New Warhorn Media post by Tim Bayly:
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The nationalists say empathy is evil, but sympathy is good. Empathy is untethered to what is good while sympathy is tethered to what is good. Empathy sucks you in and manipulates you while sympathy leaves you independent and, thus, able to assist. Empathy weakens the strong and leaves the weak in their sin while sympathy motivates the strong to use their strength to improve the weak. You get the idea.
Secular psychologists flip it around. They say (quick Google search) that sympathy is bad because it puts the stronger in a position to judge the sufferer while empathy brings the stronger into a close understanding and connection with the sufferer (judgment-free zone).
So, what say you to this distinction?
I’d say most of us overestimate our ability to be helpful to those who are suffering and our unwillingness to weep with those who weep isn’t helped by calling empathy sin.
I’d also say that God’s discipline has increased my ability to empathize and therefore has made me much more sympathetic (if we grant the nationalists’ definitions)!
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All I say is that empathy is no sin. There are endless discussions of empathy and related words, and each new discussion is opposite from the one before it. Nevermind. We know what empathy and its abuse are, and that’s all that’s needed. Retitle the book and stop the bombast. Love,
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They’re exegeting secular categories rather than scripture. The incarnation is intrinsically empathetic, therefore this distinction cannot be valid.
Granted, empathy was weaponised during BLM/Me-Too, but that hardly justifies a sub-human theology from the nationalists. They’re the last crew who need to be discarding empathy…
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Let’s not forget about Jesus’s crucifixion, too.
“He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Cor. 5:21).
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A new book: The Empathetic Trinity
For those of you who’d already read this article, just now I added this postscript:
Postscript: At breakfast this morning, my wife talked about Christian Nationalists’ redefinition of “sympathy” and “empathy.” This redefinition of words was the center of Federal Vision and continues to be central to their promotion of paedocommunion. Dozens of words with a long and well-established history across five centuries of Reformed theology were all redefined, and it is the same with paedocommunion: the words of 1Corinthians 11 are redefined.
Currently, with empathy, all the church needed was instruction in how sin can corrupt both sympathy and empathy, and what to do to keep them good and pure. It’s simple and straightforward.
Beware of men who redefine words::
Remind them of these things, and solemnly charge them in the presence of God not to wrangle about words, which is useless and leads to the ruin of the hearers. (2Timothy 2:14)
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Thank you for this article. I remember back in 2019 when Man Rampant, and the episode of The Sin of Empathy was rolled out on Amazon Prime, I was paying attention, the masculine presentation was compelling and I had listened to CrossPolitic for a bit. Between their No Quarter November campaign and the video series, it seemed to me to be the roll-out of Canon Press and Joe Rigney to the masses.
We watched the series, and my wife was put off by the Rigney episode. These aside from being The case seemed compelling to me as I had been studying biblical counseling and it seemed to supplement that training. But looking back I can see that removing empathy from any kind of help leaves you with little more than sterile empty words. Probably the worse thing we can do sterilize Gods word like medicine in a clinic.
Glad it was helpful, brother. Love,
Dear brothers,
Have you read Joe Rigney’s book? It’s quite good. I also had him on my podcast a while back to talk about this issue. https://youtu.be/A0OfWLi_vso?si=ClxHwAoj_49Fbn82
His argument is more thought out than your critique implies.
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His argument is “empathy is sin.” Period. This is highly marketable, but not true. Men need to speak the truth, but I repeat myself. Love,
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I take it you haven’t read the book?
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Puh-leeze, Joseph.
One doesn’t need to read the whole book to understand that the entire world is hearing that empathy is a sin. Period. Full stop. The title says it. The articles say it. The marketing says it. The reason it’s remotely interesting is because they are intentionally communicating that.
But since you claim to understand better than everybody else what is as plain as the nose on the end of my face, let me provide some direct quotes from the author that make it indisputably clear that he is attempting to make empathy into a sin, just as the title says. Channeling Screwtape, he wrote way back in 2019,
The fact that you had never heard the idea that empathy was a sin is enough to turn me into a centipede… our armies have fought for decades to twist the Enemy’s virtue of compassion into its counterfeit, empathy
For you to say that he says more than that is to say that the sun is yellow and water is blue and grass is green.
But for you to claim he is not saying that means you should stop whining here and go argue with the author you claim to represent better than he does himself in his own words.
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Joseph, pls feel free to “take” anything you want, brother…
@JosephSpurgeon, what do you want from those of us here?
I can appreciate sympathy for Rigney’s ideas, just as I have great sympathy for Wilson’s ideas and influence. But it seems you’re unwilling for anyone here to correct those whom you have found helpful. Wilson made brash claims about ‘masks are idolatry’. This rhetoric precipitated division in churches which were trying to shepherd Christ’s sheep during extremely complicated times. Wolfe has misused Aquinas (and classical orthodoxy) to reach absurd - and again, divisive - conclusions. Now Rigney comes under fire for oversimplifying something that is much more complicated than his own title allows, and at a time when pastors desperately need to be recovering a better understanding of compassion rather than fleeing from it. But instead of engaging productively with the critiques levelled here, you come to their defence. Sychophantically. Again and again.
Is it too much to ask you to be even handed with both your criticism and your praise? Are we allowed to appreciate aspects of Moscow and also point out the clear errors? More to the point, will you allow yourself to comprehend criticism of those whom you count allies, not just those here?
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That said, reviewing a whole book rather than just its title might be a more profitable - not to say charitable - exercise.
Won’t someone here please respond to what I wrote? Man up and defend Rigney and his masses in their declaration that empathy is a sin.
It’s not just his title. It’s his thesis. Why avoid the issue?
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A better understanding of empathy, or is empathy now a sin? In other words, is your “compassion” pointing to empathy?
Rigney and his definition of “sympathy” aside, I’m genuinely curious what y’all think about how the word “empathy” isn’t in the Bible, but the word “sympathy” is?
If the language of God as masculine “father” is worth fighting to preserve in our culture, would not also the language of Christ as “sympathetic” be worth preserving? (Again, the original Biblical use of the word, not Rigney’s particular definition insofar as it diverges from the Biblical definition.) Granted, the word “sympathy” has a negative connotation, but so does the word “father” in our culture, and so does “effeminate,” for that matter.
Perhaps there’s something I’m missing that makes one word worth preserving but not the other?
“For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.”
Hebrews 4:15 ESV
“Finally, all of you, have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind.”
1 Peter 3:8 ESV
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Dear sister, the definition of the Greek word συμπαθής (translated “sympathy”) and the modern English word “empathy” are as follows. Greek lexicons define συμπαθής as “suffering or feeling the like with another” while English dictionaries define empathy as “the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.” If anything, the standard definitions of these words would flip the narrative of empathy being a sin on its head.
What the Christian Nationalists are trying to do is change the definitions of these words. Many are willing, but I’ve warned against it.
This has nothing to do with God’s inspired words of Scripture. Given the lexicons’ definition of Scripture’s συμπαθής, that use is an endorsement of the virtue of the English virtue of “empathy.” Love,
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