insanity, empathy, character pathology & sin

I tend to use the word "insanity" to describe behavior that is irrational, particularly if the behavior is associated with confusion, hallucinations, and generally disorganized thought processes. I'm not sure that behavior that proceeds from a lack of empathy is irrational, confused or disorganized. I'd call the behavior "sick" or "criminal."

Empathy is the ability to understand things from another person's point of view. That includes understanding what emotions a person might have in response to a situation. Understanding that a person with a coat might be cold or that a person who hasn't eaten might be hungry is not empathy. Understanding that you should clothe the naked and feed the hungry can proceed from a sense of duty, or in the case of someone like Karen Zerby, from the desire to manage other people's impressions of her as a "charitable" Christian.

In the latter case, it may not be a matter of "I see you're cold, it's my duty to give you my coat." It's more like, "I see you're cold, you will think well of me if I give you my coat." And neither response is the same as, "I see you're cold. Here's my coat. I don't want you to feel ashamed that you couldn't provide a coat for yourself or feel guilty about needing to borrow mine." This last response recognizes the complexity of emotional states a person might experience over being cold, coatless and needing to depend upon the generosity of others.

I learned about empathy and impression management from a pedophile priest. To do lay ministry in the RC Church, the lay person has to be sponsored and commissioned by the parish priest. I was doing a Master's program in lay pastoral ministry, and the pastor of my parish agreed to sponsor me in the development of a youth ministry.

Although he told me to my face that he wanted a youth group, I discovered he was actually sabotaging the development of any youth ministry. He basically went behind the scenes and undercut my organizing efforts with other key players in the parish's outreach work with adolescents. I couldn't figure out why the organization meetings kept being cancelled, or why key people didn't show up.

I confronted him directly, and he "fired" me. He told me the parish didn't need a youth ministry because the parish youth had him as the pastor.
Now, another thing about this guy is that he put lots of energy into raising funds and public awareness for the homeless. He was known to give money out of his pocket to almost anyone who asked. His generosity to the poor, btw, was a matter of public record. There were regular newspaper articles about his work on organizing of "faith-based" social services in the community.

I thought he was extremely dishonest, and I told him as much. Well, that got me de-commissioned, which meant I had no authority, no official sanction to do ministry. So I quit my job as a high school religion teacher and went to work for a local newspaper.

Several months into the job, I got a tip from a parishioner that the pastor had been accused of molesting an adolescent boy. He had left town in the middle of the night and gone to a treatment facility. Ding! The light went on. No wonder he didn't want an active youth ministry in the parish. By a strange twist of fate, I wrote the initial story about the molestation allegation and his removal as pastor by the Bishop.

After he'd been in the treatment facility for a couple of months, he agreed to do a phone interview with me for the newspaper. (The editor of the paper still thought this guy was a local Mother Teresa due to all the work he'd done in the community with the poor.) I was surprised by his agreement to do an interview with me. I couldn't imagine he thought I was all that friendly toward him. After all, I had told him to his face six months earlier that I thought he was an untrustworthy jerk.

OK, so we're doing the phone interview about the allegation and his reason for going to a treatment facility, and the whole time he's talking to me, there's not one mention like, "Gee, I know we've had our differences and there was a falling-out between us. Why don't we clear the air?" He talked to me like I was a total stranger, and I'm thinking, "This guy does not have a friggen' clue about what I might be feeling right now." He didn't seem to have any awareness that I might feel deeply distrustful of anything he had to say because he once stabbed me in the back and destroyed the parish youth ministry project.

But he did put a lot of energy into impression management by reminding me of how we both shared a compassionate concern the poor. He reminded me that he had once been my confessor and that we shared a contemplative spirituality. Talk about a blatantly manipulative attempt at managing my impressions!

By the way, the man admitted in the phone interview that the allegation re: molesting a 14-year-old boy was true. He added that youth was not claiming any damage had been done and that the sexual impropriety was relatively minor. Just a little mutual masterbation...Father Compassionate Wanker was just trying to help the young lad become more comfortable with his sexuality. He apparently had come to Father for advice around, "Could I be gay?"

Once again, no clue as to what the young person might have felt--only the observation that the young man claimed no serious harm done. Whether or not that was true, I can't imagine that the kid walked away from the encounter without feeling some guilt or shame or at the very least a violation of trust. Wackin' off with Father is not exactly a source of healthy self-esteem.

On one level, Father Compassionate Wanker is crazier than bat shit. His insensitivy may appear irrational, but his reasoning is coherent and logical. It's all about him, what he wants, what he feels, what he needs. What someone else might want or feel or need only matters as long as he can use it to make himself look good.

Which is like Karen being kind and considerate toward the faithful, but not toward make a show of compassion toward the backslidden? They can't do anything to advance her cause. The people she needs to impress with her "deep spirituality" are the ones who follow her.

Furthermore, she doesn't have a clue how emotionally scarred or psychologically wounded some of her detractors might be as a consequence of anything she's done. She can't comprehend that--it doesn't fit with the godly woman image that she works so hard to project in the minds of her followers.

As to Karen's doctrine, where 'sin is not sin' if your motives are based in love: First of all, our consciences are never perfectly formed so that we can be 100% aware of all our motives. Secondly, our motives may appear to be good, but we can still do grave injury to others out of ignorance and insensitivity. People who lack empathy are humans with a malformed conscience, inasmuch as they are almost totally ignorant and insensitive to the emotional states of other human beings. What they know about is how to manage superficial impressions.

Karen cannot hear her conscience speak of sin or transgression because it is dumb. Her conscience is deaf and cannot be pricked by a conviction that she has done injury to others. This is why she cannot repent. And what of free-will and grace in all this? I don't know. It strikes me as a case of being totally given over to a spirit of delusion. She is, after all, David Berg's soul mate.