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comment by ilex
ilex  ·  1758 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The Enticing Sin of Empathy: How Satan corrupts through compassion

    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?”

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.