need to recognize faults in the beliefs I hold superior to yours and how my beliefs may harm you too.
Uh, if this is how people respond to your "help", you should probably consider how you interact with the world and why people would reject your help even if they "need" it. This also neatly divides the world into "sufferers" and "helpers" but ignores that sometimes there IS no "helping" a situation and all you can do is struggle along and deal as best you can. And sometimes the problem is of the form "this system is unjust" and the "help" is of the form "here's how to change yourself to better fit into the system" rather than "yes, let's figure out what a just system would look like". To the author's credit, if you can read through the flowery language, he does explicitly lay out a part of christian belief that is not often said aloud.When humans are suffering, they tend to make two demands that are impossible to fulfill simultaneously. On the one hand, they want people to notice the depth of their pain and sorrow — how deep they are in the pit, how unique and tragic their circumstances. At the same time, they don’t want to be made to feel that they really need the assistance of others. In one breath, they say, “Help me! Can’t you see I’m suffering?” and in the next they say, “How dare you act as though I needed you and your help?”
The Screwtape Letters make moralistic religious arguments easy to digest and fun. This was a akward attempt to ride on a better man's coat tails. It wasn't fun and I quickly got to the point where I didn't care what the guys argument was. I don't know if I buy his differentiation of compassion and empathy. I'm certain that empathy helps you understand what anither person going through. I don't think that is as often true for compassion.
Using flowery language to make an argument, should be forbidden. I think the idea behind it , is pretty decent. This Invisibilia Podcast (the end of empathy) I just listened to, seems to make a good argument. And it's very clever in making its point
This reads awfully close to being something on /r/wowthanksimcured. I don't know the author's position on other things, but this gives off a serious vibe of trying to provide a justification for being shitty to people who are suffering, if we think the suffering is their fault.