When helping hurts
Note: This teaching is designed to help followers of Jesus see that empathy-based morality is harmful. I am addressing the church at large regarding the current popular culture in America. It is a reminder that followers have a more hopeful and helpful message. This teaching explores the problem and incongruities of empathy-based morality and points to the hope we find in Christ through the church. This teaching is not about individuals who struggle with or are impacted by struggles with sexuality or gender issues for whom we have great compassion. In weeks to come, that will be addressed in part two, titled “When Helping Helps.”
ISABEL
The mirror is a battleground for her. She stands before it at least 10 times a day. Isabel is your everyday teenager, 14 years old, innocent and lively, with sparkling brown eyes and unruly chestnut hair that seems to have a mind of its own.
She illuminates her reflection with the light on the ceiling above her and one of those circle lights social media influencers use in front of her, shining up at her hips and stomach. Scrutinizing herself, she does not see the frail, childlike figure that is, but instead, she sees an exaggerated form. She is convinced she is overweight. She sees the fat in the mirror. She feels the fat hanging off of her hips and the bloat on her stomach.
She's trapped in a world of mirrors. The reflection on her dad's car, the front doors of her high school, and the bathroom mirror reflect back at her an overweight, distorted image of herself. Each visible bone to everyone else was buried under invisible layers of excess fat she was determined to lose. Like an unwelcome intruder, anorexia claimed squatter's rights in Isabel's mind.
At first, anorexia came on as a health-conscious friend advising her to skip dessert. But after missing a few desserts, she still saw the same overweight reflection in the mirror. Anorexia told her, "Something more has to be done," and convinced her to skip a few meals. And before she knew it, her days were spent nibbling lettuce and apple slices.
Never comfortable in her body, her fears, unlike the imaginary fat, were real - judgment and rejection. Each scroll of her thumb was a stark reminder of what she wasn't wanted to be. Food was the enemy; each mouthful was a fight she was losing.
She was wasting away, her health declining, and she was losing her youthful spark. Her classmates, who admired her discipline, whispered about her skeletal appearance. Teachers observed her as she grew more withdrawn. Her eyes lost their spark. Her parents were fraught. They wanted the pain to stop for Isabel. They worked together to devise a plan to help her feel comfortable in her body.
TREATMENT PLAN
Affirm what she believes she sees in the mirror.
Her mom and dad believe what Isabel feels about her weight is more important than the antiquated body mass index used by doctors and insurance companies who believe in the religion of nutritional science. The parents see their role as affirming their daughter's feelings about herself as her truth.
Here are some examples of how they affirm her feelings about her weight. One, Isabel believes she is fat. So, they refer to her as fat at her request. Also, they do not discuss the nutritional science regarding her protruding rib cage, fatigue, and thinning hair.
Get her on an appetite suppressant.
How these medications work is a nuanced process that involves gently turning down the dial on your hunger signals. Scientifically speaking, these suppressants often increase levels of serotonin or catecholamine - your brain's feel-good chemicals. When these levels rise, the hunger signals take a backseat, and one's weight management journey becomes more emotionally manageable.
Schedule Isabel for a Laparoscopic gastric banding surgery.
The surgeon will place a band around the upper part of her 14-year-old stomach and create a small pouch to hold the bits of lettuce and apples she nibbles on. Limiting the amount of food she can eat will reduce the risk of her gaining more weight.
HELP THAT HURTS
How do her parents, teachers, and psychologist arrive at this strategy? They are guided by their ability to understand and share her feelings. They affirm her feelings by agreeing that her feelings are her truth. Their compass is empathy-based morality.
Isabel is obviously in distress. The overweight person she believes she sees in the mirror is not the person she wants to be. An empathy-based moral decision would be to assist her by alleviating her mental and emotional suffering by making her feelings the truth. This treatment plan does that.
Also, the empathy-based moral decision highly values individual freedom and autonomy, arguing that people have the right to determine their moral compass. This treatment plan also accomplishes that.
But what is the reality of this treatment plan? Isabel is going to feel affirmed emotionally - and she is also going to die in a few months.
STRAWMAN
Empathy-based moralists will say my hypothetical story about Isabel is a strawman argument. But Isabel's story reveals the incongruence of how empathy-based morality is applied. This will be unpacked in the paragraphs to come.
IT’S EVERYWHERE
Empathy-based morality began dominating higher education in the early 2000s. In his 2021 Newsweek article, “How Did Universities Get So Woke?,” Professor Abrams of Sarah Lawrence College shows that since the 1970s, most Universities and Colleges have worked to turn their students into ideological activists. So most people who moved into education, politics, tech, and media roles have been fully indoctrinated in empathy-based morality. Many of you experience it in your place of employment and education. We all experience it in our interactions with Google, social media platforms, Chat GPT, Bing, video streaming platforms, and most of the corporations and favorite brands we support.
COOL KID
That’s why you will never be the cool kid! That’s one of the most significant learnings to help you live out your faith in Christ with increased vigor and effectiveness. You’re never going to be the cool kid in this fallen world! Because as 1 Corinthians 1:18-31 tells us, the message of the cross is foolishness to those who do not believe in God. These empathy-based educators, philosophers, corporations, and media giants view what you believe as foolishness! But, we who are followers of Christ know the message of the cross is the very power of God. We also see clearly that all of their self-proclaimed brilliance, wisdom, and misapplication of empathy are foolishness in God’s eyes.
Empathy-based morality means that ethical principles are derived from one's ability to understand and share the feelings of others. It's the idea that our capacity for empathy can guide us to make moral decisions.
Christian Morality is based on the Character of God, as we see in 1 Peter 1:13-16. “So prepare your minds for action and exercise self-control. Put all your hope in the gracious salvation that will come to you when Jesus Christ is revealed to the world. So you must live as God’s obedient children. Don’t slip back into your old ways of living to satisfy your own desires. You didn’t know any better then. But now you must be holy in everything you do, just as God who chose you is holy. For the Scriptures say, “You must be holy because I am holy.” Peter is urging the followers of Christ not to conform to the desires (which have been developed by strong feelings, Greek; epithumia, epithymía) they previously had before they knew Christ.
Again, that’s why you will never be the cool kid, one of the intellectual elite, or celebrated for your moral character; Empathy-based morality and the Character of God-based morality are inherently contradictory. For one, the pursuit of personal happiness proceeds everything. For the other, happiness is a by-product of personal holiness.
When empathy-based moralists say, “Love Wins,” they mean agreeing with, supporting, and promoting the LGBTQQIP2SA community. Otherwise, you are a hateful person who is Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Questioning, Intersex, Pansexual, Two-Spirited, and Asexual - phobic.
When a follower of Christ says, “Love Wins,” we mean we are all sinners loved by God, who died on the cross for our sins, and we all are invited to receive the gift of life with Christ now and for eternity.
Followers of Christ recognize our feelings can often mislead us into self-destructive and relationally destructive behaviors. We want food that tastes good, even if it will shorten our life. Our sexual feelings can lead us to objectify and misuse others for our pleasure. And our feelings about our identity can lead us to deny reality. So, we trust following the character of God and do not act on our feelings that lead to behaviors contrary to His holiness.
For the empathy-based moralist, personal feelings point us to our truth. Our sexual feelings should be explored free from boundaries. Also, we should live as who we feel we are, even if it contradicts physical reality. The empathy-based moralist believes they should always get to do whatever they want, whenever they want (See Romans 1:18-30). And if you oppose their view, it’s social jail for you!
However, we, followers of Jesus, will prepare our minds for action and exercise self-control. … we will live as God’s obedient children. We will not slip back into our old ways of living to satisfy our own strong feelings. …now we will be holy in everything we do, just as God who chose us is holy.
BACK TO ISABEL
Why is the absurdity of the suggested treatment of Isabel’s Anorexia an important illustration for me? It reveals the contradictory and disingenuous application of empathy-based moralism.
It was in 2013 that the American Psychological Association (APA) recast Gender Identity Disorder as Gender Dysphoria to move it from a category of mental illness into a category of discomfort. This recasting was not based on data or peer-reviewed studies. It was based on thirty-some years of social activists lobbying the APA with the root philosophy that when it comes to sex and gender, people should be affirmed and celebrated for how they feel!
And now, social activists have redefined empathy from “being moved with compassion to alleviate one’s suffering” to “agreeing with the cause and their solution to alleviate it.” Affirmation has been redefined from “acknowledging and providing emotional support” to “celebrating and promoting” one’s feelings about sex or gender. Both empathy and affirmation have been weaponized against anyone who disagrees.
FOCUS ON FEELINGS
A great way to make someone miserable is to teach them to continually think about how they feel and demand the world to organize around their feelings. Teach them to avoid what makes them uncomfortable. Teach them to cry, “Oppression!” if anything triggers their discomfort. And teach them that no truth matters outside of their truth!
Isabel’s story illustrates that affirming, agreeing with, and celebrating someone's feelings which deny physical reality, actually harms that person. Also, affirming someone’s behaviors that deny spiritual reality is immeasurably more destructive!
WHEN HELPING HELPS
When the whole world is running towards a cliff, he who is running in the opposite direction appears to have lost his mind. C.S. Lewis paraphrase
When Christians encounter someone struggling with feelings that will lead them down a self-destructive path, empathy motivates us to teach them about the destructiveness of sin, the goodness of God, the beauty of his holiness, and the immeasurable value of aligning our behaviors with Christ’s teachings.
When we encounter someone who is confused and struggling with their sexual preferences or gender identity, we have great compassion for them. We will love them. We will welcome them into fellowship. We will listen to their journey and share in their pain and confusion. Empathy moves us to help them discover their primary identity as a child of God. We will teach them about their divine purpose. We will guide them through the teachings of Jesus to discover the benefits of aligning their heart and behaviors with Christlikeness.
Empathy is the fuel that motivates us to point people to the grace and holiness of Jesus. “For we do not have a high priest (Jesus) who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” Hebrews 4:15-16 Leading people to Jesus is help that helps! In Him and His church, they will find empathy, grace, forgiveness, and the power to live holy lives.
That’s why you matter! When it feels like the whole world is running towards a cliff, followers of Jesus are running away from the cliff and, with God’s help, are turning many people around who are about to run off the cliff’s edge!
©2023 Greg McNichols, All rights reserved.