I sat staring at my car dashboard yesterday in the thick afternoon air of summer, waiting for Julia’s bus from camp.

What a day… an absolute whiplash of emotion.

Just a couple hours before, I was sitting with a young couple in real relational crisis. The current stress of their lives coupled with the horrific baggage of past trauma they each brought into the relationship left them overwhelmed and nearly hopeless. The scary thing was they weren’t even married yet. 

I heard their stories, validated their feelings, gently challenged their assumptions, asked them their aspirations for their relationship, and offered a path toward healing. Their future is uncertain – but I hope they take me up on my invitation.

I sent the couple on their way and walked across the lobby to interrupt a meeting and hug to my longtime friend, who I’ll call Mia. She and her husband were speaking with one of our teaching pastors to plan the funeral for her eldest son. He died suddenly and far too soon at 28 years old. I held Mia’s brittle form as she continued to process the shock of the loss. I hugged her husband as well and then excused myself to let them continue planning the unimaginable. 

In twenty years of pastoral ministry, it’s days like this when the pain of life can swallow you up if you let it. But then we’re no good to the people we serve. I have enough experience to know I was close to needing some rest.

But not five minutes later, I got a text from my wife with a link to an article with the following headline:

Christian nationalists decided empathy is a sin. Now it’s gone mainstream. – Aja Romano

Apologies – the article is behind a paywall.

“The Sin of Empathy.” It’s a concept I’m sadly acquainted with. It first popped up on my media feed a couple of months ago, and I hope you know me well enough to know I’m not a fan of the idea. 

The pastor/theologian who first made the assertion in an essay a few years ago often complains that his idea is taken out of its intended nuance and context. I’m not buying it. If he really believed that, he’d be a heck of a lot more vocal in his repudiation of the abuse of his assertion. Its unrefined extreme has been picked up by many to justify personal and institutional selfishness.

In that moment, right after I had spent an hour consoling a hurting couple and hugging a bereft mother, the headline was a tough reminder of what we’re up against.

In a world devoid of empathy, neither of those life-giving interactions would have happened. The continuous giving and receiving of small kindnesses would devolve into a culture where the assumption of intrinsic and incalculable human value would be swept aside by the impersonal, hellish machine of transactionalism. Where the value of others is assessed only in terms of their service to the unquenchable “ME”. And if I’m honest, on my bad days, I’m right there with everyone else.

The “Pandemic of Loneliness” is culturally well documented, but there is a co-morbidity that we can easily and tragically miss. I do not have the global insight to declare a “Famine of Empathy,” but I have given my life to the idea that empathy is the oil that makes the engine of life-giving human interaction operate – and it’s pretty self-evident that we’re running at least a quart low as a society.

And if that were the whole story, it would be pretty depressing. But standing there in my weariness, I got another text message. It was an update from my friend Andrea about her daughter Ella’s adventures. I’ve never met Ella, but I would unreservedly put her among the “unicorn kids” that a parent of a child with special needs prays for.

Ella is currently serving at a camp in the Old Town neighborhood of Chicago. She’s a one-on-one buddy to a frail, pre-verbal girl with more diagnoses than any little kid has any business having. When I first heard of her decision, I applauded her conviction to step into an assignment this complex and potentially exhausting.

But I was not prepared to get the pic of Ella with her buddy – and my sad heart broke open for the beauty of that image. It cut through my despair of a world running a “quart low” on empathy with a simple, irrefutable message:

Pain and brokenness are real… but Ella knows better way.

And it was a balm and a challenge for my tired soul – and a challenge to which I want to call us all.

First – the nuance: 

I’m not saying that we are only as good as our willingness to take a summer and hang with disabled kids. The people you and I are called to are different – but they need us.

I’m also not saying that you need to use yourself up helping others. Ms. Romano in the article cited a Reddit post that asserts, “you can’t set yourself on fire to keep someone else warm.” 

True, but it’s a bad faith argument that crumbles under even the most cursory pushback. After all, the airline industry has reminded us time and again to put on our own oxygen mask before assisting other passengers; and I’ve made it through twenty years of pastoral ministry by knowing when it’s time to recharge a bit.

What I am saying is this: 

If you are reading this, you (and I) have far more margin and resources than we’re often willing to admit. As citizens of the West, we likely live far above any reasonable definition of what is “enough”. 

We have more to offer people who need encouragment, kindness and help. And thankfully, that atrophied muscle of empathy can be made strong again.

It need not be writing a big check or dropping everything to help lepers in the global south. It can take the form of myriad tiny acts of kindness and grace out of the realization of what a loving God has extended to us.

Don’t relent to the off-ramps of comparison (i.e. “I could never do what they’re doing”) and straw man arguments (i.e. the whole “setting yourself on fire” thing) to opt out of engaging with one of life’s most fundamental questions: 

“What could I do, here and now, that’s one step out of my comfort zone that could make this one person’s day a little better?”

It’s not the first time I’ve cited this quote, but the question echoes… 

“What do we live life for, if it is not to make life less difficult for each other?”

~ British Novelist Mary Ann Evans, under her pen name George Eliot

Friends, we have gotten off track.

Our business, political and cultural elites need to be re-taught. From the ground up.

Our social media algorithms need to be seriously renovated from outrage amplifiers to sources of well-being.

And Artificial Intelligence models? I’ve only started to dip my toe into the waters of their potential. I’ll only say that humanity has a proven track record over millennia to take something powerful lose ourselves in the tsunami of unintended outcomes. In the end, I’m certain that AI will not uniformly transform our society for the better – collectively practicing kindness and empathy might.

Feeling overwhelmed? I get it. I am to. But I suspect that if enough of us are brave enough to start a rhythm of asking those questions of ourselves, something amazing could happen.

Let’s use the long quoted but often overlooked words of an ancient prophet who asserted all that is best in human existence can be summed up in one rule of life:

Ask yourself what you want people to do for you [if you were in their situation], then grab the initiative and do it for them. 

~ Matthew 7:12, MSG – the addition in the brackets is mine)

And take heart! The societal illness we struggle with is not final. Last night, I read through the whole article and Ms. Romano concluded with an important observation:

What’s heartening is that, whether they realize what kind of dangerous extremism undergirds it, most people aren’t buying Rigney’s “empathy is sin” claim. Across the nation, in response to Rigney’s assertion, the catchphrase, “If empathy is a sin, then sin boldly” has arisen, as heard in pulpits, seen on church marquees, and worn on T-shirts – a reminder that it takes much more than the semantic whims of a few extremists to shake something most people hold in their hearts.

And I was reminded – gratefully – that not only does my friend Ella know a better way, it seems like a majority of the rest of us do as well.

Let’s lean in.

(ed. note – I received a response to this post from a friend that merited separate treatment. You can find it here.)