Empathy Elected or Compassion Compelled

Jared Halverson – Empathy Elected or Compassion Compelled Empathy Elected or Compassion Compelled Jared M. Halverson The Call to Compassion Facing an international refugee crisis that displaced more than 60 million people, in October 2015 the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints sent a letter to be read from the pulpit in over 30,000 congregations worldwide. In it they drew attention to “the plight of the millions of people around the world who have fled their homes seeking relief from civil conflict and other hardships,” and urged members to provide relief in any way they could.1 The Church’s female-led auxiliaries responded decisively, rolling out a global initiative that the First Presidency endorsed in a follow-up letter in March 2016.2 Labelled “I Was a Stranger,” the initiative took its title from Matthew 25:35, part of the Lord’s larger humanitarian enjoinder, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me” (Matthew 25:40). Refracted through the lens of that passage, the “I” in “I Was a Stranger” is the Savior. We serve others out of our love for Jesus Christ. By the April 2016 General Conference, however, the scope of that pronoun had expanded, as had the efforts and urgency of those involved in responding to the refugees’ plight. In a talk that shared the initiative’s title, General Relief Society President Linda K. Burton shared her own experience pondering her role in the refugee crisis, wondering, “What if their story were my story?”3 Later in the conference Elder Patrick Kearon of the Seventy responded directly to Sister Burton’s question, clarifying that “Their story is our story, not that many years ago.” Reflecting on the Latter-day Saints’ displacement-ridden past, he explained, “We don’t have to look back far in our history to reflect on times when we were refugees, violently driven from 1 First Presidency Letter, October 27, 2015. First Presidency Letter, March 26, 2016. 3 Linda K. Burton, “I Was a Stranger,” Ensign, May 2016, 14. 2 1 Jared Halverson – Empathy Elected or Compassion Compelled homes and farms over and over again.”4 With Sister Burton’s and Elder Kearon’s help, therefore, the “I” in “I Was a Stranger” became more directly centered in self. Still with an eye to the Savior, we serve others because we have personally spent time in their place. Elder Kearon tied the two meanings together when he cited Jesus’ childhood flight to Egypt as evidence that He too “knows how it feels to be a refugee,” since He in fact had been one. From both Sister Burton and Elder Kearon we see that service to others can be informed, impelled, and even empowered by personal experience, moving our efforts up the ladder of motivation from the honorable discharge of duty towards a higher and holier call: love of God and love of neighbor.5 Even then, as Jesus taught in connecting those two great commandments, if we are to “love our neighbor as ourselves” (see Matt. 22:37–39; emphasis added), then our self-perception— borne largely out of personal experience—is once again an essential element. Ironically, then, altruism, which etymologically is rooted in “others,” grows best out of the soil of self. It is a selfaware egoism shorn of self-centered egotism, a sense of oneself put in service to others.6 In the context of caring for others, this interrelatedness of oneself and one’s neighbor can also be seen in the etymology of such words as compassion, sympathy, empathy, and even in such theological terms as condescension and incarnation.7 The prefixes com- and con- (from the Latin cum), as well as sym- (from the Greek syn) and em- and in- (from the Latin in) all suggest association, togetherness, fellowship, and identification, the most common definition of these word-elements being “with” or “in.” The roots to which these elements are affixed relate to Patrick Kearon, “Refuge from the Storm,” Ensign, May 2016, 111. Elder M. Russell Ballard similarly taught that we should be more inclusive of others precisely because “our pioneer ancestors were driven from place to place by uninformed and intolerant neighbors.” “The Doctrine of Inclusion,” Ensign, Nov. 2001, 37–38. 5 See Dallin H. Oaks, “Why Do We Serve?” Ensign, November 1984, 12–14. 6 The distinction between egoism and egotism was formerly more pronounced, with the latter leaning more toward the negative connotation. See https://www.etymonline.com/word/egoism, and the entries for “egoism” and “egotism” in the Oxford English Dictionary. 7 The list of related words also includes condolence (com “with, together” + dolere “to grieve”) and commiserate (com “with, together” + miserari “bewail, lament”). In each case, the pain of another is shared by oneself. 4 2 Jared Halverson – Empathy Elected or Compassion Compelled feeling, -passion and -pathy coming from the Greek pathos, which means to suffer or to feel, and in the cases of con-descension and in-carnation respectively, to come down or to lower oneself (in this case in order to share the elevation of another), and to come into the flesh or to become embodied (in Christ’s case in order to share in the mortal experience). Thus to feel compassion or sympathy is to suffer with or feel with another. It is far more personal and participatory than mere pity, far closer and more heartfelt than simple goodwill. Empathy brings the association still closer, into actual identification with the other’s feelings, a visceral stepping into another’s emotion that goes beyond a cognitive association with them. In Christ’s case, His condescension was an act of Divinity coming down to be with humanity, just as His incarnation was a Wordmade-Flesh stepping into the human condition—“that he may know according to the flesh,” as Alma puts it, “how to succor his people according to their infirmities” (Alma 7:12). “He knows our needs,” we sing at Christmas, “to our weakness He’s no stranger.”8 He knows them because He felt them. His compassion is a result of His condescension, His empathy a gift of the incarnation. As Alma’s words and Christ’s example suggest, compassion and condescension, empathy and incarnation, are concepts we typically associate scripturally with the New Testament and Book of Mormon. There we see the gentle Jesus weeping with Mary and Martha, or groaning within Himself before He blessed the Nephite children (see John 11:35; 3 Ne. 17:12–15). It was “compassion” that moved Him to multiply the loaves and the fishes, raise the widow’s son, spare the Jaredite language, and “tarry a little longer” with the believers at Bountiful (see Matthew 9:36; Luke 7:13; Ether 1:35; 3 Ne. 17:5–6). In each instance, at work was a shared emotion that 8 “O Holy Night,” lyrics translated by John Sullivan Dwight in 1855. In the original French lyrics, written by Placide Cappeau in 1843 and set to music by Adolphe Adam in 1847, the concept of “condescension” is even more clear. Where in English we sing “It is the night of our dear Savior’s birth,” the French reads “C’est l’heure solennelle / Ou l’Homme Dieu descendit jusqu’à nous” (“It is the solemn hour / Where the Man God came down to us” [italics added]). Where the English reads “Chains shall he break, for the slave is our brother, / And in His name all oppression shall cease” the French sing “Il voit un Frere ou n’etait qu’un esclave, / L’amour unit ceux qu’enchainait le fer” (“He sees a Brother where there was only a slave, / Love unites those whom iron had chained” [italics added]). 3 Jared Halverson – Empathy Elected or Compassion Compelled invited benevolent action, a sense of fellow-feeling that emerged, at least in part, from one’s common humanity. The apostle Paul wrote of knowing Christ in the same sentence in which he mentioned “the fellowship of his sufferings” (Philippians 3:10), and it is precisely within that type of fellowship that intimate and empathetic knowledge of another is born. But if the Book of Mormon and New Testament seem saturated in fellow-feeling, the Old Testament does not share this reputation. Most associate the Hebrew Bible with justice over mercy, vengeance over benevolence, a God of wrath instead of the Lord of love. It seems that Christianity has never fully purged itself of Marcionism, a second-century heresy that divorced Old from New Testament, raised the Christian Church over the House of Israel, and relegated Jehovah to a status far beneath that of Jesus the Christ. Colored by this still-common misconception, many readers cannot come to terms with what one scholar recently called the book’s “troubling legacy” of violence, injustice, intolerance, misogyny, racism, slavery, and genocide.9 Overwhelmed by the book’s problematic passages, many have laid the Old Testament aside, forgetting not only that less objectionable interpretations are available for the texts in question, but also that the Hebrew Bible is home to passages that are just as compassionate as those recalled more readily elsewhere in scripture. The longsuffering of Hosea towards his unfaithful wife is one of the most moving examples of God’s lovingkindness found anywhere in scripture. The books of Exodus and Judges (among others) show a God that will “try again” with Israel no matter how many times she spins around the pride cycle. And in what is to me the most merciful refrain in all of Handel’s Messiah, Isaiah records God’s response to Judah’s near destruction by Assyria—not with “I told you so” or “Better beware,” but with “Comfort ye, comfort ye my people” (Isaiah 40:1). Significantly, the Old Testament does more than preserve a more merciful view of God; Eric A. Seibert, The Violence of Scripture: Overcoming the Old Testament’s Troubling Legacy (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2012). 9 4 Jared Halverson – Empathy Elected or Compassion Compelled it reveals a more compassionate view of His people than is typically granted them, and this suggests both the subject of this symposium and the purpose of this paper. The sparing of Nineveh, the deliverance of Rahab from Jericho, the open-armed embrace of the Moabitess Ruth, the cleansing of Naaman the Syrian, and the preservation of the widow of Zarephath all show a degree of inclusivity and openness to outsiders that provides welcome counterevidence to the accusations of exclusivity, isolationism, ethnocentrism, and xenophobia that are commonly leveled at the ancient House of Israel. Jesus Himself cited several of these Old Testament examples to teach His contemporary listeners a better, more open-minded way (see Matt. 12:41; Luke 4:25–27). In each of these instances, we see examples of compassion not simply from God towards His people, or even from Israel towards its own, but of a compassionate inclusion of non-Israelites that can call modern readers into similar stances toward Others, whatever form their “otherness” might take. We do not have to wait for Paul’s epistle to the Ephesians to see “strangers and foreigners” being treated like “fellowcitizens with the saints” (Eph. 2:19). Old Testament Israel was commanded repeatedly to view “strangers” with compassion and empathy, and modern Israel is called to “Go, and do thou likewise” (Luke 10:37). In the pages that follow, we will see that compassionate inclusivity is not the exception to the rule in the Old Testament, but rather the rule itself, and by that I take the word “rule” literally. Stories, after all, are often exceptional—rare instances of uncommon individuals rising valiantly above the norms of their cultural time and place. Rules, on the other hand, are meant to establish those norms, and the rule in the Old Testament regarding the treatment of outsiders is one of inclusive embrace. More specifically, the rule concerning strangers is one of com-passion and even em-pathy, with all the shared fellow-feeling those words are meant to imply. What we assume to find limited to the New Testament or Book of Mormon we find enthroned in the pages of the Torah: the command to love one’s neighbors as oneself, to view the plight of others 5 Jared Halverson – Empathy Elected or Compassion Compelled intentionally through the lens of one’s own experience. In short, the God of the Old Testament demands empathy towards others. Not only does He call for and command it, but in the stereotypical sternness of Sinai, He is not above compelling it in His people. As will be shown in the following pages, God holds eternally applicable a principle that President Ezra Taft Benson first applied to humility: “Either we can choose to be [empathetic] or we can be compelled to be.”10 With God’s covenant people, it is either empathy elected or compassion compelled. Here it should be said that finessing the nuances between compassion and empathy— untangling cognition from emotion and understanding from experience—is beyond the purview of this brief paper, as is tracing the semantic shifts the word empathy has experienced it its relatively short lifespan.11 Instead, I mean to fill a gap in our understanding of ancient Israel’s attitude toward outsiders and to increase our appreciation for the Old Testament texts that called them—and still call us—to become not merely our brother’s keeper or even “our brother’s brother,”12 but empathetically to become, in a way, our brothers and sisters themselves. Empathy in the Old Testament Empathy has become such a laudable social strength that speaking or writing about it has become almost faddish. Search any library catalog or bookstore for titles containing “empathy” and a shelf’s-worth of volumes will appear, from self-help and children’s books to treatments by psychologists and neuroscientists. It has been deemed a critical component in everything from leadership styles to business success, from improving communication to achieving social justice, leading one author to crown empathy “life’s most essential skill.”13 It has become so universally Ezra Taft Benson, “Beware of Pride,” Ensign, May 1989, 6. See Susan Lanzoni, Empathy: A History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018). 12 See Jeffrey R. Holland, “Are We Not All Beggars?” Ensign, November 2014, 42; Martin Luther King, Jr., The Radical King, ed. Cornel West (Boston: Beacon Press, 2015), 87. 13 Karla McLaren, The Art of Empathy: A Complete Guide to Life’s Most Essential Skill (Boulder, CO: Sounds True, 2013). 10 11 6 Jared Halverson – Empathy Elected or Compassion Compelled applauded, in fact, that one public intellectual felt it necessary to write a book arguing against empathy (endorsing a more “rational compassion” instead), an experience he compared, as far as people’s perceptions were concerned, to writing a book against kittens.14 Public popularity notwithstanding, as a subject-line “Empathy” failed to make the cut when the Topical Guide first appeared in the LDS edition of the scriptures in 1979, and even its close cousin, “Sympathy,” sends us searching for “Compassion” instead. This is a helpful place to start since, as we’ve seen, the etymology of compassion points in empathy’s direction, but even that entry leaves us wondering exactly where scriptural empathy might be found. First, it turns readers to such topics as benevolence, charity, comfort, kindness, love, mercy, pity, and welfare, all of which relate to compassion but none of which conveys the sense of fellow-feeling or emotional indwelling that lie at empathy’s core. This element is present, of course, in the list of scriptures that explicitly contain the word “compassion,” but outside of invoking the word itself, the Topical Guide does little to introduce us to the wealth of scriptural passages that teach the principle we are discussing here, especially in the case of the Old Testament. The topic “Compassion” only includes seven passages from the Hebrew Bible, and of these, once we bracket those which speak of God’s compassion for His people (2 Kings 13:23; Isa. 53:4; Lam. 3:32) and remove those that more directly relate to pity than to fellow-feeling (Lev 19:14; Job 6:14; Prov. 19:17), we are left with a single post-exilic passage in the volume’s penultimate book: Zechariah’s declaration that the Lord requires His people to “shew mercy and compassions every man to his brother” (Zech. 7:9). Was Zechariah really the only Old Testament voice to call for the type of visceral, vicarious, human-to-human fellow-feeling we now call empathy? Was he a lone man calling for compassion in our journey east of Eden? And in calling for compassion towards one’s “brother,” 14 Paul Bloom, Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion (New York: Ecco, 2016). See also Fritz Breithaupt, The Dark Sides of Empathy, trans. Andrew Hamilton (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2019). 7 Jared Halverson – Empathy Elected or Compassion Compelled was he implying that empathy was expected, but only within the confines of kinship? Translation, as usual, is a major part of the problem. When the King James translators finished their work on the Authorized Version, empathy was still three centuries from entering the English language, sympathy was just getting its start and had not yet taken its present meaning, and compassion, though it already boasted a nearly three hundred year history, lacks a single precise equivalent in Hebrew or in Greek. Still, this word at least gives us a place to begin. By my count, the term compassion appears in the King James Version of the Old Testament twenty-two times, from the feeling that moved Pharaoh’s daughter to rescue a baby from the bulrushes (Ex. 2:6) to Zechariah’s aforementioned plea (Zech. 7:9). Between these bookends showing human compassion received and human compassion commanded, the majority of passages speak of divine compassion (13 times),15 with almost all of the rest expressing either hope that Israel’s enemies might have compassion upon them or sorrow that those enemies did not (5 times).16 Only one passage—the final one in Zechariah—contains an explicit command to show human-to-human compassion. Peeling away the English in these passages, five of the KJV’s 22 mentions of compassion come from a Hebrew root (‫חָ מַ ל‬, chamal) meaning “to spare,”17 whereas the rest come from a Hebrew root (‫רחַ ם‬,ָ racham) meaning “to love,” or in its intensified form, “to have compassion.”18 This latter root and its derivatives appear over one hundred times in the Hebrew Bible, but are translated as “mercy” or “mercies” (or “tender mercies” throughout the Psalms) far more often 15 Deut. 13:17; 30:3; 2 Kings 13:23; 2 Chron. 36:15; Ps. 78:38; 86:15; 111:4; 112:4; 145:8; Jer. 12:15; Lam. 3:22, 32; Micah 7:19. 16 1 Kings 8:50 (twice); 2 Chron. 30:9; 2 Chron. 36:17; Ezek. 16:5. Two exceptions exist: Isaiah’s rhetorical question about a nursing mother having compassion for her child (Isa. 49:15) and a strange instance in which a jealous King Saul praises the Ziphites’ compassion in offering to deliver David into his hands (1 Sam. 23:21). 17 Strong’s #2550; these passages are Ex. 2:6; 1 Sam. 23:21; 2 Chron. 36:15, 17; Ezek. 16:5. 18 Strong’s #7355, #7356, and #7349. 8 Jared Halverson – Empathy Elected or Compassion Compelled than “compassion.”19 Significantly, the word is closely related to the word for “womb” (and is occasionally translated as “bowels” or “womb” itself), suggesting the visceral, deep-seated feeling associated with this emotion. By way of comparison (or perhaps second witness), many of the New Testament’s instances of compassion are similarly rooted in words suggesting a visceral, “gut-level” depth of feeling towards which empathy instinctively inclines. One of the most frequently used, σπλαγχνίζομαι (splagchnizomai), is rooted in a word (splanchna) meaning “the inward parts,” those internal organs (heart, bowels, lungs, liver, and kidneys) that were believed anciently to be “the seat of affections” and have even been called “the nobler entrails.” Another word, οἰκτιρμός (oiktirmos), translated variously as compassion, mercy, and tender mercy, connotes a similarly depth of emotion. Colossians 3:12 combines the two Greek terms as Paul calls for “bowels of mercies” (KJV) or “a heart of compassion” (NASB) (splanchna oiktirmou).20 Moreover, since Paul urges the saints to “put on” or “clothe themselves” in this divine attribute, he is calling for internal attributes to be outwardly visible, manifest in our actions towards others. These types of word studies can be helpful to later, non-native readers, but we can assume that the Hebrew Bible’s original audience would have better understood the meaning and nuance in each of these terms. More importantly, however, even for ancient Israel the Lord did not leave the command for compassion to the vagaries of semantics. He based it in something far more concrete and unmistakable. God rooted his call to empathy precisely where this emotion emerges: in the realm of personal experience. Recall that the scriptural terms used for 19 In the KJV, racham and its derivatives are translated as “mercy” (or related forms) 73 times and as “compassion” only 17 times. It appears occasionally as “pity” or “love” and also, rarely, as “bowels” or “womb.” The word plays a significant part in the book of Hosea, where it most famously appears in the name the prophet gives to his daughter: Lo-ruhamah (“not having obtained mercy”). See Hosea 1:6; 2:1, 23. 20 A similar construction is found in Philippians 2:1, where Paul calls for “bowels and mercies” (splanchna kai oiktirmoi), rendered in other translations as “tenderness and compassion” (NIV), “affection and sympathy” (ESV), or “tender mercies and compassions” (ASV). 9 Jared Halverson – Empathy Elected or Compassion Compelled compassion are visceral, not rational; emotional, not intellectual. They aim at the “inward parts” that feel, not the mental part that thinks. Real empathy, according to the scriptures, is meant to be experiential rather than cognitive, spontaneous rather than compulsory, felt rather than forced. We see this inwardness rooted in experience throughout the Hebrew Bible and, as discussed at the beginning of this paper, we find it as well in the Church’s response to the international refugee crisis, which urged us to see (and feel) the refugees’ experience in the context of our own. Notably, the March 26, 2016 First Presidency letter recommending the “I Was a Stranger” initiative cited four scriptures: two were quoted from the Book of Mormon (Mosiah 4:26 and 4:27) and two were referenced (but not quoted) from the Bible. Predictably, one of these passages was Matthew 25:35, where the phrase “I was a stranger” appears, but the other is found in the Old Testament: Leviticus 19:34. There the Lord commands His people, “The stranger that dwelleth with you [that is, non-Israelites living within the land of Israel] shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself.” Then, as if that precursor to the Second Great Commandment were not a clear enough call to compassion, the Lord adds the more direct reminder of lived experience: “for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.” This is the Golden Rule grounded in a personal past. It is empathy borne of experience. In their first letter addressing the crisis, the First Presidency explicitly viewed the refugees’ suffering with “great concern and compassion,”21 and the one Old Testament passage they drew upon when mobilizing that concern is as clear an injunction to true compassion as one could wish for. Beyond providing service, beyond offering relief, this text, even more than those marshaled from the New Testament or Book of Mormon, calls for shared fellow-feeling based on similar personal experience. It calls for an inner attitude and its accompanying outer actions, borne of “the fellowship of suffering.” 21 First Presidency Letter, October 27, 2015; italics added. 10 Jared Halverson – Empathy Elected or Compassion Compelled Invoking the Exodus In referring to the Israelites as “strangers in the land of Egypt,” the Lord was invoking a term with a rich history both before and after. The Hebrew root is ‫( גֵ֣ר‬ḡêr), translated variously as “stranger,” “foreigner,” “sojourner,” and “alien,” and appearing in some form nearly one hundred times in the Hebrew Bible. It is the root of the name of Moses’ son, Gershom, so named because Moses had been “a stranger in a strange land” (Ex. 2:22; 18:3) and thus knew personally the pains of displacement. Centuries earlier, Abraham had considered himself “a stranger” in the land of Canaan until he was treated like “a mighty prince” among his neighbors (Gen. 23:4–6), showing a positive experience of acceptance as a foreigner. At the opposite extreme, God forewarned Abraham that his posterity would be a “stranger in a land that is not theirs” and there be afflicted for centuries (Gen. 15:13), thus prophesying Israel’s bondage in Egypt. Israel’s experience in and subsequent deliverance from Egypt—the Exodus story—is arguably the most frequently invoked narrative and most multivalent typology in the entire Hebrew Bible, rivaled only by the narrative of Creation and Fall which, typologically, serves as a prequel to the patterns of Exodus. Throughout Western cultural history, the Exodus narrative has been enlisted to explain, justify, or inspire a multiplicity of practices and positions, from colonization at one end of the spectrum to liberation at the other.22 At the latter end (the more common invocation), the Exodus has served as precedent and inspiration for groups ranging from English Puritans to Latin American liberation theologians, from modern-day Zionists to a Jewish Diaspora spanning centuries, and from generations of African-American slaves to their twentieth-century heirs in the Civil Rights movement. From songs of Zion at the rivers of Babylon to Negro Spirituals in the antebellum South, notes from the Exodus have echoed across See, for example, Jonathan Boyarin, “Reading Exodus into History,” New Literary History 23, no. 3 (Summer 1992): 523–54. 22 11 Jared Halverson – Empathy Elected or Compassion Compelled the ages, giving oppressed peoples hope that the God who delivered Israel would eventually deliver them. “Remember this day, in which ye came out from Egypt,” the Lord originally commanded (Ex. 13:3), providing one commandment that has been observed ever since. As traditionally framed, however, “remembering” the Exodus is an act of gratitude to God for His deliverance and a call to faith that God will yet exercise that power on His people’s behalf. Prophets from Moses to Micah drew such principles from the Exodus account. God frequently reintroduced Himself to Israel by recalling His actions in the Exodus, both as a positive reminder (“I am the Lord your God, which brought you forth out of the land of Egypt”),23 and as a negative warning (“beware lest thou forget the Lord, which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt” [Deut. 6:12]). Throughout Israel’s subsequent history, God’s actions in the Exodus would become a call to holiness (Lev. 22:32–33), a call to courage (Deut. 7:18; 20:1), a call to commitment (Deut. 4:20), a call to contrition (Ezek. 20:5–13), a call to obedience (Deut. 6:21–25; Jer. 11:3–7), a call to loyalty (Deut. 13:5, 10), a call to repentance (Judg. 10:11–16; 1 Sam. 10:18–19), and a call to rejoicing (Deut. 16:11–12). Occupying entire chapters on occasion (Neh. 9; Ps. 78; Ps. 105; Ezek. 20; Acts 7), later recountings of the Exodus story tied Israel to the God that had delivered their ancestors and would yet deliver them. Like their old world counterparts, Book of Mormon prophets repeatedly invoked Israel’s experience in Egypt as well.24 Nephi drew upon it in his efforts to obtain the Brass Plates and Lehi drew attention to its presence on the Plates once he began to read them (1 Ne. 4:2–3; 5:15). Nephi later reminded his brothers, and then his eventual readers, of Israel’s captivity and deliverance (1 Ne. 17:40; 19:10; 2 Ne. 25:20), as did Limhi (Mosiah 7:19), Abinadi (Mosiah 12:34), and Captain Moroni (Alma 60:20). The angel who appeared to Alma the Younger 23 See, for example, Ex. 20:2; 29:46; Lev. 11:45; 19:36; 22:32-33; 25:38; 26:13; Num. 15:41; Deut. 5:6; Hosea 13:4 See S. Kent Brown, “The Exodus Pattern in the Book of Mormon,” Brigham Young University Studies 30, no. 3 (Summer 1990): 111–26. 24 12 Jared Halverson – Empathy Elected or Compassion Compelled brought things closer to home, bypassing Israel’s captivity in Egypt to urge Alma to remember Limhi’s captivity in the land of Nephi and his father’s captivity in the land of Helam instead (Mosiah 27:16). But in following this counsel, and in urging it upon later listeners, Alma frequently connected those Nephite deliverances to the Israelite original (Alma 5:5-6; 36:2; 29:11-12; 36:28-29). No Book of Mormon prophet was more emphatic that we “ought to retain in remembrance” the captivity of our fathers (Alma 36:29). However, in every instance in the Book of Mormon, and in the vast majority of Old Testament instances as well, the purpose in invoking Israel’s captivity in Egypt was to instill faith in God’s power of deliverance. (The one invocation of the Exodus in the Doctrine and Covenants assumes a similar end [D&C 136:22].) Thus they were urged to recall past captivities in order to more faithfully endure present ones, trusting that the God of Deliverance Past would yet be their God of Deliverance Future. In short, these remembrances led them to look upward to God and inward to their own experience, but not outward to the experiences of others. This point is essential. Just as our word-study of “compassion” in the Old Testament revealed that divine compassion is mentioned far more often than human compassion, and that petitions for compassion received outnumber calls for compassion extended, the experiential aspect of remembering the Exodus suggests a similar limitation. Passover, after all, was a festival to commemorate God’s compassion in Egypt, not a call to extend compassion to strangers in Israel. As generally applied, Israel’s experience on the receiving end of oppression gave hope to later generations oppressed by their “Others,” not motivation to care for “Others” in their midst. This is not to say that the traditional invocation of the Exodus account—which centers on God’s role in delivering Israel—is devoid of the kind of compassion we have been searching for in scripture. In fact, God’s actions toward Israel were more embedded in empathy than we might think. In calling Moses to the task of delivering those suffering bondage in Egypt, God Himself 13 Jared Halverson – Empathy Elected or Compassion Compelled speaks of having “seen” their afflictions and having “heard” their cries, but then adds, far more personally, “I know their sorrows” (Ex. 3:7; emphasis added). The verb used here (‫יָדַ ע‬, yada) suggests that God’s “knowledge” of their suffering goes far beyond mere cognitive comprehension to the most intimate and experiential forms of familiarity. It is evocative of the kind of wholesouled emotion seen so poignantly in Enoch’s surprise over a weeping God, surprise that turned to true compassion once “Enoch knew” as God did. With that intimate knowledge, Enoch likewise “wept” as “his heart swelled wide as eternity; and his bowels yearned” (Moses 7:41), a visceral emotiveness grounded in the inward parts. In the case of Israel’s sojourn in Egypt, the God of Israel, Himself a “man of sorrows and acquainted with grief” (yada is used here as well) (Isa. 53:3; emphasis added), knew Israel’s sorrows completely, and was anxious to turn acquaintance into action. As He told Moses in the next verse, He was “come down”—see condescension there—“to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians” (Ex. 3:8). But this is not the end of the empathy intended by the Exodus. If divine compassion was the result of God’s experience in “knowing” Israel’s sorrows, human compassion was an intended outcome of Israel’s experience in having suffered them. Thus the point just made that the Exodus had Israel looking upward more than outward, though true in general practice, was never its only aim. Throughout the Old Testament, the Lord recalls the Exodus both to elicit their gratitude to God and to engender empathy for their neighbor, putting Israel’s experience in Egypt in service to the Second Great Commandment, not solely to the First. Strangers in Egypt and Strangers in Israel To make this point, we return to Moses’ self-identification as a “stranger in a strange land,” a phrase that, depending on who has “home field advantage” in a given time and place, can apply to both Israel’s sojourn in Egypt and the experience of non-Israelites within the land of 14 Jared Halverson – Empathy Elected or Compassion Compelled Israel. Against the stereotypical view of Israelite exclusion and ethnocentricity, the presence of “strangers” within Israel is assumed throughout the Old Testament, from discussions of Passover observance (Ex. 12:48) and sacrificial rites (Lev. 17:8–15) to the songs of the psalmists (Ps. 146:9) and the jeremiads of the prophets (Jer. 22:3). The Decalogue makes special mention of the “stranger that is within thy gates” (Ex. 20:10), and a curse for any who “perverteth the judgment of the stranger” was among the maledictions proclaimed from Mount Ebal when Israel entered the promised land (Deut. 27:19).25 Moreover, beyond merely tolerating their presence, the Hebrew Bible typically presents “strangers” alongside “widows” and the “fatherless” as a specifically protected class deserving of assistance, shelter, and support, reminding us of the word “refuge” that sometimes goes unrecognized as the root of “refugee.” This trio of the socially marginalized and economically disadvantaged appears in the Law, in wisdom literature, and in both the major and minor prophets, always as objects of God’s special concern.26 The fact that the House of Israel had been “strangers” in Egypt before becoming the host culture for later “strangers” is key to our understanding of empathy in the Old Testament, for the Lord repeatedly ties Israel’s treatment of outsiders to their earlier experience as outsiders themselves. The earliest passage to draw this connection is Exodus 22:21, where the Lord commands just-delivered Israel to treat its still-future alien inhabitants in light of its own oppressed past—a “past” so recent it could hardly be called “history” yet. “Thou shalt neither vex a stranger, nor oppress him: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.” One chapter later the command is repeated, but with the idea of empathy presented even more emphatically, as the 25 For a helpful introduction to the place of “strangers” in the Old Testament, see David Lurth, “The Strangers in the Land: Who They Are and Israel’s Responsibility to Them,” Studia Antiqua 5, no. 1 (June 2007): 93–107. For a more thorough investigation into the identify of these “strangers” in Israel and a summary of variant views, see K. J. Tromp, “Aliens and Strangers in the Old Testament,” Vox Reformata (2011): 4–24. 26 See Ex. 22:21-22; Deut. 10:18; 14:29; 16:11, 14; 24:17, 19–21; 26:12–13; 27:19; Ps. 94:6; 146:9; Jer. 7:6; 22:3; Ezek. 22:7; Zech. 7:10; Mal. 3:5 15 Jared Halverson – Empathy Elected or Compassion Compelled focus shifts from similar experiences to shared emotions regarding those experiences. “Also thou shalt not oppress a stranger: for ye know the heart of a stranger, seeing ye were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Ex. 23:9). Note the presence in this passage of two elements seen previously in our search for true compassion: “ye know” (again, from yada) bespeaks intimate familiarity, and “the heart” reminds us of the visceral, inward-parts emotion that empathy entails. In this passage, in fact, “the heart” may be even deeper, since the Hebrew root used here (‫ ֶנפֶׁש‬, nephesh) goes beyond the inner emotions to the “soul,” the “life,” and the “self.” Later in the Torah, the charge to treat the “stranger” in view of their experiential knowledge of a stranger’s “heart” appears repeatedly, and significantly, while many of these commands maintain the “do no harm” standard expressed in the passages in Exodus 22 and 23, several shift to more positive expectations that God’s people “do good” to the strangers in their midst. The loftiest enjoinder may be that expressed in Deuteronomy 10:18–19, which surpasses mere tolerance to embrace true charity, something entirely absent in their Egyptian captors. God “loveth the stranger,” Moses declared, and then added, “Love ye therefore the stranger: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.” In one instance God even asks Israel to nod in the direction of her former oppressors with what seems to be a note either of gracious resignation after centuries of oppression or of grateful recognition of earlier days of hospitality: “Thou shalt not abhor an Egyptian; because thou wast a stranger in his land” (Deut. 23:7). Beyond generalities forbidding oppression or non-specific commands to practice love, several calls to compassion reach into specific aspects of Israelite social life, economic practice, and even religious observance, each urging Israel to treat her strangers the way she would have wanted to be treated when a stranger in Egypt. Israelites were to treat a poor “stranger” no differently than a poor “brother” when it came to loaning money. In one breath the Lord prohibits charging interest and in the next He reminds them of their earlier destitution: “I am the 16 Jared Halverson – Empathy Elected or Compassion Compelled Lord your God, which brought you forth out of the land of Egypt” (Lev. 25:35–38). When servants were freed on the seventh year, former masters were to “furnish [them] liberally” out of their possessions, “remember[ing] that thou wast a bondman in the land of Egypt” (Deut. 15:12– 15). They were not to “let him go away empty” (Deut. 15:13), just as Israel did “not go empty” when they left Egypt (Ex. 3:21; see Ex. 11:2–3; 12:35–36). In a fascinating role reversal that reenacted the Israelites’ “spoiling” of Egypt, former slaves who had later become masters were not to forget their former feelings or the uncertain future they once faced. They were to view their servants through the lens of self-reflection, recognizing that they were playing the role of the Egyptians now. And just in case the Israelites missed the connection between their experience and God’s expectation, the Lord drew the link explicitly. After reminding them of their bondage (“thou wast a bondman”) and His redemption (“and the Lord thy God redeemed thee”), He affirms, “therefore I command thee this thing to day” (Deut. 15:15). Later in Deuteronomy, God commands His people not to “pervert the judgment of the stranger, nor of the fatherless; nor take a widow’s raiment to pledge,” followed immediately by the reminder, “But thou shalt remember that thou wast a bondman in Egypt,” who had once pled with God for similar justice. It did come to Israel eventually, but only when the Lord intervened. Now He was asking His people to provide that protection to others: “The Lord thy God redeemed thee thence: therefore I command thee to do this thing” (Deut. 24:17-18). Building upon this passage to relieve even more pressing distress, the Israelites are then told that forgotten sheaves were not to be fetched, olive boughs were not to be rebeaten, and vineyards were not to be gleaned after harvest; these were to be reserved “for the stranger, for the fatherless, and for the widow.” And if ever a selfish thought arose within them, they were to “remember that thou wast a bondman in the land of Egypt: therefore I command thee to do this thing” (Deut. 24:19– 22). In both of these instances (and in the aforementioned instance from Deut. 15:15), with the 17 Jared Halverson – Empathy Elected or Compassion Compelled conjunction “therefore” God explicitly connects Israel’s treatment of strangers to her experience in Egypt. More than unfeeling injunctions or even practices of pity, these were expectations of empathy, withdrawals from the storehouse of personal experience. Hints of empathy exist in Israel’s religious observance as well, including in Israel’s ritual calendar, much of which grew out of her experiences in Egypt and the Exodus. Provision was made in the Passover, for example, for the participation of strangers. The Feast of Weeks was to be celebrated not only with one’s servants, but with “the stranger, and the fatherless, and the widow, that are among you,” all the while “remember[ing] that thou wast a bondman in Egypt” (Deut. 16:11–12). In offering the firstfruits, the people of Israel were to recount their afflictions in Egypt, recall their prayers for divine deliverance, rehearse their experience in the Exodus, and then “rejoice in every good thing” the Lord had provided for them since, both “thou, and the Levite, and the stranger that is among you.” Then with Egypt and Exodus still moving them in memory, they were to give tithes not only “unto the Levite” as one would expect, but also to “the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow” as well, since their day of deliverance seemed not yet to have come (Deut. 26:5–12). Even the Sabbath was to be seen through the lens of their experience in Egypt, that they might rest from their labors, and that “the stranger” might “be refreshed” as well (Ex. 23:12). As God said elsewhere, “that thy manservant and thy maidservant may rest as well as thou…, remember[ing] that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt” (Deut. 5:14–15). These passages, and others like them less explicitly tied to the Exodus, constitute what has been called the “humanitarian law” (as opposed to the moralistic, sacrificial, or judicial aspects of the Law of Moses), and its installation among the first generation to have escaped bondage in Egypt is yet more evidence of empathy at work. The temporal proximity between Israel’s experience in Egypt and the command to treat others in light of that experience ensured that it would be personal emotion, not corporate memory, that was driving them. Moreover, 18 Jared Halverson – Empathy Elected or Compassion Compelled Israel had not yet entered the land of Canaan, making this commandment anticipatory and precautionary. Anticipating the Golden Rule, they would be treating strangers in Israel the way they wished they had been treated when they were strangers in Egypt. Enforced Empathy The Golden Rule connects naturally to Israel’s humanitarian law because both are rooted in fellow-feeling. The reciprocity and interrelatedness of both parties in any relationship— Israelite and “stranger,” insider and outsider—emerge from a sense of common humanity and in many cases, a more closely parallel common experience. These relationships are further informed by—and in a sense foreshadow—God’s later self-disclosure that He is “no respecter of persons” (see Acts 10:34; Rom. 2:11), and suggest that we often find ourselves trading places across that divide, a kind of first-shall-be-last-and-last-shall-be-first role reversal that facilitates the mutuality that empathy and compassion are meant to engender. The Lord suggests this kind of mutuality and equality when He says of sacrificial offerings, “One law and one manner shall be for you, and for the stranger that sojourneth with you.” Or as He declared in a statement that applies far more broadly, “As ye are, so shall the stranger be before the Lord” (Num. 15:15–16). Much later in the Hebrew Bible, we see the order of Golden Rule reciprocity reversed, from “do unto others what you would have others do unto you” to “it shall be done to you what you have done to others.” As Obadiah taught, “As thou hast done, it shall be done unto thee: thy reward [or in this case thy punishment] shall return upon thine own head” (Obad. 1:15). Replacing actions with emotions, we might rephrase Obadiah’s words to say that as you have made others feel, so shall you be made to feel, or conversely, because you could not put yourself in another’s place empathetically, to feel what they might be feeling, you will be put in their place literally, so that their feelings inescapably become your own. 19 Jared Halverson – Empathy Elected or Compassion Compelled This would be a fellow-feeling that is forced upon us since we were either unable or unwilling to engage with that emotion instinctively or intentionally. I call this principle of forced fellow-feeling “compelled compassion” or “enforced empathy,” and nowhere in scripture is it taught as starkly as in the Old Testament. Obadiah’s is a late invocation of the idea; its most striking intonation appears, not coincidentally, in our earliest instance of Exodus-informed empathy, part of the Law God gave to Moses at Mount Sinai. The passage is Exodus 22:21–24, and it begins with a combined mandate and reminder that should be familiar to us by now: “Thou shalt neither vex a stranger, nor oppress him: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.” So far, this is empathy expected, but it quickly becomes a warning of empathy enforced. Expanding His protection of the stranger to His oft-accompanying concern for the widow and fatherless, God forewarns, “If thou afflict them in any wise, and they cry at all unto me, I will surely hear their cry; And my wrath shall wax hot, and I will kill you with the sword; and your wives shall be widows, and your children fatherless.” This is admonitory anger put in service to lovingkindness, instinctive empathy replaced, when necessary, with compulsory com-passion. Feel for these fellow-sufferers. Better yet, feel with them. And if you cannot learn from the Ghost of Suffering Past then prepare to be tutored by the Ghost of Suffering Future, a destroying angel meant to awaken you to the destruction you once were content to leave unnoticed or unaddressed. In the face of your failure to enter the feelings of others, those feelings will be forced upon those you hold most dear. Significantly, this is still one step removed from the true focus of God’s indignation, the unfeeling individual whose death will teach his family the lesson in compassion he refused to learn in life. Sooner or later, by choice or by compulsion, we will feel for one another. Again, echoing Ezra Taft Benson, God will have a compassionate people. We can choose to be empathetic, or we will be compelled to be. Fast forward to the days of destruction in Judah and we see that since God’s people were 20 Jared Halverson – Empathy Elected or Compassion Compelled not true to these emotions, God ended up being true to His word. From the rivers of Babylon Ezekiel cried out against Jerusalem, “In the midst of thee have they dealt by oppression with the stranger: in thee have they vexed the fatherless and the widow” (Ezek. 22:7). And because they “vexed the poor and needy” and “oppressed the stranger wrongfully…Therefore have I poured out mine indignation upon them; I have consumed them with the fire of my wrath.” Framing this destruction in terms of the law-of-the-harvest reciprocity that defines compulsory compassion, the Lord concludes, “Their own way have I recompensed upon their heads” (Ezek. 22:29, 31). You did not feel with them then; you will feel with them now. Closer to home, Jeremiah echoed Ezekiel’s sentiments, describing the results of the neglect and oppression his counterpart decried, using words we now recognize as the principle of enforced empathy. It is one part role-reversal: “Our inheritance is turned to strangers, our houses to aliens…. Servants have ruled over us” (Lam. 5:2, 8). And another part forced fellow-feeling: “We are orphans and fatherless, our mothers are as widows” (Lam. 5:3). With the destruction of Jerusalem, God’s warning in Exodus had been precisely fulfilled. Strangers turned out from the houses of the selfish now inhabited those dwellings themselves. Oppressors of widows and orphans were slain, leaving widows and orphans behind them who possessed a perspective the dead had avoided. Empathy was now the burden of those who outlived the unfeeling. “Our fathers have sinned, and are not; and we have borne their iniquities” (Lam. 5:7). A final scriptural example of enforced empathy is found in the book of Zechariah, once the Jews returned from their exile in Babylon—another “Exodus” of sorts that should have encouraged an increase of empathy. Decrying the hypocrisy and self-centeredness that made a mockery of the two Great Commandments, Zechariah asks, “when ye did eat, and when ye did drink, did not ye eat for yourselves, and drink for yourselves?” Their actions neither pointed them to God nor connected them with neighbor, drawing from the prophet the command to 21 Jared Halverson – Empathy Elected or Compassion Compelled “Execute true judgment, and shew mercy and compassions every man to his brother: And oppress not the widow, nor the fatherless, the stranger, nor the poor.” Unfortunately for both God’s people and those whose suffering they might have relieved, “they refused to hearken, and pulled away the shoulder, and stopped their ears, that they should not hear.” Such selfishness and neglect are bad enough, but beyond their refusal to recognize these sufferers’ plight (stopping their ears) and their unwillingness to offer them assistance (pulling away the shoulder), they were also guilty of a failure to feel: “they made their hearts as an adamant stone” that left the allimportant inward parts—the site of compassion—hardened against the calls of God and the cries of their neighbors. “Therefore,” the Lord explained, once again joining choice to consequence, “it is come to pass, that as he cried, and they would not hear; so they cried, and I would not hear, saith the Lord of hosts.” Having ignored others, they would know what it feels like to be ignored. In fact, having oppressed strangers, they would know what it feels like to be strangers themselves. Enforced empathy thus lies behind God’s choice of punishment: “I scattered them with a whirlwind among all the nations whom they knew not” (Zech. 7:6–13). Conclusion Once we have the eyes to see, calls to greater empathy appear almost everywhere in scripture. It is part of the baptismal covenant as described by Alma the Elder, which witnesses our willingness not only to “comfort those that stand in need of comfort” (the outer action), but “to mourn with those that mourn” (the inner emotion) (Mosiah 18:9). It was at play when Jesus turned inward the accusers of the woman taken in adultery, who ended up “convicted by their own conscience” once empathy showed them her sinfulness from the perspective of their own (John 8:9). The author of Hebrews called not merely for service but for the empathy that would naturally call it forth, urging, “Remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them; and them 22 Jared Halverson – Empathy Elected or Compassion Compelled which suffer adversity, as being yourselves also in the body” (Heb. 13:3). And if that passage blurs the line between a suffering Other and an empathic Self, Isaiah erases it completely in describing the care that our fasting affords for the hungry, naked, and poor: “hid[ing] not thyself from thine own flesh” (Isa. 58:7). “Are we not all beggars?” asked King Benjamin, as he urged his people to look inward at themselves and outward at their neighbor (Mosiah 4:16–26). Here even enforced empathy is implied, as he warns that those who deny the beggar his petitions will someday know the feeling of having their petitions denied as well. The same is true of the Parable of the Unmerciful Servant, which teaches empathy alongside forgiveness, as it was not for his debt that the greater debtor was punished, but rather for his sin against empathy, since he knew his fellowservant’s feelings precisely. Moreover, enforced empathy is the final result for this debtor, since he suffers a punishment that mirrors what he intended as his fellowservant’s fate (Matt. 18:23–35). No wonder the Law of Moses requires that a false witness receive the penalty intended for his victim. “You shall do to him as he had meant to do to his brother” (Deut. 19:18), like most instances of an-eye-for-an-eye retribution, is the principle of enforced empathy at work. It lies behind Abinadi’s warning to his persecutors, “ye shall suffer, as I suffer” (Mosiah 17:18); Nephi’s prophecy that “that great pit which hath been digged for the destruction of men shall be filled by those who digged it” (1 Ne. 14:3); and Joseph Smith’s realization that “the things which they are willing to bring upon others, and love to have others suffer, may come upon themselves to the very uttermost” (D&C 121:13). Enforced empathy may even be a part of the Savior’s dramatic warning: “But if they would not repent they must suffer even as I” (D&C 19:17), a com-miseration that cancels the role-reversal Jesus effected through His substitutionary atonement. If we could not “watch with [Him] one hour” (Matt. 26:40), or “view his death, and suffer his cross” (Jacob 1:8) with a measure of fellow-feeling that would warn us away from our 23 Jared Halverson – Empathy Elected or Compassion Compelled sinfulness, then suffer with Christ we must—the ultimate example of com-passion. As with every other positive attribute, empathy and compassion are most perfectly embodied in Jesus Christ. He “knoweth the weakness of man” (D&C 62:1) because He chose to condescend to the level of man’s weakness. “In all their affliction he was afflicted,” prophesied Isaiah in a passage that repeats several of the words for empathy’s visceral, indwelling emotiveness we studied earlier (Isa. 63:7–9, 15). Or as described in the letter to the Hebrews— those most conversant with the empathy of the Old Testament—“We see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels [think con-descension] for the suffering of death [think compassion]…that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man [think taking within, to the inward parts]…. For both he that sanctified and they who are sanctified are all of one [think true unity and fellow-feeling]: for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren… Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same [think incarnation]; that through death he might…deliver them [think Exodus] who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage [think Egypt]….Wherefore in all things it behoved him to be made like unto his brethren [think full identification with another],…For in that he himself hath suffered being tempted, he is able to succour them that are tempted [think empathy turned into action]” (Heb. 2:9–18). As we read in a later chapter, “We have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities” (Heb. 4:15). One need not know Greek to provide a closer approximation to the word rendered “touched with the feelings” by the King James translators. The word is συμπαθῆσαι, sympathēsai, a cognate for “sympathize,” which appears in most other translations. The NIV, showing its more recent birth than most others, renders it even closer to what we have been studying: its word is “empathize.” Returning to the Old Testament, perhaps the Savior’s compassionate condescension—and the empathy He asks of us—can best be illustrated by one of Elisha’s more remarkable miracles. 24 Jared Halverson – Empathy Elected or Compassion Compelled When the son of the Shunammite woman died and she rushed to the prophet for assistance, Elisha at first sent his servant with his staff to bless the boy. But nothing happened. Even Elisha’s subsequent prayer seemed ineffectual. What finally returned life to the boy’s inward parts was a mirroring of that boy by the prophet. Elisha “went up, and lay upon the child, and put his mouth upon his mouth, and his eyes upon his eyes, and his hands upon his hands: and he stretched himself upon the child; and the flesh of the child waxed warm” (2 Kings 4:29–37). The mission of Messiah could not be delegated to a servant; He could not wish away sin and death with a wave of a hand or a staff. He had to “come down” to meet and mirror us: to see through our eyes and to breathe through our nostrils. Hand in hand and heart in heart, a condescending Christ “wrap[ped] our injured flesh around [Him] / Breathe[d] our air and walk[ed] our sod,”27 all that He might feel like saving us. Empathy was one of the purposes of the incarnation, part of what He called His “preparations unto the children of men” (D&C 19:19). It was what Jesus won for Himself in Gethsemane, and what He turned into salvation for His friends. Strangers, like the poor, will always be with us, as will those who similarly suffer oppression or marginalization. And among them we will always find Jesus. “I was a stranger,” He said to His disciples, and we are meant to see Him in those we serve. More deeply than sight and service, however, we are to feel what they feel, for in doing so we form an emotional interrelatedness that binds us both to them and to God. In our inward parts, we become part of one another, fellow sojourners in our Exodus to “a far better land of promise” (Alma 37:45). Through the “fellowship of suffering”—com-passion’s true ideal—we share the feelings of Him who says to insider and outsider alike, “ye are strangers and sojourners with me” (Lev. 25:23). 27 Lyrics to “Welcome To Our World,” by Chris Rice. 25