The Sin of Empathy Quotes

“But the emotional boundaries and separation implied in sympathy and compassion can serve another purpose. They allow the comforter to maintain the kind of stability and sober-mindedness necessary to actually help the sufferer.”
― Joe Rigney, The Sin of Empathy: Compassion and Its Counterfeits

“Joe Rigney is not against empathy—the ability to appreciate and respect the feelings of another—but he does take issue with untethered empathy—an emotive connection that exceeds and overpowers reality and good judgment.”
― Joe Rigney, The Sin of Empathy: Compassion and Its Counterfeits

“Sympathy willingly joins with sufferers in their pain. Empathy makes their suffering our own in a more universal and totalizing way.”
― Joe Rigney, The Sin of Empathy: Compassion and Its Counterfeits

“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.”
― Joe Rigney, The Sin of Empathy: Compassion and Its Counterfeits

“When empathy is unhitched from the Truth, it becomes an idol and a god. And feelings create tyrannical idols and gods.”
― Joe Rigney, The Sin of Empathy: Compassion and Its Counterfeits

“When the broad evangelical church embraces untethered empathy, it renders Christians incapable of thinking through basic categories: Does pro-life mean protecting infants in the womb or illegals at the Southern border?”
― Joe Rigney, The Sin of Empathy: Compassion and Its Counterfeits

“What’s more, sufferers frequently make unreasonable demands of those who are trying to help them. After we’ve climbed down into the pit with them, they demand that we agree there is no way out. They may even demand that we destroy the ladder we are offering them. And empathy, in its zeal to stay out of judgment, is often willing to burn the ladder in the name of fueling connection.”
― Joe Rigney, The Sin of Empathy: Compassion and Its Counterfeits

“To mix metaphors, that slippery slope is a one-way train with four stops. Stop 1: “I’m Not That Kind of Complementarian.” Stop 2: “I’m Neither Complementarian Nor Egalitarian.” Stop 3: “I’m Egalitarian.” Stop 4: “Sodomy Is Cool.”
― Joe Rigney, The Sin of Empathy: Compassion and Its Counterfeits

“These women have come with an unquenchable grief. The kind that forth from silence into tears and lamentations. These lamentations ease the heart only by straining and exacerbating it more and more. Such grief does not even want consolation. It is nourished by the sense of its unquenchable-ness. Lamentations are simply the need to constantly irritate the wound.”
― Joe Rigney, The Sin of Empathy: Compassion and Its Counterfeits

“Lean into the sorrow, but remember the goodness and kindness of God.
And in time, weeping with remembrance will turn lamentation into quiet joy and bitter tears into tears of quiet tenderness. Weeping lasts for the night. And the night may last a long time. But joy comes in the morning.”
― Joe Rigney, The Sin of Empathy: Compassion and Its Counterfeits