Christianity has failed to…


I claim that the Christian religion has failed to teach empathy; one of the most important moral concepts we have.

There are various definitions of empathy given by various individuals but almost all of them point to the same meaning. Empathy is defined as the ability to understand the feelings, thoughts, and beliefs of another person. Empathy is often characterized as the ability to “walk in the shoes of another”, i.e. to acquire an emotional resonance with another.

In his classic work about modern art, “Abstraction and Empathy”, Wilhelm Worringer provides us with a theory of empathy derived from Theodor Lipps that can be usefully applied to objects of art as well as all objects including persons.

“The presupposition of the act of empathy is the general apperceptive activity. Every sensuous object, in so far as it exists for me, is always the product of two components, that which is sensuously given and of my apperceptive activity.”

Apperception—the process of understanding something perceived in terms of previous experience.

What does in so far as it exists for me mean. I would say that something exists for me when I comprehend that something. Comprehension is a hierarchical concept and can be usefully considered as in the shape of a pyramid. At the base of the comprehension pyramid is awareness that is followed by consciousness. We are aware of many things but we are conscious of much less. Consciousness is awareness plus our focused attention.

Continuing with the pyramid analogy, knowing follows consciousness and understanding is at the pinnacle of the pyramid. We know less than we are conscious of and we understand less than we know. Understanding is about meaning whereas knowing is about knowledge. To move from knowing something to a point when that something is meaningful to me, i.e. understood by me, is a big step for man and a giant step for mankind.

My very best friend is meaningful to me and my very worst enemy must, for security reasons, also be meaningful to me. The American failures in Vietnam and Iraq are greatly the result of the fact that our government and our citizens never understood these ‘foreigners’. We failed at the very important relationship—we did not empathesize with the people and thus failed to understand our enemy. It is quite possible that if we had understood them we would never have gone to war with them.

If we had empathy with Germany in the 1930s would we have stopped Hitler before he forced us into war?

If we had empathy with Germany before August 1914 would we have prevented WWI?

Do you agree that we understand our best friend and that we must also understand our worst enemy?

What I see here (maybe im wrong) is the ever increasing demand for Christians to compromise there faith. What is there to understand about people who would put on a vest bomb and destroy innocent lives, children, on purpose?? You right about one thing, we dont understand our enemy, and thats why we will lose to them.

BTW, we did have empathy for Germany in the 1930's. It was the rest of Europe that couldnt come to terms with the reality of the situation. And what did we get for our trouble???

That's actually right from a very top-level point of view. Have you actually studied the history of WWII?

Oh yes. I became obsessed with ww2 way back in high school. There was something about Hitler that made me want to learn everything I could about him, and the times he lived in. I developed a great pride in America's responce to being pulled into the war. How everyone came together and everyone sacrificed for the good of the nation. Its to bad we will never see a responce like that from America again.

Plus, my better half's grandfather is a WW2 vet, so I learned alot from him as well. He fought in Japan.

Something similar happened to me in high school regarding evolution. My 10th grade science teacher at the begining of the year put a cup of water on the window. He told us that by the end of the year we will see that life spontaniously would appear in that cup. Well dontcha know by the last week there were little tad pole looking creatures swiming around in it. I couldnt help but to feel I was hoodwigged. So I learned all I could regarding that subject as well, from both sides of ID, and evolution. I wasnt a Christian back then, but now that I look back, its probably where it started.

Did he fight for America or Japan? How did he gain so much knowledge of Hitler's Germany whilst in a totally different theater?

I wasn't aware that tadpole creatures have been known to teach us a lot about the history of WWII.

He fought for America. My point was I have some understanding of WW2, not just Nazi Germany.
Well now you are.

What do your questions about Germany have to do with your initial assertion that "the Christian religion" has failed to teach empathy? If empathy is in some way lacking, is it the fault of "the Christian religion," and if so, why?

They do everything they can to remove God and religion from politics, then blame the lack of religion on there failures.