The Sin of Empathy: Compassion and Its Counterfeits

by Joe Rigney

And given the prevalence of appeals to empathy in our society, it’s vital that we learn to distinguish good from bad, healthy from toxic, the virtue of compassion from the sin of empathy.

Friedman argued that, in recent years, 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 Needless to say, I found

On the one hand, the Scriptures command us to have sympathy and a tender heart (1 Pet. 3:8). Paul tells us to clothe ourselves in compassion (Col. 3:12; literally, “bowels of mercy”). He tells the Philippians that he yearns for them “with the affection of Christ” (Phil. 1:8). The Greek word for “affection” here, splankna, connotes a depth of feeling, loving someone from the gut. According to Paul, such affection and sympathy are bonding agents, enabling us to be single-minded and in one accord (Phil. 2:1).

On the other hand, the Bible contains passages like this: If your brother, the son of your mother, or your son or your daughter or the wife you embrace or your friend who is as your own soul entices you secretly, saying, “Let us go and serve other gods,” which neither you nor your fathers have known, some of the gods of the peoples who are around you, whether near you or far off from you, from the one end of the earth to the other, you shall not yield to him or listen to him, nor shall your eye pity him, nor shall you spare him, nor shall you conceal him. But you shall kill him. Your hand shall be first against him to put him to death, and afterward the hand of all the people. (Deut. 13:6–9) In this passage, we are forbidden to show pity or compassion on those who would entice us to idolatry.

The NIV’s translation decision reflects a broader cultural shift away from sympathy and toward empathy. At one level, this is a very small change, the substitution of one prefix for another. “Sympathy” (and its Latin equivalent, “compassion”) literally means “suffering with” (sym + pathos in Greek, com + passio in Latin; throughout this book, I will use sympathy and compassion interchangeably). “Empathy,” on the other hand, means “suffering in.”

In 1955, Reader’s Digest defined the term as “the ability to appreciate the other person’s feelings without yourself becoming so emotionally involved that your judgment is affected.”1

Empathy is a fundamentally squishy term. Like many broad and complicated concepts, empathy can mean many things. Even the researchers who study it do not always say what they mean, or measure empathy in the same way in their studies—and they definitely do not agree on a definition. In fact, there are stark contradictions: what one researcher calls empathy is not empathy to another.

An empathetic person is able to “put themselves in another’s shoes.” This cognitive understanding of empathy is sometimes called “perspective-taking.”

happy, I’m happy. If they are sad, I’m sad. The affectional definition of empathy is called “emotion-sharing.”

Finally, empathy may refer not to sharing the same emotion as another person but instead to the warm feelings we have for those in distress (under this definition, empathy is sometimes equated with compassion or sympathy).

Empathy includes perspective-taking, by which Brown means recognizing someone’s perspective as “their truth.” It “stays out of judgment,” recognizing emotion in other people, and then communicating that recognition. Empathy is a “sacred space” in which we join people in their darkness and refuse to find silver linings in their affliction.

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

Alastair Roberts has distinguished empathy from compassion in this way: empathy is often fundamentally or primarily oriented to the feelings of sufferers; compassion (or sympathy) is fundamentally or primarily oriented to their good.

Sympathy, on the other hand, is fundamentally responsive. It maintains enough emotional space to consider the picture as a whole and not get lost in the immediate acuteness of the suffering. As a result, it is able to take sober-minded and carefully considered action to address others’ pain.

If a sufferer is sinking in quicksand, an empathetic helper jumps in after them with both feet. A sympathetic helper, on the other hand, steps into the quicksand with one foot while keeping the other firmly planted on the shore (there’s the emotional boundary).

the virtue of compassion (or sympathy) is the habitual inclination to share the suffering and pain of the hurting that moves us to relieve their suffering and pursue their ultimate good. Like courage, it has a double vision. It sees the objective affliction and the subjective misery of a sufferer, and it resolves to join them in their pain. At the same time, it remains anchored to what is good and thus desires to relieve their suffering by pursuing their true well-being.

empathy is an excess of compassion, when our identification with and sharing of the emotions of others overwhelms our minds and sweeps us off our feet. Empathy loses sight of the ultimate good, both for ourselves and for the hurting.

And this untethering is precisely our challenge. As Chesterton put it: The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful.9

Or, in Lewis’s restatement, “love begins to be a demon the moment he begins to be a god.”1 Lewis is concerned that human love tends to claim for itself a divine authority that overrides all other obligations. It demands unconditional allegiance and thereby becomes a demon that destroys both us and itself.

The passion of pity is simply “an ache.” It leads men to concede what should not be conceded. Under its influence, we surrender the truth out of misguided compassion for the hurting; we flatter others rather than speak the truth.

want to argue that a community in the grip of empathy winds up being characterized by three traits: cowardice, indifference, and cruelty.

The issue is whether the sensitivities and concerns of the most reactive and least mature members of a community (family, church, business, etc.) should be allowed to set the agenda.

I believe that the increasing popularity of empathy over the past few decades is symptomatic of the herding/togetherness force characteristic of an anxious society.3

But it makes feelings more important than boundaries. It’s a very late concept, you know . . . Came into English about 1922 actually. At first I didn’t pay too much attention to it, but then I began to realize that by getting everyone to substitute empathy for compassion—feeling in supposedly being better than feeling with—I saw that I could generally frustrate the Creator’s plan for an evolving response to challenge because everyone would stay focused on one another instead of themselves.6

Emotional blackmail says, “If I feel hurt by you, you are guilty.” There is no defense. The hurt person has become God. His emotion has become judge and jury. Truth does not matter. All that matters is the sovereign suffering of the aggrieved. It is beyond question. This emotional device is a great evil.

Thus, a recent spate of articles has noted that an increase in empathy, far from building connection, seems to be joined with increased polarization and tribalism.18 One

Even a good emotion, pity, if not controlled by charity and justice, leads through anger to cruelty. Most atrocities are stimulated by accounts of the enemy’s atrocities; and pity for the oppressed classes, when separated from the moral law as a whole, leads by a very natural process to the unremitting brutalities of a reign of terror.22

In our intense cultural battles, conservative Christians are often reminded that because we must love our enemies and show the meekness of Christ, we should, therefore, avoid “culture-warring” or “politicizing the faith.” Rather, we are told, we need to be “winsome” and find a way to transcend the divisions of our day. We are to lay down our rights, for the “world is watching.” Any pursuit of power will, supposedly, discredit the church’s public witness. Any attempt to “win” is characterized by our opponents as a mere power-grab and selfish pursuit of privileges. Critics claim that such pursuits of political victory reveal that we have made politics superior to our faith, that we instrumentalize the faith for partisan ends. They argue that, in so doing, we may win the world, but we definitely lose our souls. . . . The winsome framework inhibits our ability to act in accord with proper political prudence. This tricks us into thinking that we need to highlight the flaws in all sides with equal airtime or to put all issues on the same level, thus resulting in false moral equivalencies on issues and strategies, producing a crippling inability to recognize and publicly admit when there is moral asymmetry between contemporary sides and among the issues themselves.9

In all of these cases, biblical virtues withered under the progressive gaze. Clarity degenerated into selective nuance and misdirected boldness, compassion degenerated into untethered empathy, kindness degenerated into winsome coddling, and a desire for a good reputation degenerated into man-pleasing and man-fearing. Candor and honesty were smothered beneath the progressive gaze.

Christians began to censor themselves and became reluctant to challenge woke ideologies, to question specious proposals related to race, sex, and abuse, and to speak clearly about progressive sins. All of this was partly out of a desire to avoid alienating their target audience (progressives), partly out of fear of Advocates, and partly out of pressure from other respectable Christians.

The compromised leaders and soft-hearted Christians overcome faithful resistance to the progressive drift using sticks and carrots, waving the banner of mission and evangelism and (subtly) threatening ostracism from respectable Christian circles. And frequently men who are otherwise faithful will go along with it all because “So-and-so is a good guy” and “I don’t want to rock the boat.” In this way, the progressive gaze comes to dominate, not because every Christian leader is consciously setting out to appease progressives directly, but because corporately, we’ve absorbed progressive categories, sensibilities, and hostilities by osmosis. The influence is indirect and atmospheric. As one friend put it, “A man drinking water downstream may have no idea that the river’s source is polluted, but that doesn’t prevent him from being poisoned by it.”

Believe that the Scriptures are both true and good for the world. Speak boldly, clearly, courageously, with no muttering and mincing of words. Refuse to be embarrassed by anything the Bible says.

God’s ministers—those who serve in God’s sanctuary—must be “jealous with his jealousy” (Num. 25:11). Our zeal for God’s holiness must supersede our natural love for our family and friends and neighbors.

Empathy feeds the competitive victimhood mentality that is rampant in our society. In an empathetic society, victimhood confers invulnerability. Victims (both real and imagined) must be affirmed and validated and must not be questioned, challenged, or made to feel uncomfortable in any way, lest they be re-traumatized. Moreover, they are absolved of all responsibility for their actions, and they can count on others to excuse all manner of behavior out of a misguided sense of compassion.

the first imperative is to love the indicative. The first command is to love God and the way that he has made the world. In this case, that means gladly embracing, without embarrassment, the reality that men and women are wonderfully different and complementary, and that these differences are relevant in all areas of life. What’s more, it means celebrating (again without shame or embarrassment) the biblical teaching that accounts for, clarifies, and further grounds the reality of what it means to be men and women. We are equally made in God’s image, yes, but men are the head, and women are the glory.

You wish we lived in a day when the cultural battles centered on the doctrine of the Trinity or the historicity of Christ’s resurrection or some other theological doctrine. And in a way they do. Beneath our battles over manhood, womanhood, the family, and sexuality is the fundamental question: Who is our God? Are our feelings and passions and desires our god? Or is Jesus, the crucified and risen Messiah, the Lord of Heaven and Earth? So plant your flag on the Lordship of Christ.

develop the kind of Christian fortitude that will enable you to endure the hurt feelings of priestesses and lady pastors, as well as the agitation and pressure of the nice guys. Cultivate the moral strength and stamina to resist the inevitable emotional sabotage and manipulation while offering true care and compassion.

compassion is too important, too valuable, and too powerful to leave in the hands of the empathetic. We must not be like Luther’s drunken peasants, falling off on the apathetic and aloof side of the horse because others have fallen off on the side of untruthful pity and untethered empathy.

When faced with suffering, we must weep with those who weep (Rom. 12:15). Tethered compassion is not tepid compassion. We must join them in their sorrow. In doing so, we should labor to communicate four truths.

First, “This is hard.” This is an objective statement about the situation. It’s an acknowledgement of the difficulty and depth of the pain. Second, “I know you feel that way.” We communicate that we see and recognize their emotions, acknowledging their felt reality. Third, “I’m with you in this.” This is gospel presence, and it includes some measure of emotion-sharing, but without necessarily endorsing or affirming all that they are experiencing. By sharing the emotions of the afflicted (including their negative and painful emotions), we seek to build connection, to build trust, to cross the divide that so often isolates the sufferer from everyone else. Fourth, “I have hope.” In other words, we are tethered to Christ, clinging to him for dear life. The ultimate goal of emotional connection is to bring the sufferer to Christ so that he can comfort and heal them. Emotion-sharing serves compassion, and compassion moves us to loving action, just as compassion so often moved Jesus to act to help the hurting in the gospels (Matt. 9:36; 14:14; 15:32).

Whether it’s illness (cancer, stroke, unexplained sickness, chronic pain); whether it’s the death of someone we love (parent, child, sibling, friend); whether it’s persecution, opposition, or enmity; whether it’s anxiety, doubt, depression—here’s what we know: Jesus is able to fix this. He’s omnipotent. We know he could fix anything, if he so chose. In his compassion, Jesus has fixed these sorts of things for others. He did heal the blind man. He did heal the official’s son. That’s what Mary and Martha want. And that’s what we want too. Jesus loves me. And yet, the illness is still here, the death still happened, the persecution has intensified, and the darkness has not lifted.

This is so important to remember. Yes, the love of Jesus waits. It even rejoices in waiting. But he still meets us in our sorrow. When we come to him with our confusion and our questions—“Where were you? Why didn’t you do something?”—he doesn’t rebuke us. He says, “I know. Grief is great. I’m with you and for you. Bring your confusion. Yes, I waited. And I’m still with you because I love you.”

The issue with “the sin of empathy” is that few people in the modern world can imagine empathy being sinful or negative. It is an incorruptible virtue, and thus, as Friedman noted, questioning its value is considered irreverent, if not sacrilegious. But it’s precisely empathy’s inviolable status that makes it such a powerful mask for corruption. At this point, it’s worth

Mercy, detached from Justice, grows unmerciful. That is the important paradox. As there are plants which will flourish only in mountain soil, so it appears that Mercy will flower only when it grows in the crannies of the rock of Justice: transplanted to the marshlands of mere Humanitarianism, it becomes a man-eating weed, all the more dangerous because it is still called by the same name as the mountain variety.

the untethered and corrupt version is more dangerous because it is still called by the same name as the virtue. This is as true of empathy as it is of mercy. Empathy might refer to simple emotion-sharing. Well and good. Or empathy might refer to total immersion in the feelings of another, the power tool in the hands of the sensitive. The common term is what creates the confusion.

“Quite so. People rarely advertise their sins as such. Envy hides behind a mask of ‘equality and justice,’ greed behind a facade of ‘blessing and prosperity,’ laziness behind the desire to respect other people’s space, busybody-ness behind the call to love and sacrifice for others, pride and superiority behind gratitude (‘I thank you, God, that I’m not like that man . . .’).” The Devil loves to hide real sins inside innocent phrases, and especially inside virtues. And like Lewis on the shift from Charity to Unselfishness, I believe that the shift from Compassion to Empathy is “of more than philological significance.”5 As a result, it has seemed good