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Charlie Kirk is quoted as having said, “I can’t stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made-up, new age term that does a lot of damage… Sympathy I prefer more than empathy. That’s a separate topic for a different time.”

Some have invoked the first part of this quote to rationalise a disturbing lack of concern for Charlie’s death, reasoning, “Charlie didn’t believe in empathy! So why should I have empathy for him now?”

Charlie said this particular line between talking about the manipulation and dishonesty of politicians, referring to how empathy is used as a way to appeal to voter emotions. Politicians and activists throw it around to sound virtuous, but it’s often handled with the sentiment “agree with me or you don’t care” looming ominously in the background. This is similar to the modern use and abuse of the word “tolerance”.

Now, we wonder, what would he have said if he’d continued to justify his view on “empathy”? We cannot know exactly what he would have said. It certainly seems like he had more to say, but he stopped himself from the tangential thought and returned to his original point. Maybe Charlie disliked the word “empathy” simply because it’s overused and often misused?

In Their Shoes

In my search for more context, I found one lady who claimed to finish his thought. She said, “Empathy means you feel what another person felt, and nobody can feel what another person felt.” This brought back memories of a high school version of myself who had that very same criticism of the concept of empathy: put yourselves in their shoes? You can’t! How can I take comfort in another person’s presumptuous and futile attempt to imagine being in my situation?

There really is a sense in which this is a New Age concept. The term empath is common in New Age spirituality, and describes a person who can “tune into” other people’s emotions, vibes, or energies. It can even be associated with astral projection and feeling into their “aura”.

Empathy also risks collapsing into self-reference: “I know how you feel because I remember that the same thing happened to me and I was devastated.” The earlier aesthetics term, Einfühlung, which empathy is derived from, is inherently self-referential, referring to the way a person might project their own feelings into an artwork.

In that sense, I suppose empathy has the potential to be the disingenuous and selfish version of its much older counterpart, “sympathy”. Sympathy recognises the emotion, and expresses condolences, but doesn’t claim to know how you feel. But this can risk feeling distant or unsupportive.

The pinnacle of these interrelational emotions must be “compassion”. Charlie says this himself. Compassion recognises the emotion, then stretches out its hand and offers to help. It both acknowledges the suffering and moves toward alleviating it.

Empathy and sympathy are like faith without deeds, a fig tree without figs. Compassion is not only the feeling, but also the motivating desire to help. It’s not just an emotional buzzword; it’s a commitment to serve.

Moved to Action

It should come as no surprise that, out of the three, the concept of compassion appears in Scripture the most. Jesus explicitly shows compassion several times in the New Testament. Rachamim and Splagchnizomai are often translated to “compassion”.

The next most common concept is sympathy, represented by words like “comfort, mourn, bear one another’s burdens”. While empathy, in the modern sense, does not seem to have much of a presence in Scripture. The Greek root of both empathy and sympathy is the term Sympatheo, though sympathy does not carry the additional baggage of Einfühlung.

Christians are called to something stronger: not just to feel or imagine another’s suffering, but to respond with compassion and act in ways that reflect the will of God.

Of course, we can’t know whether this is the rationale Charlie had kept to himself. Maybe it was more elaborate, or far simpler. I’m sure there were so many more profound insights that Charlie had packed into his head – insights that only Erika might’ve been privy to.

So, to my readers: Have compassion. Do something. Speak out.

God bless and comfort the Kirk family. The human race has truly been robbed.

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Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.