Ruined by Empathy

I’ll never forget when I stumbled upon a particularly morally challenged believer. They puzzled me. Their intentions always seemed so pure, their care for others outsized everyone else’s, and they wished so deeply for the redemption of others. How can someone whose outward focus was so constant suffer from the problems of those, as far as I knew, who obsessed about themselves?

I didn’t realize how much I would learn from that answer.

The concept of empathy has been placed in the highest echelons of Christian quips and claimed values, and seems to me so poorly examined, as to be a completely arbitrary.

Is it really always a good thing? What about its monster opposite: Apathy? The devil himself may as well be prowling between every letter of that word on this page – so hatefully is it sometimes spoken of in believing circles. Never is it even given a chance to be anything else! (more on Apathy in a later blog entry)

Back to our saint that is empathy. Empathy for what, exactly? People? The good ones? No, not that, since there aren’t “really” good ones (which is also not quite right). We are all sinners saved by grace… right? Since that seems so to most, empathy now gets a paved road and unfettered access as a guiding value that might as well be the Holy Spirit’s sovereign hand!

But, Daniel, the BIBLE!

You’re right. I won’t argue with you on that.

Empathy closes distance between hearts of people and can make familiar to the empath things that should not be. Another person’s depression does not get to become your own. Neither is their anxiety, or other negative impacting inner turmoil. We may want to feel connected to others, to thrive in a communal bond with them, but sometimes the best thing to face instead is the silence of being alone – even if it somehow feels deafening.

Staying connected doesn’t make you noble, and unintentionally carrying negative emotional struggles of others will only make you less so. We need our wits, stability, confidence, and strength to withstand our own struggles in life – and to powerfully overcome them. If you fall, you can help no one.

Connect, but then disconnect, for the sake of your sanity, and to remain the person you are without the inner hells of others. Otherwise you may get lost in a labyrinth of other people’s struggles, never able to find the inner self you either once knew or desperately need to discover.

Empathy can lead to a path of immorality, confusion, and destruction when not tempered with solidarity with oneself, which I have always found most powerfully in the nearness of God in the place of lonesomeness and silence.  

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