Introduction
A few years ago, Joe Rigney caused something of a stir when we recorded an episode of Man Rampant together in which he made a crucial distinction between sympathy and empathy. We might call the latter “untethered and toxic empathy” for short. Sympathy is simply fellow feeling, and we have good New Testament examples of this word. Jesus is a sympathetic high priest (Heb. 4:15), and Peter tells Christians to sympathize with one another (1 Pet. 3:8). It is a good and sturdy word. By way of contrast, empathy, at least as it is used coming out of the world of therapy-goo, is radically relativistic. It means that your feelings for the one you are empathizing with must not have an ounce of criticism in it. In other words, empathy is judgment-free when it comes to the victim, and if you are chump enough to have—I do not believe that I have used the word scintilla recently—a scintilla of disapproval in your heart, then you are not being empathetic at all.
I bring all this up because it is time to take this discussion to the next level. Of decibels, if nothing else.
Introducing Wimpathy
Sympathy is a function of true compassion, and is a virtue instilled in us by the gracious workings of the Holy Spirit. Empathy is a snare and delusion, where the one extending the empathy believes that it is his duty to take a header into the other person’s feelings, detaching himself from any objective criteria whatever. The empathetic one is agreeing with the victim in his decision to make reality optional. In this way, the empathetic friend becomes as extensively deluded as the object of his compassion is.
Sympathy is when you see a drowning swimmer float by, and you throw him a rope, but you keep your own feet firmly on the bank—so that you can help rescue him, which you truly want to do. You want to do this because you are a good guy, and not a bad guy. You want to do this even if you recognize that the person is drowning because he threw himself off a bridge upstream. He may be the one responsible, but you still want to help him. Empathy is when you dive in alongside him, not in order to rescue him, but to drown alongside him.
So what then is wimpathy? This sentiment is a function of hypocritical cowardice. You stand on the bank feeling sorry for the guy, shouting encouraging words like “I’m coming! I’m coming!” when you are not doing anything at all. People drown in rivers. But maybe you make some splashing noises to make it sound like you were coming.
Wimpathy is when you know the truth, and refuse to lie to yourself the way the empathetic guy does, and yet you refuse to act on your knowledge, the way the sympathetic man does. So again, wimpathy is not extending anything but lies to the sufferer. This is because the wimpath is solicitous of feelings all right, but it is his own feelings he principally has in mind.
The empathetic one enters into the world of the lie. He had perhaps heard Solzhenitsyn’s charge to “live not by lies,” but turned away in Pharisaical disapproval, in order to launch himself into the Void. The sympathetic one knows the truth but is resolved to help anyway. He is determined to act, and he does act. And the wimpathetic one sees the truth, like the sympathetic one does, but he also wants to hold onto that course of action which will not get his timid little hinder parts into any kind of trouble.
Do you still not have a picture of the kind of thing I am talking about?
Let Me Illustrate What I Mean
Whenever you see a feminine disaster area strutting her stuff at the mall, you can rest assured that before she went out in public in that outfit, a minimum of three friends told her, and quite explicitly, that it was “darling,” or “daring,” or “delicious.” Disaster begins with a d also, but nobody thought of using that word. And yet at least two of those friends actually thought she looked like something the cat regurgitated on the kitchen floor, something that was probably a bird once.
These two friends are wimpathetic friends. They lied to her because the thought of incurring anyone’s disapproval would inaugurate an emotional pain too savage to be borne. Not by a couple of girls anyway.
In other words, we have developed a severe allergy to any kind of confrontation that might have a righteous point to it. We have unrighteous confrontations all the time. We can do that. As long as we get to be in sin while confronting somebody, we feel free to cut loose, and we are seeing more and more of that. We yell at gate agents in the airport, we flip off fellow motorists, and we vent our bile in random YouTube comment threads. It is not as though we don’t know how to confront people. We just refuse to do it if the confrontation is based in any way on a good and godly point. We are no more willing to try that than we could swallow a coat hanger sideways.
You have all seen the phenomenon a hundred times. Say some giggly and introverted chick posts something outrageous on Instagram, I don’t know . . . let’s say a scorpion tattoo when a scorpion tattoo was not well-advised. The tattoo artist, who has probably seen it all, should have put his foot down. No, no, he should have said. Especially not a scorpion smoking a cigarette.
What will the comments from all her friends consist of? “Stunning. Brave. You’re beautiful, girl. Proud to call you my friend.” In other words, she has close friendships with wimpathetic liars, a friendship built on the foundation of lies, layered over the years.
Let’s Apply This to Marriage, Shall We?
Husbands struggle with the virtue of sympathy. It is not a grace they take to readily. They also tend to be objective and analytic enough to be resistant to the demands of empathy. Women make better all-in empathetic counselors, if that is what you are after. But when it comes to wimpathy, husbands excel. Man, are they good.
Mencken once observed that men like a gaudy show every once in a while, but they actually want peace and comfort every day. When they come home from work, the first thing they want is food, the second thing is sex, and the last thing they want is trouble. And yet it is this last thing that they want which frequently becomes the steering wheel of their lives. In order to prevent a scene—because the last thing he wants is a scene—he will tromp along through life, just a big galoot, nodding along with various absurdities.
Think I am being too general? Think I should name some actual examples? Here’s a thought experiment for you. Say your wife reads this post later today, and then asks you, “Is there anything to this? Are there areas where you think I am being silly, but you just ‘go along’ while pretending agreement?” The first three examples that spring your mind, and which make you think, ‘no, no, better not say that,’ are the examples I had in mind. I could easily have used those.
Fortunately for them, such men, being evangelicals, have been taught from the pulpit for years that this cowardice of theirs is actually a virtue. It goes by the name of servant leadership, and servant leadership covers a multitude of abdications.
And this leads to the last illustration of wimpathy.
Ministerial Mousiness
The reason that preachers provide all the husbands with this kind of cover is that they have their own version of this same game going on. It is often the case that pastors are red-pilled in their hearts long before they are red-pilled in public. They see and hear the shenanigans, and yet to say something about it would set the cat among the pigeons. They cannot be truly empathetic, as they have read too much Turretin. But to be sympathetic, truly sympathetic, would mean addressing the actual trouble that the person is in. If that person is drowning, you have to pull them out of the right river. You have to rescue them from the thing that is actually threatening them. But they might not like that. They might erupt in rage. They might get Rachael Denhollander on the phone.
Far better to look serious, to furrow the brow, to clear the throat, and say, “Yes, yes, we clearly need third-party accountability. Our youth minister is accused of groping one of his charges, and yes, this is alleged to have happened five years before he was born, but nevertheless, we cannot be seen as dismissive of such serious concerns. To project callousness in such a time would be deplorable. Are there any reputable ambulance ch . . . abuse experts we could call?”
This ministerial mousiness lies behind all kinds of pastoral failure, and in every direction. This was the motive force behind Revoice. It is the motive force behind the current Revoice, but for Nazis. It is the motive force behind the ecclesiastical dithering that opened the door to various unaccountable sex abuse investigators. Better to let them molest Lady Justice than to risk the chance of being falsely accused of enabling molesters.
Yeah, you got that right. What kind of men would enable molesters in order to prevent being accused of enabling molesters? That is correct—wimpathetic . . . but at least they are winsome. They’ve got that going for them.
The Basic Choice
Here is the basic choice. Would you rather be actually sympathetic, and yet thought by most others to be hard-bitten and calloused . . . or to be actually calloused, and thought by most others to be kind, tender and compassionate? If it is the latter, or anything that rhymes with the latter, then congratulations. You are both whimpering and wimpathetic—and you’re so vain, you probably think this post is about you. You know the empathy charade is in fact a charade. And yet the route of true pastoral sympathy has a price tag that seems much too high. It’ll cost you.
And yes, it really will.
Our Book Giveaways
My free book from Canon is Mere Christendom. Here is the link. This will be available until November 8. And another book has now been added to their free list—Primeval Saints by Jim Jordan.
And in my Mablog shoppe, I am giving away:
21 Prayers for Pastors on the Lord’s Day.
Letters of Marital Counsel, found here.
And new as of today . . .
Proof as Moral Obligation