Where Do We Disagree?
Do you believe empathy can be spiritually dangerous? I do, and I have tried to explain why and how. And as I have, I have received some criticism (some of it quite fierce). The criticism is not surprising. Most of us have categories for the way that certain passions (such as fear or anger) can become sinful; articles about “the sin of anger” or “the sin of fear” make sense to us. But in the modern world, empathy is viewed as an almost unalloyed good, and therefore the notion that it could be dangerous, and even sinful, may be shocking. Nevertheless, the interactions and criticisms have been both illuminating and instructive. For instance, one group of responses sounds like this: How can you call empathy a sin? Empathy is Christlike care for suffering people that seeks to deeply enter into their pain in order to help them. By criticizing empathy, you must be advocating for an aloof, uncaring, and unchristian response to suffering people. At a basic level, this criticism of my argument i