Why Are We Arguing About Empathy?

How Literary Fiction Shapes Empathy—For Better or Worse

I noticed over on X there seems to be a dust up about empathy, specifically related to Joe Rigney’s book The Sin of Empathy and tangentially Allie Beth Stuckey’s book Toxic Empathy. First, I know I should stay off X, but it’s like a car crash. You have to look. Second, I haven’t read either of the aforementioned books, so nothing could possibly go wrong writing about them in a vague way in this post.

From what I gather on X, people on one extreme view empathy as a key tenet of Christianity equating it with love and people on the other extreme think empathy is easily used to manipulate people into affirming sin and unchristian beliefs. Of course, having not read the books, I could be completely wrong about all of that. That’s okay.

A Surprising Connection: Empathy & Fiction

What I really want to write about is reading fiction. How’s that for a bait and switch? My favorite English professor, Dr. Lipani, once said that reading literary fiction is the greatest way to learn true empathy. In my experience, this has proven true so many times through the years. After all empathy is a kind of fiction. It is putting yourself in someone else’s place and seeing things through their eyes.

Now, here’s the snobby English major part. Bear with me. It has to be literary fiction. Plot-driven pulp fiction you find in the airport doesn’t typically build empathy. Why? Because it’s focused on plot, not character development. Character development is where the magic happens. That’s what builds empathy. That’s how you get inside people’s heads and know how they feel and think. That’s how you figure out what drives people. Good character development requires serious craftsmanship. It’s what separates okay fiction writers from great ones. It’s an art, really.

I know some of you are already objecting. Don’t quit on me yet. Character development can feel slow and plodding. I’ve heard it a thousand times from students— it feels like nothing happens in literary fiction. Except, your feelings lie. A lot of stuff does happen. It’s just internal. It’s character driven. Getting to really know someone takes time, right? Maybe that’s a good simile. Literary fiction isn’t a Tinder date. It’s a long term relationship. Please, restack that. I beg you.

But Isn’t Fiction Just… Fake?

Another objection is that fiction is just that—fiction. Many people have told me they only read nonfiction, because they don’t want to waste their time on something that isn’t even real. Why get to know a character that doesn’t even really exist? The paradox of fiction is that in many ways it’s more real than anything nonfiction can offer.

The example that Dr. Lipani used that stuck with me was “How to Tell a True War Story” from The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien. The main character of the story, Rat Kiley saw his friend get blown up in Vietnam when he stepped on a rigged mortar round. He wrote a letter to his dead friend’s sister, but she never wrote back.

Nonfiction could tell you the sequence of events. It could give you details about the location, the mortar round, people’s biographical background, but it misses the most important human elements. In fact the story makes that point. How do you tell a civilian what war is truly like and capture it accurately? How do you explain what it feels like to see your friend needlessly die a gruesome death while you’re goofing off playing catch? What does it feel like when you poured your heart out, and his sister doesn’t write back? Nonfiction can’t capture the deepest human elements.

The Exact Truth As It Seemed

The story comes to the conclusion that fiction is the only thing that comes close to communicating all of that. It’s emotionally truer than nonfiction. O’Brien writes, “The pictures get jumbled; you tend to miss a lot. And then afterward, when you go to tell about it, there is always that surreal seemingness, which makes the story seem untrue, but which in fact represents the hard and exact truth as it seemed.”

Fiction puts the reader there. You smell the moss. You see the shade of the tree. You hear the click of the detonator. You feel Rat Kiley’s grief. You live it vicariously through the story. It builds empathy.

Just to be clear, “How to Tell a True War Story” is not about empathy, but it serves as a great example. Also, fair warning, The Things They Carried is very much rated R, but it’s also in my top ten all time favorite books. So, there’s that.

Does Empathy Matter In The Christian Life?

Back to the argument on X: Is empathy valuable in the Christian life? Absolutely. It’s valuable to human beings in general. Anyone who wants to understand other people has to have empathy. After all, psychopaths and narcissists are defined by their lack of empathy.

Some level of empathy is essential to the Christian life. It would be difficult to practice the 59 “one another” statements of the New Testament without empathy. How do you rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep without empathy? (Romans 12:15) As I mentioned, I haven’t read the recent books causing the controversy, but I would hope they’re not calling all empathy literal sin.

Something we are prone to forget is that empathy is not blind compassion without discernment. We can have empathy without affirming bad decisions or misplaced feelings. It is possible to show compassion without affirming sin. Jesus demonstrates this.

Fiction also teaches this. I work in training and development, and typically the most valuable training is experiential. We put people in realistic scenarios, and they have to perform. Sometimes they’re set up to fail. However, it’s a fictional training environment where mistakes don’t hurt people or things. In fact we learn a lot from mistakes. Fiction is an empathy training scenario where we can safely make mistakes and learn.

Read The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. You get multiple perspectives of tragic events out of sequence, and you have to put together the pieces. Life is complicated. Justice on this earth is rarely perfect. We rarely have all the pieces of the puzzle, and people are flawed. Perspectives change with age and experience. Sometimes we want empathy to be too easy, which squanders its value. We have to work at it.

In The Great Gatsby, it’s difficult not to empathize with Nick’s desire to reinvent himself and live the American Dream or Jay’s undying love for Daisy, even though we know it leads to disillusionment and death. We want shake them by the shoulders and slap them around at times. We see a little bit of ourselves in these characters, and we often don’t like it. That’s why when we see it in real life we can say, “I know what you’re thinking. I know how this story ends. Don’t do it!”

The Danger Of Empathy: The Unreliable Narrator

Is empathy something that can be manipulated and abused? Can people use it against us to deceive and get their way? Absolutely. Literary fiction proves this as well.

Literary fiction gives us the unreliable narrator. Have you ever read Edgar Allan Poe? (Spoiler alert) The narrator of “The Cask of Amontillado” will have you empathizing with him up to the moment you realize he’s the psycho burying his enemy in the wall. By the end of the story, you’re not sure if the other guy did anything to deserve it at all. You’ve been manipulated.

Perhaps the most persuasive and controversial example of the unreliable narrator would be Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. The novel is narrated by Humbert Humbert (a pseudonym) who invites empathy with his tragic childhood lost love, his charm, and beautiful writing, but he’s clearly a pedophile who ruins a young girl’s life. He’s an insidious monster, and yet the genius of the novel is you want to empathize with him while at the same time see him hang.

Fiction As A Tool For Discernment

Don’t we talk to unreliable narrators every day at work, in school, at church? Aren’t we, in many cases, unreliable narrators inviting empathy from others when in fact we don’t deserve it? We selectively share the facts and color our stories, just like Humbert in Lolita. Surely the hot button issues in our cultural are ripe with unreliable narrators. I would argue fiction helps train us to recognize and sift through shady motivations. It lets us pick the narrator’s brains in a no risk environment. We might get fooled for a while, but it’s fiction. It helps us empathize with these people, not to show blind compassion and affirmation, but in order to see through the manipulation and move towards truth.

The Goal Of Empathy

That is the ultimately goal of empathy: to point people to the truth of the gospel which is salvation through Christ. Brene Brown famously described empathy as being willing to get down in a hole and say this isn’t my hole, but I’m willing to be here with you and help you find a way out. That last part is the key. We don’t just want to add to the population of the hole. We want to help people find salvation. Jesus didn’t just empathize with people. He said, “Repent and believe.” He transformed people.

Literary fiction lets us climb into the fictional hole with people from all walks of life with different fears and tragedies and faults. We learn how to empathize from them and think through how to do that with discernment and godly love. Anyone who spends significant time working with people—pastors, teachers, counselors, Christians—can benefit greatly from reading quality fiction. It’s like on-the-job training. I don’t know who said it, but good fiction is about the human condition. Understanding the human condition helps us share the heavenly solution—the gospel of Jesus Christ.