Confusion of Guilt with Empathetic Pain
This post is practical in nature. It is based on observation, not necessity. And its point is not that pacifism is wrong (although it is), but that pacifism’s critique of just violence is based on a confused response to emotion.
The international pressure on Israel to move toward a cease-fire with Hamas is a good example of a basic confusion which promotes pacifism over real peace. One of the reasons pacifists mis-characterize all violence as wrong—or as anti-Christian—is related to the reason much violence is wrong. That is, the empathy and altruism built into humanity produce uncomfortable emotions and a corresponding awareness of guilt when a person behaves cruelly. By human (and Humean) nature, people who experience the emotion (empathetic pain or grief) associate it with the condition (guilt).
But the same altruism produces similar if not identical emotions in persons who, for example, observe the suffering of others without contributing to that suffering at all. That painful empathy is a good thing. It is a huge part of what makes humans humane. It provokes even those who have little to do with what is happening to intervene and to help those who are suffering. In that light, the warning of Proverbs 24:11-12 makes good sense. People know they should do something to alleviate suffering, and bear a new and distinct guilt (distinct from the guilt which derived from the cause of suffering) if they fail to do so.
However, it is utter confusion to think that because the same emotional sense rises out of distinct circumstances that the circumstances themselves are morally equivalent. Emotion does not define morality—popular culture notwithstanding. Dogs can leave hair wherever they go. Cats can leave hair wherever they go. But dogs are not cats. Unjust causes of suffering can lead to guilt. Just causes of suffering can lead to guilt. But just causes are not unjust causes. The confusion is about guilt. Western culture certainly thinks of guilt simply as an emotion. But it is more than that. Guilt is a condition which has a certain set of emotions associated with it. Having the emotions associated with guilt is not the same as being guilty.
And there is the problem. Christians ought to grieve whenever people suffer, even at the Christian’s own hand. Only so can believers mimic the attitude of God in Ezekiel 18. But the commitment must first be to do what is right. That a virtuous person would never take pleasure in going to war, in aiming a weapon at an enemy, in seeing a soul judged for anything, is excellent. That a virtuous person would always retract from the suffering of others is equally excellent. That a person pursuing virtue would act on that pleasure (the virtuous pleasure of knowing others are not suffering) alone, rather than on the basis of what is actually right, is vicious, not virtuous at all.
To summarize: it is as vicious to act wrongly based on emotion as it is to evade or suppress the emotion. The key is to realize why the emotion is surfacing and what it ought to provoke. In the case of violence, it pushes it toward last on the list of human options and, when its use is required, mitigates its extent and demands its thorough and accurate justification—something of which just about all human behavior could use a fresh dose.
What is the attitude of God in Ezekiel 18? Particularly note verse 23.
21 But if the wicked will turn from all his sins that he hath committed, and keep all my statutes, and do that which is lawful and right, he shall surely live, he shall not die.Sphere: Related Content
22 All his transgressions that he hath committed, they shall not be mentioned unto him: in his righteousness that he hath done he shall live.
23 Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die? saith the Lord GOD: and not that he should return from his ways, and live?
24 But when the righteous turneth away from his righteousness, and committeth iniquity, and doeth according to all the abominations that the wicked man doeth, shall he live? All his righteousness that he hath done shall not be mentioned: in his trespass that he hath trespassed, and in his sin that he hath sinned, in them shall he die.
