In recent political theology of the Evangelical right, there has been a growing conversation about the sin of empathy, the toxicity of empathy, and the general weakness of empathy as a human capacity. This paper will not be a line by line rebuttal of recent arguments – partly because there is not sufficient space and partly because there are points I agree with – rather this paper will be brief sketch of Christian empathy and the essential place it has in Christian soul care.
The paper will begin with a brief definition of empathy. Then to start to define Christian empathy, it will explore the empathic nature of God as seen in the Exodus and the Incarnation. Here we will see how God’s capacity for empathy and compassion result in concrete action toward his people, without God-self being absorbed within the experience of his people, nor eliminating his call to obedience and repentance from sin. Next, we will look at Paul’s exploration of human suffering in Romans 8 as groaning and how the Holy Spirit both groans with – an expression of empathy – and groans for, as is seen in the fact that these are prayers to the Father. In Paul’s language of groaning, he both acknowledged the painful experience of suffering and intrinsic hope of these groanings, for they are the groanings of childbirth.
Taking our cues from our empathic God, the paper then moves to Christian empathy. It does this by expositing two Pauline prayers that speak of the nature and centrality of love in the Christian life and Christian community: Ephesians 3:14-19 and Philippians 1:3-11. Using these two prayers we will consider how Christian empathy is to be rooted in God’s love with a love that is teleologically pointed toward what is truly excellent. An empathy rooted in God and pointed toward the good, allows the soul care practitioner to both enter the experience of another without being swept up into their pathology. The implication for those offering soul care is that central to their call to cure and care for souls will be both growth in their capacity for empathy and in their own rootedness in the love of God. Now Christian empathy, rooted in the love of God, becomes a powerful and essential tool in any form of Christian soul care, broadly conceived. The inverse of this is also true; to lose our moorings in the love of God, secularizes empathy to the detriment of the shepherds and the sheep.