The sin of empathy

Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde, prelate of the Episcopal Church had the audacity to do something truly radical recently: she asked a president for mercy.

Mercy is not necessarily entirely foreign to this particular president. He showed “mercy” to 1,500 men and women pardoned on his first day in office, some charged with violent crimes, for attempting to overthrow our democracy in 2021. Of course, I don’t actually believe “mercy” was his intention. He cannot build a proper paramilitary movement with them behind bars. Perhaps shrewdness is a better descriptor? And yet, the idea of the pardon is certainly meant to imply a kind of “mercy,” or has for previous presidents.

In fairness, no one expected that a request for mercy would be fulfilled by this president. He only seems to know contempt. And yet, surely we would not find ourselves surprised that a pastor – charged like all Christian shepherds with heralding the love and forgiveness exalted through the life and teachings of the Christ they claim to worship – might dare ask for the kind of mercy Jesus himself asks for when he finds it within himself to seek grace for those who are behind his state-sanctioned murder, a capital punishment.

“Forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.”

Asking for mercy may actually be the wrong request on the part of the bishop. Immigrants, by nature of immigrating alone, have done no wrong. People who are trans, by transitioning alone, have done no wrong. Gays who choose to love someone of the same sex, merely by choosing love, have done no wrong. Mercy for what, I would ask? For existing?

Some like our president believe there are wrongs at play. They use lies and propaganda to mount their case. They take advantage of a legacy media willing to play the normalization game and equivocate. They take a few bad apples (or make them up out of thin air) and use them to spoil the whole bunch. They use a twisted theology, contrary to our freedom from religion, to make a case about a perversion against their God, which makes no sense given that they say humans are also created in God’s image, and yet, behind these lies is the tired scapegoat they want and need to avert our eyes from their own high crimes and misdemeanors.

They use such hate to divide us, because collectively we are dangerous enemies of the state. The moment you learn that you have more in common with someone who is trans or an asylum seeker than you do a cabal of billionaire bros robbing you and your children of their future is the moment you are simultaneously the most free you can be in our great melting pot, and also the moment at which they are most threatened by you.

This brings me to an important point, namely that the always popular “strong men” are also always the smallest, most threatened, most vulnerable small men who surround themselves in personal victimhood. They derive their power from the destruction of others precisely because tearing down, rather than building up, seems mighty in the eyes of those who look on in admiration at the power they have obtained. It’s a power that can indeed look inviting from afar, especially if we are prone to be in awe of material things. A sleek, boxy car or a private plane or a beachside golf club can all help the deadness behind their eyes go unnoticed.

These are men who were likely not shone mercy in their younger years and therefore never learned to give it. Some of us, myself included, have been shown mercy when we did not deserve it. We took advantage of it. We eventually tried to learn from our mistakes. I see in these men a sadness I have seen at times in my past self. My prayer would be that there is still a world in which empathy can be learned, not merely tossed aside to their sociopathy. And to some degree or another, our survival as a nation and maybe as a species depends on a learned empathy.

But this is not about them or finding the human in them. It’s about us. The non-billionnaires. Across the divides of those who support him and those who do not. Perhaps what I was most dismayed by this past week was not his behavior which I’ve long come to expect and can now easily predict but was a new term I’ve seen popping up in right-wing circles to intentionally attack the good bishop who, again, merely asked for mercy. The phrase?

“The sin of empathy.”

Nevermind that St. Augustine so clearly defined pride, empathy’s antonym, as the greatest sin. Nevermind that Jesus points to the golden rule – quite literally a command for empathy as the greatest commandment. Nevermind the command going as far as to proclaim “love your enemies.” Nevermind that the most basic tenets, broken down to the bare bones, of Christianity, contain the story of a divine being born vulnerable and “of the flesh” to be able to understand and therefore “save” humanity from itself.

“Forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.”

Or, you know, empathy.

Perhaps they know exactly what they are doing. Perhaps they know this is about raw, unadulterated power and nothing more. Because for as much empathy as Jesus himself was prone to show others, he was most clear, and most damning when it came to men like them, promising it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for wealthy men of their ilk to see heaven. If I were in their shoes, I would be doing everything in my power to pacify and hide that message of Christianity, too. It’s quite a radical stance Jesus is taking, and given that he talks about money more than anything else at all in the Bible, it begins to make sense why he was an enemy of the state, too.

I would urge you to commit the sin of empathy. Commit it all the time. Surround yourself by it like it’s a mantra.

But make no mistake, the sin of empathy is hard for all of us to pull off. It’s maybe one of the most challenging and difficult paths to walk. It requires seeing the human in his supporters even as they rally behind his worst evils. It may even require seeing the human in him. I would much prefer it really were a sin, because I find the ability to dehumanize a far easier and more preferable task, quite frankly.

Finding empathy – that is, seeing the human in others, seeing ourselves in others – does not mean letting others trample over us, either. It does not mean we do not fight or call a spade a spade; it simply asks that before we do, we understand the suffering and pain we are all sharing.

And yet if there is still a Christianity – or any religion or morality – in which practicing empathy is a goal worth pursuing, may we all seek it. Even if we fail at it, may we seek it out every single day until there is no us or them yet simply a we, holding on to our self-evident truths and trying our best to see each other excel.