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DiggLose Yourself: The Theology of Empathy
By Nathan Brockman
Why empathy?
The hunt is on. Such varied groups as neuroscientists, educators, psychologists, and social entrepreneurs are exploring empathy’s role in what makes us human — from the way we learn as infants to the way we act as adults. The sense is that studying empathy may hold a key to unlocking a few secrets of human knowledge and behavior, and that empathy as an emotion and a learning mechanism may be of greater importance than anyone ever thought.
In other words, empathy is more than a trite way of feeling bad on someone’s behalf. In fact, there may be a sense of theological renewal in considering the fundamental role empathy plays from a theological perspective. After all, the word itself has that familial resemblance to those words we as church folk are more familiar with: passion, sympathy, compassion. And yet rarely is the word on the lips of the Church, or leaking from the pens of theologians. Empathy is perhaps worthy of our thought, word, and deed as people interested in the power of churches to change the world.
We were all helpless once. This we share. If you want to learn about the role empathy plays in our lives, just find yourself someone with relentless daily experience in the art of empathy — a new father or a new mother. Talk to them about the laboratory of their learning — the crib room in the middle of the night, when yellow streetlight coats the room, and they know with a sniff or by the feel of air on the skin what is happening in the crib. Parents get better every day at making sense of the baby quickly. What is going on in her mind? Is she hot? Cold? She may need picking up, to feel you close. Hold her just so, where she can see your face in the light. Figure out what she is feeling, and you both can go to sleep.
The theology of empathy is a little bit like this. It works through love and imagination, and with practice and cultivation, it gets better over time. Children teach us empathy, simply by being their defenseless little selves, drawing us inside to see and feel with their point of view.
With my own daughter, I remember relishing the moment I learned about what connections were being made in her mind as her brain grew. It fascinated me to know that as an infant, people’s faces looked like scattered puzzle pieces to her, a Dali painting. I pretended seeing — as best I could — through her Dali eyes. I could never see her perspective with absolute fealty, but I could explore her way of seeing using a smidgen of knowledge and imagination. And that is the art of empathy — losing yourself willingly, even willfully, in favor of another.
Empathy is our capacity to know what it feels like to be another person and then to deal with the emotional consequences constructively. It both acknowledge and challenges the singularity of selfhood. I am me, and you are you, but empathy can form a kind of emotional connective tissue between us.
And surely it exists within theology’s realm. With our sense of self so bound by individuality, much of what we read in the New Testament feels startling. Yet the lessons drawn from parenting, or in any relationship of deep caretaking, suggest a natural uniformity with such theology.
Take St. Paul, for instance, and the insistence that we are part of a single body. That we should see ourselves as part of a unified whole is somehow so unexpected as to turn the world upside down. Yet the empathetic model, a theologian might contribute to the current discussion, is neatly aligned with such world-turning theology. Empathy suggests that not only are we our sister’s keeper; we are actually, in some spiritual and theological sense, our sister. And in this sense, watching the way empathy directs our actions in the world reflects St. Paul’s emphasis on the single human body in a word. Within a theology of empathy, we understand the oneness of creation, and so the victim becomes anyone who I have made “other” in my mind. We all drink of the same Spirit.
So this, in a sense, is a brief manifesto of empathy’s theology. Let us praise empathy’s elegant mimicry, for in you there is some sense of what it means to be me — the kernel of the golden rule. Let us understand the role empathy might play in religious experience. Let us join the discovery process as scientists trace empathy’s evolutionary roots, neural pathways, and the chemicals it pours into our blood. What might we learn?
The embodiment of empathy is somehow captured by the creature who one day outgrew her crib to become a smiling (most often), spirited home to two blonde pigtails and a passion for macaroni and cheese. When I think of empathy, I think of the spiritual experiences I hope my daughter will have. There will be moments when she loses herself, when she feels as though she is seeing with another’s eyes. I hope she is somehow prepared for the power of such spiritual experiences. My hope is that these moments in which she loses herself collect in her mind like leaflets left in the pews after church; that she remains a teacher of empathy as wise as when she was born.
Know what I mean?
Nathan Brockman is editor of Trinity News.
Comments
Yes, I know very well what you mean. It has become my deepest conviction that the experience of Empathy, and the growth of our capacity for that experience, lies at the very core of human purpose. I know of not a single great spiritual teaching that does not, in my view, lead ultimately to that conclusion.
Reading your article was immensely enjoyable. Thank you.
jaspersneed on July 29, 2008
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