Do Christians Still Empathize?

Empathy should be a Christian ideal.

Romans 12:15 reads, Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep.

Ephesians 4:32 says, And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.

These verses epitomize empathy.

Someone quote shared a Facebook post I made about Kyle Rittenhouse. I said I was heartbroken for a child who broke down weeping when recalling his first shooting in Kenosha. I said Rittenhouse is not a killer, but a kid who took two lives while defending his own.

The man mocked me for calling Rittenhouse a child, and said that most people calling him a child would want a black teenager tried as an adult.

Of course, I challenged his assertion.

He also used the line, “if you want to act like a man, you get what you get when you kill someone.”

Now, we can agree that Kyle’s parents should have stopped him. Adults in Kenosha that met Rittenhouse should have told him to go home. The business owner, the reporters interviewing him, SOMEONE should have told him to leave.

That didn’t happen, so we can toss out the “woulda, coulda, shoulda.”

My takeaway from my interaction on this is similar to that of the Alec Baldwin shooting – our society, including Christians, lacks empathy.

This is a disturbing trend, and I think the “meme culture” is partially to blame.

Mocking people is fun. It’s one of my favorite pastimes. Memes provide a clever outlet for this, and they are hilarious.

But memes aren’t for everything.

We used to understand this. Murder is one of those things that should not be joked about – especially when it is a recent tragedy.

We don’t mock the Holocaust. We don’t laugh at victims of a serial killer. We don’t joke about mass shootings.

But recently, we have been laughing at death and shooters who unwillingly took lives. It’s mostly politically based, which makes it so much worse.

Shame on this nation. Shame on Christians. Shame on any of you who made or shared a meme involving Alec Baldwin, Rittenhouse, or anyone else involved in a murder and has to live the rest of their lives suffering from PTSD from having pulled a trigger.

We honored our Veterans yesterday. We thank them for their sacrifice and for volunteering to go to war and potentially kill the enemy.

Many of our troops come home and commit suicide because they cannot deal with the ramifications of taking a life.

These men and women signed up for service KNOWING that they would pull the trigger.

Rittenhouse and Baldwin did not. Rittenhouse had a rifle and HOPED he wouldn’t have to use it (is that not one of the arguments FOR firearm ownership?), and Baldwin trusted the team around him to hand him an unloaded gun.

Soldiers know they will kill someone. They are trained to do it. Rittenhouse and Baldwin are not.

But Christians laugh. Liberals like Lebron James laugh. Tucker Carlson laughs. The only difference is the target of the mockery.

If you claim to be a Christian and have participated in mockery, you need to turn off social media and get in your Bibles.

Unbelievers watch us. When you are flippant about something so tragic, you push them away. You are not drawing the lost toward Christ, and you make soul winning so much harder for the rest of us.

If you are a Christian who lacks empathy, you are the stumbling block. You are taking the Lord’s name in vain.