Dear Second Thinkers:

From time to time, an experience occurs that causes me some regret for a musing I’ve previously written. While I will not make a full review of my erroneous confidences, today I am thinking I failed in being too dismissive of empathy. To quickly summarize my empathic dismissal, I expressed concern that empathic feelings were replacing compassionate action, and as Christians we are not compelled to merely feel bad for those suffering—we are also supposed to do them some practical good. (You may read my previous and now somewhat regrettable discussion of the topic here.)

What has compelled me to rethink the whole issue is something I never imagined, and that is a cadre of policymakers completely void of empathic guidance. In the past, public