Be Sure The Longhouse Will Find You Out

In Which I Listen to a Book and Read the Internet

File: Matrimony (BM 2010,7081.1296).jpg - Wikimedia Commons

It’s Friday! Although every day this week has been a little bit Friday. Still, it’s good to acknowledge the day. I spent a lot of the week listening to this podcast about the Shroud of Turin, and then this one. And I tackled a huge overgrown rosebush and painted a lot of Catechesis material. Also, by the mercy of God and the help of some wonderful friends, the child (he’s not really a child, but I’m his mother, so I feel I can take liberties) found a place to live so that he and his gorgeous bride will not have to live in my basement in a month when they get married. Oh, and the bridesmaids’ dresses arrived, so this is starting to feel sort of real.

Anyway, as I said yesterday, I also listened to Joe Rigney’s new book, The Sin of Empathy, and then I read this review in Mere Orthodoxy, and the follow-up on the author’s own Substack. And I thought, how bout some takes, because, after all, doing the usual thing is not always bad. Let’s see what we can see.

one: an Ode to Edwin Friedman

As you all know, I am a huge Edwin Friedman fan. Matt and I read Generation to Generation almost 25 years ago, and if we hadn’t, we would have been chewed up and spit out of parish ministry. Fortunately, the way that Friedman described the sort of Emotional Force Field of human relationships allowed us to minister and care for our congregation without getting lost in self-pity, anger, or apathy. Faced with thorny pastoral situations, the question was, relentlessly, “What would Edwin Friedman do?”

At the beginning of Covid, I dug out Generation to Generation again and drew out maps of all my relationships, pausing to think about each triangle my middle-aged self might be trapped inside. Like everyone else in the world, there were a lot of them.

I was therefore delighted when I learned that Joe Rigney and Doug Wilson were Friedman fans and that books would be forthcoming relating Friedman’s various tools and concepts to a wider audience. Because, for real, sometimes it is hard to convince someone to read Failure of Nerve, or even Friedman’s Fables. I have not been the least bit disappointed. Toxic Empathy was fantastic, and, more recently, The Sin of Empathy. In both cases, Rigney translates the world of Friedman into the local church and the encroaching political and theological controversies that immiserate the very online.

two: Brene Brown

So what is empathy, and why is it so bad? I was charmed to see Rigney bash away at Brene Brown, who has taken to herself so much authority in this sphere, without really knowing that about which she is speaking. Rigney references this clip:

and then dismantles it:

Both words concern our orientation to hurting and suffering people, but they represent this orientation differently. Sympathy willingly joins with sufferers in their pain. Empathy makes their suffering our own in a more universal and totalizing way. This, in fact, is why some commend empathy as a more loving response to the pain of others. To suffer or feel with someone maintains a certain kind of emotional separation or boundary between the comforter and the afflicted; we’re with them, but we’re not in them. We maintain our own personal integrity and boundaries—I remain I, and you remain you. For authors like Brown, the emotional distance of sympathy is the problem that empathy overcomes. Empathy encourages a greater fusion of my emotions and the emotions of the afflicted. For many, empathy’s virtue (and its superiority over sympathy) lies precisely in this fuller immersion in the pain and feelings of another, in so entering into their experience that we fully feel what they feel. As Brown’s video suggested, sympathy preserves a kind of asymmetry between comforter and afflicted, whereas empathy attempts to minimize this asymmetry by withholding judgment and evaluation.

three: who needs God?

When I first read Brene Brown, I was horrified by what she was recommending we all do. In the first place, to suggest that people who offer sympathy can only reach for platitudes and heavy-handed efforts to make things better is an overgeneralization that borders on slander. It is true that well-meaning people often say the wrong thing in the face of tragedy, but to go from that to, ‘you must climb in this hole with me to feel my pain, otherwise we don’t have a meaningful connection,’ is, to put it mildly, insane.

This is so crucial, because a lot of people are in trouble and sorrow and adversity, and they really do need help—help that also offers comfort and emotional connection. But the help they need is really from God, and what empathy does is take God out of the picture and replace him with a morass of feelings that ultimately have no redemptive power.

four: Untethered Feminism

Your experiential standpoint, just to adopt one of the categories of progressivism, will probably determine how well you liked The Sin of Empathy. If, like me, you are someone who endured the demise of a beloved church through the machinations of proto-wokeness, you will probably really like this book. The gradual retreat of men from the church until all they would do was send in the occasional check or agree to fix the furnace in the dead of winter lives in recent memory. From the ordination of women to only referring to God as “She/Her” is a brief twenty years, if that.

How did this happen? It wasn’t just bad theology:

Put simply, it is this: men struggle to deal with the unhappiness and displeasure of women. Put another way, female distress activates male agitation. Male empathy for an unhappy woman is frequently a disguise for his own anxiety and angst. This is especially true of “good” men, men who have been taught to be “servant leaders.” We’re all familiar with the modern social media phenomenon of “the white knight.” A man sees a woman in distress (that is, engaged in online debate with a man), and comes to her aid by attacking her opponent with a vehemence and zeal that he would not have if another man was engaged in the same sort of ideological conflict. Of course, this phenomenon is again a perversion of a good impulse. Women are the weaker vessel, and the masculine impulse to protect them is noble and right. Men are taught from a young age, “Don’t hit girls. Treat them differently than the boys.” But this noble principle is also subject to gross manipulation, especially in the modern egalitarian world in which women frequently enter the proverbial boxing ring. As Lewis taught us, “Battles are ugly when women fight.” This is true, not merely of physical war, but also of ideological and theological battles. In fact, we might state the challenge in this way. Faithful men know how to resist unfaithful men. Good shepherds are willing to fight wolves. But even faithful men struggle to resist unfaithful women. She-wolves, especially ones who present themselves as victims, give faithful men fits because of the unavoidable asymmetries in play. What’s more, ungodly women are often willing to exploit these asymmetries in order to steer entire communities. And it’s not just the she-wolves who cause trouble—it’s also the compromised (female) sheep, the ones who Paul calls “weak women,” captured by false teachers due to their emotional instability, immaturity, and sin (2 Tim. 3:6–7).

She who might as well not be named of the 5000 word review took umbrage over the entire chapter on Feminism and tried to say that Rigney is actually a misogynist for putting the “blame” at the feet of women. In fact, one may observe, in this single paragraph, how that is manifestly not the case. Not all women fall prey to the sin of empathy. There are different kinds of women—ungodly ones and godly ones. If you take the trouble to read The Great Divorce, a book Rigney spends a good bit of time on, you’ll discover that there are women in heaven just as there are women in hell. Rigney isn’t talking about all women or even only one woman. He is talking about the emotional world that grows in certain conditions.

five: the longhouse

It is possible to end up in a longhouse without ever intending to be there, either as the man or the woman. What a man instinctively feels is good is adjacent to what a woman feels is good—because they are both human—but it is not a perfect and exact correspondence. It is those ineffable manners and assumptions that creates what feels like a wide gulf between the two and because men and women don’t fight in the same way, and because women have to be treated daintily—even while insisting that they don’t have to—the discourse will eventually go in only one direction.

six: fight me

Of course many women have developed a thick enough skin to engage in online discourse, and have observed how grotesque it is to be around an obsequious man who panders and lacks, what do you call it, courage, and how irritating it is to observe a woman use the very methods at her disposal that Rigney is talking about. Shrieking “misogyny” about a carefully reasoned argument is almost too delicious for words.

seven: song of the week

If you’re looking for sympathy, or empathy, or anything, this is probably what you need:

Have a lovely day! Read the comments below the line.