I’m new to the “empathy is sin” debate, which has been bouncing around for years in the rightwing Christian echo chamber.
It’s gained new traction in the wider culture recently as rabble rousers such as Elon Musk and JD Vance have pushed variations of it.
“I believe in empathy, like, I think you should care about other people, but you need to have empathy for, for civilization as a whole, and not commit to a civilizational suicide,” Musk said on Joe Rogan’s podcast in February. “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.”
Erich Bridges
Wow. Who knew caring about others and trying to understand them was our cultural downfall in the West?
We’ve dominated the world for generations, but we’re just too nice. Maybe we should go back to divide-and-conquer colonialism and ruthless economic exploitation. That’ll show those mean old Third Worlders taking advantage of us.
For his part, Vance took a slightly more nuanced approach in a FOX interview in January, referring to the empathy debate and the Medieval Catholic idea of ordo amoris, or “order of love.” Vance’s interpretation: “You love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country. And then after that, you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world.”
Sounds reasonable, right? Most of us take this approach more than we’d like to admit. Prices are high. The bills need to be paid. There are so many needs out there, who knows which ones to address? Compassion fatigue is real.
“This ‘order of love’ is the death not only of global charitable work but of Christian missions.”
Carried to its inevitable conclusion, however, this “order of love” is the death not only of global charitable work but of Christian missions.
As a missions advocate for more than 40 years, I’ve heard countless versions of this statement: “We can’t be sending missionaries and money to faraway places right now when we’ve got so many problems here. Maybe when we’ve solved all the problems here, we’ll think about world missions.”
That contradicts the command of Christ, who told us to be witnesses in Jerusalem (our town), Judea and Samaria (our nation/region) and the ends of the earth — simultaneously (Acts 1:8).
Never in church history have we had so many opportunities and resources to do exactly what Christ commands. And yet Christian nationalists tell us to pull back behind spiritual, mental and physical walls and hoard our gifts instead of sharing them. Satanic thinking, much?
Spiritual isolationism
Vance doesn’t care about Christian missions, of course. He is using ordo amoris to advance his disastrous campaign to return America to 1930s-style isolationism, which enabled the Nazis to seize much of Europe and bring on World War II. But spiritual isolationism is even more destructive than the military/political variety.
The rightwing Christian attack on empathy isn’t just another cudgel to beat up on supposed liberal manipulation of emotional pleas to help the hurting as a way to advance leftist causes. It’s an attack on compassion itself as a Christian virtue — especially compassion for the poor, immigrants and other marginalized groups outside your immediate sphere. And it comes with a heapin’ helpin’ of toxic masculinity and contempt for the “feminized” role of emotion in altruism.
Alan Bean wrote an excellent analysis for BNG, “Here’s Who’s Behind the War on Empathy,” posted April 1. He investigated the Christian nationalists behind the attack, such as Joe Rigney and Doug Wilson, and their secular compatriots, such as Gad Saad and Musk. One passage in Bean’s piece jumped out at me:
“Spiritual isolationism is even more destructive than the military/political variety.”
If empathy opens us to ungodly ways of looking at the world (its critics assert), our biblical convictions are in peril. This point lies at the heart of Allie Beth Stuckey’s Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion. We can’t care about hurting people outside the borders of God’s family without damaging innocent people, she says. Care about pregnant women and you end up murdering babies. Care about mass incarceration and you forget about law and order. Care about asylum seekers and you forget about hardworking Americans who lose their jobs to immigrants. Stuckey isn’t calling for a balanced, both-and approach; with her it’s either-or. In her telling, faithful Christians must harden their hearts.
Perhaps this will help you understand the callousness of so many “good Christian folks” these days. They honestly believe, whether they can articulate it or not, the culture has been hijacked by “toxic empathy,” used by the left to guilt-trip us into prioritizing people who don’t deserve it — minorities, immigrants, refugees — and who in fact weaken the culture.
The anti-feminist element? Well, empathy is a trait found more often in women than men, so it must be weak. Better to keep tough guys like Donald Trump in the White House. Better to keep pastors in muscle shirts in megachurch pulpits, reminding women their place is to listen and obey, not speak up and lead.
Jesus and empathy
Jesus Christ, the Son of God, knew something about empathy.
“For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are — yet he did not sin,” declares Hebrews 4:15. The Incarnation itself is the ultimate act of empathy:
Michael Lacy
“Now all this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet: ‘Behold, the virgin shall be with child and shall bear a Son, and they shall call his name Immanuel,’ which translated means, ‘God with us,’” says Matthew 1:22-23.
I can testify to the power of empathy in my own life in recent years. After my wife died of cancer in 2017, old friends and new ones — some of them Christian believers, some not — walked with me through grief and through the depression and alcoholism that followed. I probably wouldn’t be here without them.
My current role model for empathy in action is Michael Lacy, who leads the ministry to homeless people at my church. He’s got macho cred: He played defensive linebacker for a major college football team as a young man. Later he served in the Marines. But those aren’t the things that make him a real man.
Three times a week, I watch him listen to people in crisis and walk with them in their pain. I’ve seen him exercise amazing self-restraint, turning the other cheek when verbally cursed rather than responding in kind. That is Christ-like manhood.
I’m sure there’s such a thing as toxic empathy. But that’s not the problem we face at this cultural moment. Our problem is hardness of heart. That’s the sin we need to confess and repent of, before it’s too late.
Erich Bridges, a Baptist journalist for more than 40 years, has covered international stories and trends in many countries. He lives in Richmond, Va.
Related articles:
Here’s who’s behind the war on empathy | Analysis by Alan Bean
Why empathy is under assault today | Opinion by Rodney Kennedy
Have you heard the one about empathy being a sin?
The recovery of empathy | Opinion by Stephen Shoemaker