Play on Words: Empathic vs. Empathetic

I found this article from The Grammarist to be very interesting:

"Empathic is a variant of empathetic, which means characterized by empathy. Some American dictionaries list empathic as the standard word and empathetic as the variant, and the shorter word is older than the longer one. But empathetic has prevailed—probably due to analogy with sympathetic—and is now about five times as common as empathic in news publications from throughout the English-speaking world."

I'm left pondering the significance of a change in language, if empathic were used in popular culture instead of empathetic.  Here are some examples of the use of the word empathetic from the same article above:

"His adversary, the Lorient coach Christian Gourcuff, tried to sound empathetic but probably made things worse. [New York Times]"
"Gran, the tough-but-fair warden in a juvenile detention centre, was one of Lilley’s finest and most empathetic creations. [Sydney Morning Herald]"

We all have the capacity to be empathic to varying degrees, and the extent of our empathy also varies by situation.  Some days we are all more tuned in than on other days.  Having the gift of empathy, the God given gift, we would generally expect to entail being more tuned in than the norm for our population.  It can venture into the realm of spiritual experience if we are so called.

As a Christian empath, I feel the need to explain that being empathic does not have to involve the supernatural - which I mean to be a spiritual nature other than God and His creation.  The next time you think of someone who you would describe as empathetic (or possibly sympathetic), consider whether empathic would apply.