A Case for Empathy

I am horrified by the news. While there has been no life changing natural disasters or attacks, the last week has brought about stories that are phenomenally unhinging. Last week, a small child was dragged by a gorilla inside an exhibit. Last weekend, a few blocks from me in Detroit, a young boy was abducted and murdered. This week, after being brutally sexually assaulted a woman’s rapist was sentenced to a simple six-month jail sentence. It seems like all around me are these stories that make me so furious that I feel sick. They make my thoughts messy, my words jumbled, as I search for ways to make sense of injustice. 

In honesty, the only thing that has made me angrier has been the reactions I’ve seen on Facebook. Granted, I don’t think I’ve spent as much time lingering online as I have in the past few weeks. As I wait to hear back from summer job applications, I have nothing but time to read the comment wars that I normally ignore on my feed. These conversations have made me lament further about our world as I realize the profound need for compassion.

I'm struggling to have hope amidst such heartbreak news and terrifying reactions

In many of these Facebook posts, it seems like the blame has fallen upon the victims. The mother of the child attacked by the gorilla is “blamed” for being negligent and letting the child walk off. The young boy who was murdered in Detroit’s family was “blamed” for letting him out too late at night.

“He was going to take someone’s cash,” My little sister said, “He wasn’t innocent.”

In the court case for the young woman raped at the Stanford, she was questioned as to what she was wearing, how often she partied, how much she had been drinking. (Never mind the fact that her rapist took her to court in the first place, as if she was to blame for the whole event).

In the wake of seeing the reactions, I was fuming. How could people fail to see that injustice is independent of any action of the victim? How could people want to put the guilt, the fault on the person who was already suffering?

Victim blaming is an easy trap to fall into. If we can point to something, anything the victim did to bring that situation onto themselves, we don’t have to worry about that happening to ourselves. It is easy to say, “I would never let my kid wander off, that would never happen to me.” Or “I would never try to steal something, so that could never happen to me.” Or “I would never wear that. I’d never get that drunk. It’s her own fault. It couldn’t happen to someone like me.” It’s so easy to put the blame on the victim because it lets us detach from it. It cuts off our empathy. It allows our imagination to stop us from being in their place.

Empathy is terrifying. Opening ourselves up to another person’s pain, to let ourselves feel exactly what it might be like to inherit their burdens, to walk in their shoes- it’s scary. Those emotions are scary. That pain is scary.

But as people of faith, this is exactly what we are called to do. We are called to kindness. We are called to fight back against our instincts which allow us to detach from another's pain, but instead to search out ways to better understand them. We are called to look for the humanity in victims, instead of making them a tool to escape empathy. God shaped as all as beautiful, unique humans. Humans that deserve dignity to have their stories told without blaming the atrocities they faced on themselves. No person would choose to attacked by an animal, abducted, murdered, or raped. No person deserves to have their pain taken away from them by inferring that they chose that.

I'm praying for empathy. What about you?

I pray for those who lack empathy, that they discover the importance of taking on another’s pain. I pray they abandon their righteousness in exchange for compassion. I pray they learn that victims deserve dignity, not blame.

I pray for the victims of unspeakable injustice. May God hold them close.