17h ago

Is empathy a sin? Some conservative Christians argue it can be

WASHINGTON (AP) — Empathy is usually regarded as a virtue, a key to human decency and kindness. And yet, with increasing momentum, voices on the Christian right are preaching that it has become a vice.

For them, empathy is a cudgel for the left: It can manipulate caring people into accepting all manner of sins according to a conservative Christian perspective, including abortion access, LGBTQ+ rights, illegal immigration and certain views on social and racial justice.

“Empathy becomes toxic when it encourages you to affirm sin, validate lies or support destructive policies,” said Allie Beth Stuckey, author of “Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion.”

Stuckey, host of the popular podcast “Relatable,” is one of two evangelicals who published books within the past year making Christian arguments against some forms of empathy.

The other is Joe Rigney, a professor and pastor who wrote “The Sin of Empathy: Compassion and its Counterfeits.” It was published by Canon Press, an affiliate of Rigney’s conservative denomination, which counts Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth among its members.

These anti-empathy arguments gained traction in the early months of President Donald Trump’s second term, with his flurry of executive orders that critics denounced as lacking empathy.

As foreign aid stopped and more deportations began, Trump’s then-adviser Elon Musk told podcaster Joe Rogan: “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.”

Even Vice President JD Vance, a Catholic convert, framed the idea in his own religious terms, invoking the concept of ordo amoris, or order of love. Within concentric circles of importance, he argued the immediate family comes first and the wider world last — an interpretation that then-Pope Francis rejected.

While their anti-empathy arguments have differences, Stuckey and Rigney have audiences that are firmly among Trump’s Christian base.

“Could someone use my arguments to justify callous indifference to human suffering? Of course,” Rigney said, countering that he still supports measured Christ-like compassion. “I think I’ve put enough qualifications.”

Historian Susan Lanzoni traced a century of empathy’s uses and definitions in her 2018 book “Empathy: A History.” Though it’s had its critics, she has never seen the aspirational term so derided as it is now.

It’s been particularly jarring to watch Christians take down empathy, said Lanzoni, a graduate of Harvard Divinity School.

“That’s the whole message of Jesus, right?”

Conservative @sh.itjust.works

SatansMaggotyCumFart @piefed.world

14h ago

Is empathy a sin? Some conservative Christians argue it can be

apnews.com /article/conservative-christians-sin-of-toxic-empathy-c9ab96faf99605e010f487df61d92d8f

70 comments

As a Christian, I'm utterly disgusted by how these people are perverting my religion that's supposed to be all about love for others. For your enemy, even.
Feed the poor, shelter the homeless, heal the sick, visit the imprisoned and welcome the foreigner. That's how we will be judged, according to Matthew 25.
The pervert the words of Jesus. First the Prosperity Gospel, and now this.
If Christ lived today, these people would be in line, with hammers in their hands, to nail him to a cross.
now this is actual heresy
Key ingredient if you want fascism via christian nationalism. Oh, those gas chambers? Jesus blessed them!
There's no hate like Christian... hate?
I hate the religious hypocrisy of today. Like politics, people used to have neuroplasticity. I don't know 100% of human history, but a lot. The shit that stuck and was successful was neuroplasticity in any fucking anything.
Did anyone know that during the European Black Plague, Arab nations were learning cryptography to encrypt the documents that would become their religious document? They had public libraries and free knowledge. Today we try to bomb that part of the world or encourage it to bomb themselves.
We humans are really dumb. Just learn and grow and be thankful we get to exist. Not billionaire like a douche. What's that get you? Nothing. Ever. You can own everything and have nothing.
- Propoganda as a tool is designed to target humans specifically and it is horrifying.
  Middle east still focused on education to this day. There are actual secret organizations dedicated to schools over there. It's insane people imagine average middle-eastern as an anti-intellectual.
It’s worth pointing out that empathy is different from sympathy and compassion.
Empathy is basically just understanding someone else. It doesn’t mean agreement or acceptance. Empathy is usually necessary in order to manipulate someone effectively.
That being said there is a component to empathy—sometimes called affective or emotional empathy—that reflects the phenomenon of emotional contagion, or how empathizing with someone else’s feelings can sometimes cause you to feel the same emotion on a lesser level.
Sympathy is understanding another person through shared or similar experiences.
Compassion is caring about someone.
What these Christians are talking about is the way there’s a trail from simple empathy to compassion that can cause some people to get over the bigotry and intolerance they have worked so hard to instill in them.
I have some of these Christians in my family. They are good people who have been taught rotten beliefs, and to avoid any critical thinking about said beliefs. I avoid associating with them as much as possible. Religion is a mind virus and these folks have one of the worst strains.
I had a really good preacher growing up. Probably a big part of why I don't hate all religion.
He spoke of compassion, of the teachings of the bible as he felt was to be a good person. Viewed being Christian as being like Christ as much as much as one was possible, but people fail to live up to it, that's our failings, but to believe is to still keep striving for that perfection.
2001 happened, and the hatred to Muslims came. Then one day, the preacher is talking about an extremist, one that is hated by the government, outspoken to the government, that people hated and reviled. A man from the middle east. "That is our lord and savior." You could have heard a pin drop in that room when everyone was figuring he was talking about a Muslim radical instead of Jesus. It was a call against the fear mongering, to love our neighbors even if we don't believe the same, to not assume the worst about people. He described how we usually get Jesus wrong in looks, that he'd be one of those we'd be persecuting post 9/11 America because of his looks, showing a magazine cover where a group of anthropologists reconstructed what Jesus likely looked like based on what they knew of the people of that region of that time, had the magazine on display in the hall where people gathered after worship.
It wasn't a year later that he was removed from being the preacher of that church. Probably a big part of why I'm not a believer anymore.
- I think he won the best preacher's pulpit, one no corrupt church leadership can take away: Your heart. It will beat to his words, for many more decades to come.
- So this is only vaguely related but the look of white Jesus is probably based off of Alexander the great through a somewhat roundabout mess. Basically the Colossus of Rhodes was most likely modelled after Alexander this is based off of some surviving contemporary artifacts of Helios which the Colossus of Rhodes was a statue of, cut forward a couple centuries and due to a weird mess of synchronizing religious imagery and coding you end up with Jesus as being portrayed as Helios or at least based off of the Greek god. This is also where the halo most likely comes from, it's probably derived from the sun beams Helio was portrayed with which sometimes had a halo of light.
  
  Okay, that is cool!
  I would like to subscribe to more obscure connections of modern iconography to unrelated mythology.
If people knew S.S. Jesus was healing leppers, then there would be no incentive for people to avoid leprosy.
-Supply-Side Jesus for the uninitiated.
Matthew 22:37-39 NIV. Jesus replied: “ 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. ' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.
Matthew 25:40-46 “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’
“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.
For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink,
I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’
“They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’
“He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’
“Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”
These aren't even out of context. But I admit these are copied straight from the woke red bits.
But perhaps Kropotkin wrote it better. Mutual Aid,1902: "...in all these scenes of animal life which passed before my eyes, I saw mutual aid and mutual support carried on to an extent which made me suspect in it a feature of the greatest importance for the maintenance of life, the preservation of each species, and its further evolution."
- Kropotkin is my favorite Santa. One of his most eloquent quotes. Thank you.
If this lot encountered Jesus here on earth today, they would deport him
- jesus can just tell his daddy and the angels to smite them, send 7 of them.
- They're the same people that crucified him in the first place.
  
  Nonsense. They would've just sent him to alligator auschwitz and made him eat rotten food from a bowl on the ground with his hands tied behind his back.
In other news
women are at fault for being raped because they wear revealing clothes
the Good Samaritan was wrong, because that traveller was at fault for being robbed and beaten, why else was he on the road to Jericho
“They should have tortured Jesus even harder! I woulda fucked him up!”
-Modern Far-Right Christians
This is insane
- They are. Evangelicals are seriously so fucked in the head it’s like dealing with someone out of their mind on crack. And it runs deeeeeep.
  
  the rapture is also thier creation too.
1 John 3:17
“If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person?”
- Yes but that was pre-Maga.
- You can't expect them to read so far beyond John 3:16 now can you?
  
  most of them probably dont read it all, only listens to thier televengist pastor.
  
  I don't expect them to be able to count to 16...
  
  They don’t read past Austin 3:16. That’s the only verse they live by I think.
- a brother or sister in need
  Obviously, Jesus was referring to immediate family only. Anyone outside the sacred bloodline should be killed on sight.
In the Bible they talk about how people will view the antichrist as virtuous. Jesus condemns the pharases who are the religious officials of the day, for hypocrisy. I understand when you regretfully have to disobey God's words and want to call yourself a Christian, dispite your shame. I do not understand gleefully treating the sorjourner as an animal then chanting his name like you mean it. I call them antichrist-ians.
- These jokers had like 2000 years of warning of what the antichrist would be like and still fell for it. Unreal.
  I'm not religious, so this is in jest, but it's still eerie.
  
  Trump doesn’t tick all the boxes of the Antichrist (ex. he isn’t universally loved) but the Bible also says there will be many antichrists leading up to the Antichrist and he is certainly one of the them.
- The Pharisees were a competing group of reformers.
In order to justify their own bigotry, they seem to be literally abandoning the central teachings of the key teacher in Christianity.
When Jesus was asked "what is the most important part of the law", the two part response was love . To love God wholly, and to love others as we love ourselves.
When later asked how Christians would be judged, Jesus said that we would be judged as if we had done to Jesus whatever we do to the least among us.
I don't see how it is possible to reconcile bigotry with either of these teachings. I guess they can twist themselves into rhetorical knots and try, but it seems way easier to just decide to love everyone and leave it to God to judge us for whatever our sins may be.
Religions have all way overstayed their welcome. Time to go.
- That’s kind of what this all is. There’s less interest in religion so when a political party hijacks it and calls their bullshit a religion, it goes unchallenged. There’s only people who still care about religion are the control freaks who want to weaponize it.
Jesus rather specifically says to take care of the poor and the widowed, etc.
Having no empathy is also one of the things that mark the evils of the end times.
- Jesus rather specifically says to take care of the poor and the widowed, etc.
  Churchgoers have long-since taken that to mean "poor and widowed who are members of that church"
  
  Back when I was a kid, my family's church used the 'god cares for the sparrows' verse to push prosperity gospel. They're "taking care" of the poor and widowed by providing them a path to god's grace, which is inseparably coupled with financial security. If you're going to church and not rich, they say you're still too sinful.
NPD is literally the lack of empathy and compassion. Why would we encourage people to be objectively worse people by discouraging compassion?
- Well it’s fine to have compassion… for the right people!
  The whole thing is framed to make it out that these people are empathetic and caring, and that trait they have is being abused by the wrong people. Refusing to empathize with those people doesn’t mean they are no longer empathetic!!
  (Total BS, obviously. But that’s the loophole that they use to make this argument.)
  
  Something that really pisses me off about this is that empathy can absolutely be exploited by bad actors. Empathizing with the wrong people can be harmful. But they've defined "wrong people" as "minorities" and that's the fucked up part.
Being hateful bigots is also a sin.
Empathy was dead in the church when they didn't back BLM. That's when I lost my religion.
- Many churches did back BLM and still do. There are actually many who actually read the Bible and don't just listen to MAGA nutjobs and cultish leaders. They're just not as loud (that's kinda the point... The Bible talks about that, too)
- Ima atheist but I recognize many churches did and many did not and many were indifferent.
Religion is the absolute seed of all that's wrong here.
- No. (Organized) Religion is just a symptom of it.
  The issue is fascism and totalitarianism. Religion is just one of the many methods that The State has historically used to control people and enrich itself. Most people are aware of the idea that "don't eat meat on Fridays but DO eat fish that we have monetary investment in" was a thing. But lent itself did a LOT to sell olive oil (because it wasn't animal based) which... let's just say that there is a reason that olive trees are so intrinsically tied to "the holy land".
  And same here. Empathy is a great thing to preach when you are building a community. But "empathy for the wrong people is a sin" is a great way to mobilize against said "wrong people".
  But if it wasn't religion it would be something else. All the people across the river are redheads so redheadedness is an indication they are unclean and diseased but also their wives and daughters are hot so... Shit like phrenology was used to mobilize "science" against The Other. And so forth.
What we don’t understand, we fear. What we fear, we judge as evil. What we judge as evil, we attempt to control. And what we cannot control…we attack.
I might be an atheist's atheist, but if you are anti-empathy you aren't christian, you just like old testament for it's prejudice and horror.
Stuckey, host of the popular podcast “Relatable,” is one of two evangelicals who published books within the past year making Christian arguments against some forms of empathy.
Naming podcasts sarcastically has officially gone too far.
It is plain and simple in the Bible: empathy is a function of skin color. The whiter the skin, the more empathy is a virtue; the darker, the more it is a sin. I don't understand what's so difficult about it.
- 🎵 "I believe that in 1978 God changed his mind about black people!" 🎵
  
  [Sound of ominous horror film music]
Disgusting
I can't understand how these people can still look at themselves in the mirror. I guess I'm not very empathetic.
- most of them are probably attending televengical churches, and only hearing a curated version of a bible verse.
- I see the joke you’re making but also if you genuinely want to understand and possibly gain some empathy for these people, I’d suggest reading The Cult of Trump. It’s from 2019 so it doesn’t include a ton of awful stuff that’s happened since then, but it does a great job of contextualizing how people can fall into these belief patterns.
  It was written by a man who fell into a cult in his early 20s, found his way out, and has built his career around helping others out of cults and cult-like mindsets.
It's dumb to use that word anyway.
Describe the process of doing it and you force the listener to do empathy once just to understand you, which reinforces that brain pathway. This whole conversation is an easy, massive win in the hands of any even slightly competent communicator.
Why are we arguing with religious nutcases over something trivial?

70 comments