On Feb. 28, Elon Musk took aim at “empathy” on a Joe Rogan podcast. He said empathy is “the fundamental weakness of Western civilization.” Barely one month later, April 1, in a New Yorker interview, Al Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, had climbed on board, declaring, “Empathy is ‘destructive’ for immigration policy because ‘empathy means never having to say no.’”
MAGA declaring war on “empathy!?” Really!?
In the version of Christianity I was raised in, empathy was the cornerstone of the cornerstone of the faith, which is love. God’s love. Love, as in the Greek word agape, self-giving love, self-sacrificial love.
Richard Conville
Think of a husband taking care of his wife with Alzheimer’s 24/7; think of a single mother caring for her children while working two jobs; think of the first responders combing the banks of the Guadalupe River for survivors and bodies.
Agape/love. You probably had someone (or many) in your own life who gladly gave of their life — time, attention, money — to better your life, whether a parent, a grandparent, a teacher, a neighbor, a friend. That took empathy.
Some of you can recite the outlines of Jesus’ parable of The Good Samaritan. That Samaritan (social outcast that he was by Jews in Jesus’ day) would not have stopped and helped the Jewish person left injured in the ditch had it not been for his empathy, his capacity to feel the pain of the victim.
Some of you can quote at least a portion of 1 Corinthians 13. For example, “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude; … it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth.” The passage is a suggested reading on p. 426 of The Book of Common Prayer (The Celebration and Blessing of a Marriage), which I assume Elon would have encountered as a youth in his Anglican church in South Africa.
Some of you know the first sermon Jesus preached. At least it looked like he was going to preach before he was rudely interrupted by the congregation. He read the Scripture in the synagogue in Nazareth that sabbath (see Luke 4:16-18). It was the first two verses of Isaiah 61: “The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free.” And a few minutes later, he said, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
Empathy is what would enable many of Jesus’ followers, down through the centuries, to feel the poorness of the poor, the captivity of the captives, the blindness of the blind and the oppression of the oppressed. Empathy.
“This is not the America I know and love.”
Shift gears to anthropologist Margaret Mead, of all people. There is a story, probably apocryphal, that a student once asked her what was the earliest sign of human civilization and Mead answered, “a healed human femur.” Said femur was allegedly found at an archeological dig and was 15,000 years old. At that time, a broken leg would have been a death sentence. For the bone to heal would mean someone had cared for the injured person: providing protection from the elements and from predators; providing food and water. A civilized society, she seemed to be saying, is one that cares for its vulnerable members.
Shift gears again. You no doubt have seen footage of ICE agents chasing down presumed illegal immigrants (their term) in Home Depot parking lots, in fields of lettuce in California’s Central Valley and in McArthur Park, LA. Masked. No identifying badges. No due process. No 14th Amendment. They have become Trump’s private police force — the essential tool wielded by every dictator, emperor or king who ever lived.
This is not the America I know and love. The Land of the Free and Home of the Brave does not put on “a show of force” in a Los Angeles city park. The America I know, with its Statue of Liberty bearing the inscription, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” doesn’t put on a Putin-style military parade in its capital. The nation whose Declaration of Independence opens with the words, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal” doesn’t try to rule by ridicule, threats and cheap adolescent name-calling.
Stand up. Speak out. Make Good Trouble, as the Honorable John Lewis taught us!
Richard Conville is professor emeritus of communication studies and service learning at the University of Southern Mississippi and a long-time resident of Hattiesburg where he is a member of University Baptist Church.
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