The Sin of Empathy: Compassion and Its Counterfeits

by Joe Rigney

In the second example, the empathetic observer seeks to affirm the victim’s feelings and joins the victim in the problem. “Suffering together” takes priority over problem-solving.

When empathy is unhitched from the Truth, it becomes an idol and a god. And feelings create tyrannical idols and gods.

Untethered empathy shipwrecks Christian lives. Indeed, it creates moral failure wherever it resides. Untethered empathy is not Christian love.

empathy has become a sacred cow, one which allows the least mature and most reactive members of a community to hijack the community’s agenda.3

So let’s begin with the challenge of definition.

Sympathy willingly joins with sufferers in their pain. Empathy makes their suffering our own in a more universal and totalizing way.