An Empathetic Plea (Updated)
We are a people of words, because we follow a Christ who is the Word. He spoke, and therefore words are of eternal and infinite importance—they cannot be overvalued. With that, the meaning of those words is essential because without understanding what words mean, we cannot rightly understand the very words that God has used to communicate with us, and this concept transfers to all of life. This means that we must understand not only what words mean but also how to use them properly in our communication. To make the matter a little more murky, the other side of the coin is living out the definition/concepts of these words in our lives. In other words, the meanings and concepts that words specify are not innocuous. These meanings have a significant impact on how we live, speak, serve, etc., and if we then embrace principles, concepts, or definitions that are not in accordance with biblical truth or are flatly antithetical to it, then we will, sooner or later, find ourselves “in a tight spot”, to quote George Clooney.
What is Sympathy and Compassion?
Sympathy has a few common definitions. They are:
feelings of pity and sorrow for someone else's misfortune
understanding between people; common feeling
the state or fact of responding in a way similar or corresponding to an action elsewhere
The third definition would have a wider application and could be utilized for a scenario not involving people, like that of a “sympathetic detonation,” for instance, when one bomb explodes, causing another bomb to explode. But likewise, compassion would be defined as “sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others.” At any rate, these definitions are fine, as far as they go, but they all, to one degree or another, fall short of what biblical sympathy is.
Biblical sympathy is the ability (not the necessity) to feel what someone else feels as well as the ability to understand how others feel. It is the capacity to feel another person’s feelings, thoughts, or attitudes vicariously, as a distinct and separate person, coming alongside a sufferer for their help and betterment. It is the ability to exercise grace or favor toward someone else, or to show kindness, in relieving sorrow and want from others. It is what a Christian is to express when he or she encounters someone suffering and wishes to be an aid to them amid their trial, as well as an instrument in the relief of their misery. In short, biblical sympathy and compassion are the ability to act as Christ did toward those who suffer.
And, as you would expect, we are given many exhortations to this end in scripture. Here are some:
1 Peter 3:8 Finally, all of you, have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind.
Romans 12:15 Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.
Matthew 18:33 And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?
Luke 10:33 But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion.
1 Corinthians 12:26 If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.
John 11:35 Jesus wept.
It should be noted, also, that sympathy and compassion are not two different words with similar meanings; they are two different words, coming from two different languages with the same meaning, which is why biblical interpreters can employ both of these words without distorting the meaning of the biblical narrative. Sympathy derives from the Greek prefix “syn” meaning with or together, and the Greek noun “pathos” meaning passion, suffering, emotion, feeling, or obsession. And compassion comes into English by way of the Latin root “passio”, which means to suffer, paired with the Latin prefix “com”, meaning together—so when put together, this word means to suffer together or with.
All in all, the words sympathy and compassion mean to “suffer with someone” else.
The Compassion of Christ
The occasion of Jesus raising Lazarus from death in John 11:1-44 is a good case study for understanding what compassion truly is. Although the words sympathy or compassion do not find themselves in this narrative, the concept of compassion can be found all throughout. In verse 11, Jesus calls Lazarus his friend, in verse 23, Jesus comforts Martha by telling her that Lazarus will rise again, and in verses 35 and 36, Jesus weeps and his love for Lazarus is abundantly observed by the Jews looking on. From these few examples, it is clear that Jesus feels what Mary and Martha are feeling, he loves them and considers the loss of Lazarus a significant tragedy, and he gives words of comfort to alleviate their pain.
However, the crucial aspect of compassion that wasn’t in the definitions above, but must be present for compassion to be biblical, and is always present when Christ shows compassion, is the facet and retention of truth. Notice that Jesus does not just feel what they feel and leave it at that. He also points them to look beyond themselves, to the objective truth of the matter. In verse 4, Jesus tells them that the death of Lazarus is not a meaningless and hopeless occurrence, rather that his illness was “for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” In verses 21 and 24, we see the hysteria of Martha as well as her distrust of Christ when she blames the death of Lazarus on Jesus’ absence and communicates that she does not believe that Jesus can raise him from the dead. But, Jesus does not coddle her, affirm “her truth”, or choose to feel what she feels and toss truth to the wind. Instead, he corrects her thinking so she can actually be saved from her suffering rather than wallow in it.
This is a very brief exposition, but this scenario is like all others where we see the compassion of Christ on display. He may feel what the sufferer feels and express deep emotion, but he always remains tethered to the truth. He never jumps with both feet into a fast-moving river of another person’s experience, to use an example, so that he is able, with one foot on the solid rock of truth, and the other in the river of suffering, to pull the distressed person back to the shore of safety and reality. This must be what our compassion looks like.
What is Empathy?
Empathy has become a bit of a buzzword in American culture. As the MeToo movement, Black Lives Matter, the mental health crisis, et al have begun to sweep the cultural landscape, the idea of empathy has likewise been swept up into people’s minds. Empathy is seen as a virtue, a good thing, a noble thing, the thing that everyone should be doing for everything else. If anyone would come against the idea of showing empathy, that sentiment would be viewed by most as a supremely unloving thing.
Empathy is seen by most, even many Christians, as possessing and meaning everything that sympathy means, but with more love and tenderness. It is seen as the higher, better, kinder, gentler, more loving, deeper, and wider way to go, and it has nearly replaced sympathy as something desirable from one person to another. It is seen by some as relating to sympathy, but with a much narrower focus, which makes people consider it more deeply personal.[2]
If a casual reader did not know better, he would read the standard definition of empathy, which is “the ability to understand and share the feelings of another,” and conclude, “this is just synonymous with sympathy, the same way compassion is, only far better.” However, this would be an incorrect conclusion. This is incorrect because this definition is intentionally deceptive and is in no wise the way actual pervaders of empathy think of the subject.
Empathy has dubious roots at best. As a Yale University Press article explains, “The English term “empathy,” … was coined only in 1908. English-speaking psychologists needed translations of the German scientific terms appearing in the new discipline of experimental psychology. By around 1913, “empathy” became the term of choice for the German Einfühlung, which literally means “in-feeling” (Emphasis mine).[3]
Right away, we should see a discontinuity with how I defined sympathy above, as well as the relative newness of the word and concept. Remember, sympathy is defined as “suffering with someone,” and notice how the term empathy is defined as: “in-feeling.” Or to make it match and contrast more easily with the definition of sympathy, empathy means to “suffer in someone.” So the difference between the two is the difference between “in” and “with,” which, as we’ll see in a moment, is no small matter.
But we must dig a little deeper into the origins of the word and the concept. This is what the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy explains for us:
“Before the psychologist Edward Titchener (1867–1927) introduced the term “empathy” in 1909 into the English language as the translation of the German term “Einfühlung” (or “feeling into'), 'sympathy' was the term commonly used to refer to empathy-related phenomena. If one were to point to a conceptual core for understanding these phenomena, it is probably best to point to David Hume’s dictum that “the minds of men are mirrors to one another,”(Hume 1739–40 [1978], 365) since in encountering other persons, humans can resonate with and recreate that person’s thoughts and emotions on different dimensions of cognitive complexity.” (Emphasis mine) [4]
This is mightily helpful, because it shows us at least two things. The first is that the term “empathy” replaced the term “sympathy” so that what these psychologists were observing/studying could be re-conceptualized and defined as they desired. Notice how the concept of empathy was previously captured by sympathy, but a new word was needed because of the perception of additional phenomena and complexity that was supposedly too intricate for the words sympathy or compassion. In other words, the biblical concept of sympathy was not sufficient for all that the psychologists were attempting to describe; they believed they had stumbled upon some unique expression of humanity that they needed a new and improved word for. (In other, other words, the way the bible - God - chose to describe this relational aspect of humanity was insufficient). And second, it was David Hume, the brilliant anti-Christian apologist, who is the buttress of the conceptual core of understanding all that empathy was used to describe. So the roots of this term and concept are decidedly atheistic and find their home in secular experimental psychology. This means, at least, that the standard definition of empathy that you might read from dictionary.com is a truncated definition meant to deceive, and smuggle far more into the meaning and concept of the word than is readily identified. Further, this would mean that any Christian using the term is unaware that it is utterly incompatible with the biblical idea. It simply means what it means, and cannot be changed.
What The Psychologists Say Empathy Is
Meet Dr. Casandra Brené Brown. In the biography on her website, this is what she says about herself: She is a research professor at the University of Houston, where she holds the Huffington Foundation Endowed Chair. She is also a visiting professor in management at the University of Texas at Austin McCombs School of Business. Additionally, she says that she has spent the past two decades studying courage, vulnerability, shame, and empathy; she is the author of six #1 New York Times bestsellers, and she hosts two award-winning podcasts, Unlocking Us and Dare to Lead.
Her bio contains many other aggrandizing accolades, but there isn’t sufficient space to list them here. Suffice it to say, she would be what the world would call an “expert” in her field of study. This being the case, I will use her words as emblematic of how the world uses and thinks of empathy, which, as we will see, is markedly different from the standard definition of the word.
Dr. Brown gave a lecture roughly 9 years ago that has been put on YouTube and has garnered millions of views, which I’ve linked here. In this video, she articulates the difference between sympathy and empathy, and she does so in a way that should illicit the immediate attention of every Christian serious about Christian ministry.
The video opens with these words,
“So what is empathy, and why is it very different from sympathy? Empathy fuels connection; sympathy drives disconnection.”
The remainder of the video follows this trajectory. Sympathy is shown to be a disconnecting practice, and empathy is a connecting practice. The degree to which you desire to actually meet the needs of others is the degree to which you will embrace and show empathy, not sympathy.
First, in her speech, Dr. Brown says that “empathy is feeling with people.” She then says that in order to connect with others, we have to connect with something within ourselves that knows that same feeling. So notice the sleight of hand happening here. As was shown above, it is sympathy that is defined as “suffering with others,” but she somehow gives empathy that definition. Then, as she describes what empathy requires, she articulates what it means to suffer in others. She defines empathy with the definition rightly due to sympathy, diminishes sympathy (which is a biblical practice), and then says that to show empathy, you must connect with the same feeling within yourself that others have, which inherently means to suffer in other people. Her sleight of hand is better than David Copperfield's.
This is anecdotal, but in my experience working in the secular psychological field in Pennsylvania, and having gone through hours upon hours of training from official state representatives about this exact topic, this is precisely what the state teaches about empathy and sympathy. As a matter of fact, I recall a conversation I had with a co-corker of mine - it went like this.
Co-worker: When we sit down with these people, we need to be able to show them the greatest degree of empathy.
Me: I agree. I try very hard to be sympathetic with others and show them the compassion they need.
Co-worker: No. Not sympathy. We must show empathy.
The conversation did not continue because in a sea of secular counselors who know that sympathy and empathy are diametrically opposed to one another, the lone Christian must pick his battles wisely. But that conversation with a man educated at a graduate level, from a top school in Pennsylvania, in a program accredited by CACREP means that his perspective is what every school in America that teaches psychology is discipling their students to believe.
It must be stated, then, that any Christian who believes he can use the word empathy with the same meaning as sympathy or compassion is simply mistaken. Not only does empathy have an entirely different meaning from sympathy, but to use it is to participate in a scheme that is directly and purposely opposed to God’s ideal.
Suffering In or Suffering With?
I’ll describe these two concepts with an illustration.
Imagine someone is barreling down a raging river toward a waterfall. You run up and are standing on the bank of the river and desire to help this desperate person being swept away, uncontrollably, down the deadly canal. You have two options, and the first is this. You can jump headlong, feet first, into the river and attempt to save this person. When you do this, the person nearing their demise feels immense comfort. You have risked it all to assist them. You have endangered yourself and have put your own life in peril to do for them what they could not do for themselves. They feel a deep and abiding connection to you, and even a great sense of gratitude, and they see what you have done as supremely courageous and sacrificial. The only problem is, however, that once you jump both feet into the river, despite the closeness you feel, you are no longer in any way able to save this person. You have given yourself the same fate as them, because you have consigned yourself to drowning just as the other person did by abandoning your footing along the shore.
Imagine now the same scenario, except this time, instead of jumping feet first into the river, you tether yourself to a thick, old, and firmly rooted tree, and you begin to wade into the water to pull the person out. Because you have refused to get swept away by the current by being securely fastened to the tree, you are actually now in a place to offer real, life-saving help to the one drowning. However, because you have maintained your footing, the one you are seeking to help may begin to feel inferior to you and subsequently feel judged rather than loved. They may view you as stronger than them and wiser because you tethered yourself. He may also feel less loved because you haven’t sacrificed everything for him; you haven’t immersed yourself in the exact trouble he finds himself in, and therefore, there will likely be an accusation such as “you can’t really understand me because you didn’t experience and feel exactly what I did.” (This response is far more common than the reader might imagine.)
The first scenario, probably to no one’s surprise, illustrates empathy. The second, sympathy. The river symbolizes any kind of suffering, and the tree symbolizes truth. Jumping in with both feet symbolizes abandoning truth and believing anything and everything the sufferer says and allowing their view of reality to determine truth. Tethering yourself to the tree (truth) before wading into the person's suffering allows you to pull them out with the truth rather than being swept away into potential lies by their story.
When you attempt to help someone who is suffering, the world expects you to believe everything they say as fact, and feel everything they feel, because the world expects empathy, and they are right to expect it, because that is what is in the hearts and minds of those uninformed by the biblical model. Absolute belief in anyone's and everyone’s truth is part and parcel with empathy. This is where the “believe all women” movement came from, and this is where the idea of everyone having their own truth comes from. Empathy requires you to believe the woman who accuses a man of rape and never ask any questions for clarification. Empathy requires that every time someone is shot by the police, you don’t investigate whether the shooting was justified; you just believe the victim was innocent. Empathy demands that you suffer in the exact way as the victim and feel exactly what they feel. And, when a biblically minded man or woman refuses to do this, he or she is choosing to be compassionate rather than empathetic. This bifurcation is unavoidable. However, when someone chooses sympathy over empathy, they are seen as unloving because, in the mind of the victim, the one assisting them cares more for the truth rather than the sufferer’s perception of the truth. This is the meaning of, and natural effect of, what it means to “suffer in someone.”
On the other hand, when a woman accuses a man of rape, she may be telling the truth, or she may be lying. Both have happened within recent memory. Sympathy, because it is tethered to truth, seeks to help those who are suffering with the love and compassion of Christ, while maintaining the truth of God, his word, and reserving the right to ask questions for the sake of truth and clarity. This is the meaning of, and natural effect of, what it means to “suffer with someone.”
Words, Words, Words
At this point, the reader may be wondering what we should do in light of all this. And, happy day for you, I know just the thing. We need to be biblical. We need to reclaim the superiority of sympathy and compassion and practice these principles anytime we encounter someone in need of help. We need to discern when we are expected by others to just feel what others feel and believe blindly what others say, and we must refuse the imposition to do those things. We need to recognize that with the Bible in hand, and the Spirit in our hearts, we are able to help others whether we feel what they feel or not. And we need to reserve the right to always ask questions to gain clarity on someone's story so that all the facts may be known.
Now, lest the reader believe that my angst is against a lowly word, allow me to correct this assumption. Empathy means what it means, and it means what is stated above. There isn’t any way to maneuver out of it and claim otherwise without intellectual dishonesty. However, that does not mean that a Christian cannot redeem this word, redefine it, and use it for his purposes (just like we ought to do with many ungodly things). Because the world looks down on sympathy and compassion relative to empathy, I would enthusiastically label the sympathy I show as empathy for the sake of making inroads into people’s lives. If I am counseling someone who very clearly does not have an understanding of biblical sympathy, but is highly psychologized, I would communicate my desire to “empathize” with him or her, knowing full well that what I am going to do is show biblical sympathy. And when I am asked if I believe their story, I will tell them the truth of God’s word and help them with it. And just for everyone's sanctification, this would not be classified as a lie. This is what it looks like to deal shrewdly with the world in which we live, and become all things to all people, which Christ vehemently commands Christians to do (Luke 16:8).
So, go show compassion and sympathy to others like Christ did, don’t confuse sympathy and empathy, and if someone demands you show empathy, use the word but remain true to biblical principles, and glorify your Father in heaven with your shrewdness.
S.D.G.
[2] GotQuestions.org. “What Does the Bible Say about Empathy?” Accessed March 29, 2024. https://www.gotquestions.org/Bible-empathy.html.
[3] yalepress. “The Origin of Empathy.” Yale University Press(blog), November 21, 2018. https://yalebooks.yale.edu/2018/11/21/the-origin-of-empathy/.
[4] Stueber, Karsten. “Empathy.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta, Fall 2019. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, 2019. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2019/entries/empathy/.
