June 24, 2025 • 20 mins
EMPATHY HAS BEEN WEAPONIZED And there is a fantastic book about it called The Sin of Empathy: Compassion and Its Counterfeits by a fellow named Joe Rigney. Dr. Joe Rigney serves as Fellow of Theology at New Saint Andrews College and a pastor at Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho. He is the author of eight books, including Leadership and Emotional Sabotage (Canon Press, 2024) as well as The Sin of Empathy. To say his take on how our natural sympathy has been weaponized against us isn't being taken well is an understatement, as you can read in this column, but after reading the book I agree with him 100%. We need compassion, not empathy. One helps, the other enables. It's a great book and you should buy it here. It's about compassion, not empathy. He joins me at 1.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
I am very excited to talk to my next guest.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
His name is doctor Joe Rigney.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
He serves as a Fellow of Theology at the New
Saint Andrew's College. He's also a pastor at Christ Church
in Moscow in Idaho. He is the author of eight books,
including Leadership and Emotional Sabotage and the book we're talking
about today, The Sin of Empathy, Compassion and Its Counterfeits,
Doctor Ridney.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Welcome to the show. First of all, Hey, thanks for
having me, Mandy.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
I loved this book. I just told him off the air.
It took me maybe an hour and a half to read.
It's not War and Peace. It's a very simple, slim book,
but boy does it pack a punch. And I want
to just allow you to give what you must have
at this point, an elevator speech, a version of what
you're talking about that is easy to understand for my
(00:49):
listeners if.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
You would, Yeah, absolutely, I would say.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
The basic premise is that, like all good things, passion
is capable of being corrupted, and when it does, it
becomes highly destructive.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
So maybe one of the simplest.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
Way into it is if you have someone who's drowning
in quicksand there's sort of physics analogy using the book.
There's basically three ways that you could try to do
something about that. The first way would be to kind
of walk by on the other side of the road,
sort of the parable the good Samaritan the bad guys
in that story who just walk by, And we would
call that apathy.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
So you could be apathetic.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
Someone's drowning, someone's suffering, and you just completely ignore it.
But the other two responses are a little more interesting.
So one would be I'm going to reach in and
grab you as you're drowning, and I'm gonna have one
hand grabbing a branch on the side, and I'm going
to embrace in order to help pull you out. And
the word I would use for that is sympathy or compassion.
(01:51):
So I'm I'm joining you at some level in the pit,
but I've I'm still remaining anchored to the shore. And
I think that's kind of the historic Christian response to
pain and suffering is to say, that's what pity, that's compassion,
that sympathy tether to the shore, but reaching in joining
people in their suffering and pain in order to.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
Help them get out of it.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
But in the modern world, there's kind of been this
movement to upgrade that that sympathetic, that compassionate response, and
they've build empathy as compassion two point zero. And the
upgrade is you jump all the way in, You just
dive in with them. And this is presented as a
(02:36):
kind of improvement on the old version because it's a
more total immersion in the feelings and experiences and suffering
or whatever of other people.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
And so that's better.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
But the problem I have with it, the reason that
I call it a corruption of compassion, is that in
losing touch jumping in with both feet, you lose touch
with the shore, you lose touch. And then this analogy,
it's that's losing touch with reality, with what's true, with
what's good, with what's good for someone in the long run,
and focuses mainly on the immediate validation affirmation of what
(03:09):
everyone is feeling in the moment.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
And so that's what I call the sin of empathy.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
It's when empathy is untethered and when it does that,
it actually because the destruction comes when it's a tool
of emotional blackmail, of emotional manipulation, and you can do
a whole lot of destruction and.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
Evil in the name of empathy.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Now, in the book, this is not a book about politics,
I want to be clear, but I am going to
take it in a political direction and you can respond
in kind if you'd like. This feels very much like
what we're dealing with on some of the biggest social
issues that we're dealing with right now. And you know,
the trans situation that we've been dealing with in the
country for a long time, I think is the best
(03:50):
example of this. And you know, I am one of
those people that at my core, I'm a small l
libertarian type. So when you are an adult, if you
want to do whatever you want, I really don't care.
As long as you bear the responsibility for those actions
and have those consequences on your own, I don't care
what you do. You can have all the plastic surgery
that you want, you can take all the hormones that
(04:11):
you want, and go about your business. But when we
started talking about children, if you said this is not
a good idea, you were not argued with on the
merits of whether or not this was a good idea.
You were told you were transphobic, you were hateful, you
wanted these people to die, and that for me is
the clearest definition of how can we help someone who
is struggling and suffering, but also recognize that perhaps thrusting
(04:35):
them into a path of medicalization is not the way
to go, And that for me, compassion is how can
we help them. Empathy is we're going to just go
along with whatever they want to do, whether or not
it's going to damage them in the long run or not.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
And I mean you're right that you know at some
level the phenomenon I'm trying to unpack is as old
as dirt. Right, So you know, Adam and Eve came
out of the garden and we're trying to emotionally manipulate
each other. So and so in anybody who's ever been
on the receiving end of a pity party or a
guilt trip by a family member knows the phenomenon where
(05:09):
we're describing where they're they're taking advantage of the fact that.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
You care about them, right in order to steer you
to get their way. So this is not a new thing.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
This is a human thing, deeply human way of manipulating
people's pity and compassion. What is a little bit unique
perhaps about the last twenty thirty forty fifty years is
the institutionalization and of that phenomenon throughout all sort of
sectors of society where it became it became like the
(05:40):
entire society became hijacked in this way by appeals to compassion.
And the trans said one is the law is the latest.
It's in a long line of.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
This kind of manipulation.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
I think that the LGBT stuff was advanced in precisely.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
The same way.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
Here's people who just want to have the same rights
as you do. They just want to get quote unquote
married just like you do. And isn't it so sad
that they can't get married because we're such a bigoted
and hateful country. And so it was an appeal to
compassion in order to mute any resistance to the redefinition
of the most fundamental.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
Institution of society.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
So this radical move of redefining marriage and trying to
unmoor it from its biological covenantal realities was made on
the basis of compassion and appeal to compassion and empathy
for same sex couples.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
And then but it doesn't stay in place.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
It was just extended out as we're seeing with the
trans movement, where would you rather have a dead son
or a live daughter?
Speaker 2 (06:40):
When the medical.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
Community makes that statement to parents who have children who have,
somehow or other through their smartphone or internet access, have
been catechized and indoctrinated into gender ideology and are now saying,
I even though I was born a boy, I feel
like I'm a girl, and I want to get surgery
and get on puberty walkers and everything else. When parents
would put up any resistance, it was an appeal to
(07:03):
their natural human compassion for their child. Don't you love them?
Don't you care for them? Do you want them to die?
That was used to short circuit any resistance, And that's
a great example of that manipulation of our normal, good
human response to suffering and pain and hardship, which is
(07:23):
to share and identify with people. But it can get
easily get hijacked, and when it does it it does
become highly destructive.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
A lot of the criticisms that I've read quite a
few scorchers of columns that have people that really don't
care for your opinion on this. How does this square
because you're a pastor of a church, how does this
square with Jesus's commandment to love thy neighbor. And you
know we've all heard, you know, love the sin or
hate the sin. Where does all this sort of fit
(07:50):
into that overall dogma?
Speaker 2 (07:52):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (07:53):
Absolutely so well. I mean, Christ is the model for
Christian compassion. And we're told that he's a sympathetic high priest,
which means he was tempted in every way that we are,
yet without sin. The one thing that Jesus would not
do is join us in our sin. Now, he died
for our sins, but he himself would not celebrate, validate,
and affirm us in our sins.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
He came to rescue us from it.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
And so Christ is a great example of what I
would call tethered compassion. He's anchored to his father, he's
anchored to Oh, I'm gonna love God first, and then
because I love God, I'm able to love human beings
in their weakness, their brokenness, their sinfulness and try to
pull them out of the pit that they've put themselves in.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
That's tethered compassion.
Speaker 3 (08:32):
What he didn't do was put our emotions in the
driver in his driver's seat and say take me wherever
you want to go. In fact, the Bible tells us
repeatedly Jesus would never entrust himself to man because he
knew what was in the heart of man. He actually
when people tried to hijack and steer him, like his
disciples did at times, like no, you can't go to
the cross, get behind me, Satan, right. So there's a
(08:53):
number of places where Jesus absolutely refuses to do what
his followers or his enemies want him to do because
he's more committed to the mission that God has sent
him on than he is to whatever their desires might be.
And I think the larger biblical picture of compassion always
anchors our love for neighbor, in love for God and
(09:13):
what's ultimately good for them. And the challenge with this
untethered empathy is it frequently prioritizes the immediate feelings of
a person over their long term good. So I'll do
something that I think will relieve their immediate feelings.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
Of distress or pain. Transisu is a great example.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
They feel this way, so we'll castraate or mutilate, or
give them puberty blockers in order to try to alleviate
these feelings that they have, rather than their long term good,
which would be Let's try to bring their psychological identity
in line with biological reality. Let's remain anchored to what
is true and what is good, not get untethered by
(09:55):
their emotions.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
So how do you prevent someone And I guess you
probably can't prevent this. But my thinking is is, like
I read your book, I absolutely understood what you were saying.
I am of the sort that I want to solve
the problems. In Denver, we have a huge issue with homelessness,
and our mayor has chosen to just shove you know,
people who suffered great trauma who are now addicted to
drugs or alcohol or mentally ill, has just shoved them
(10:17):
into old hotels, which doesn't solve any of the underlying problems.
But to your point, this is exactly what you just
talked about, which is solve this immediate need without solving
any of the longer issues. So how do you prevent
people from saying, well, you know, the sin of empathy says,
I don't have to be concerned about that, you know,
(10:38):
I mean, this could be a double edged sword. Do
you know what I mean? Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (10:42):
Sure, it's certainly possible for someone to see the abuse
of compassion and empathy in our society and to actually
fall off on the other side and become heartless and apathetic,
indifferent to human suffering. And part of the reason that
I wrote the book, you know, it's passion and its counterfeits,
and the final chapter is commending real compassion in the
(11:05):
face of the counterfeits, because I don't want that to happen.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
But the surest way to keep to, the surest way to.
Speaker 3 (11:09):
Get the cruelty and apathy that people are afraid of,
is to continue allow to allow people to manipulate us
by empathy into doing things that are destructive and harmful.
So in the cases like homelessness or rampant criminality in
urban centers, or legal immigration for that matter, and these
kind of hot button issues, we are running the risk
(11:30):
of a kind of callous indifference to human suffering because
people are tired of being manipulated by the suffering of
others by advocates. So this is like, this is how
the setup often works, where you have here's real human suffering,
and then you have activists who are victims, and they
may be victims of real things or have real hardship
(11:50):
not of their own doing. But then you have activists
and advocates who come along as representatives, who speak on
their behalf, and they view the victims as a as
a tool to power and they know that they can
reorganize society however they want in the name of compassion.
So we will well reorganized. They'll set the agenda for
(12:12):
what everybody else has to do. They'll be the ones
in charge. And they discovered this was a very effective
way to hijack institutions, colleges, churches, schools, and it was
very effective.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
And so now we've got more of that.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
So then you have a backlash against it as people go, well,
if that's what compassion gets me, no, thank you. And
what I want to say is no, we actually need
to think in terms of what's good for people in
the long run, like what is actually going to get
down to root issues, So whether it's homelessness or immigration,
we want to actually think what's going to be good
for everyone, not just myopically focused. One of the things
(12:47):
empathy does is it acts as a spotlight and it
focuses on certain suffering and not other suffering.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
Others, certain suffering gets totally whitewashed.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
It's just totally gone, but other people at certain suffering
is elevated, so that we fixate on that, and I
want to say, no, we need to have a broader perspective,
rooted in justice, in what's true and what's good for
people and long run, what's good for society in the
long run, and out of that then you can make
wise decisions because you're not governed by the immediate passions
(13:17):
of the moment.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
I'm talking with Pastor Joe Rigney about his book The
Sin of Empathy, and to that point, Pastor, you know,
one of the things that has been irritating for me
for a really long time when it comes to the
immigration issue, is a perfect example of this. And you know,
I have a lot of compassion for people who live
in these crapholed countries and they just want to escape
and have a better life for their family. I think
(13:39):
most people can understand why you would want to leave
someplace where there's no opportunity in danger to make the
long trek to the United States of America. But so
much of it happened and was allowed that now we
see people rooting and cheering as people are dragged off
the streets by ice and it's like with the pendulum
swung so quickly too, I can understand why you'd want
(14:00):
to come here to Uh yeah, we don't care if
you get due process and we're going to toss you
out on your ear. It's it's been it's been an
interesting thing to see. But ultimately, I think we're seeing
more and more of a backlash against more of these
issues where empathy has been weaponized to use a better
you know, for lack of a better term. Do you
(14:21):
see a shift on some of these things, and are
we going to shift too far too fast?
Speaker 2 (14:28):
Well?
Speaker 3 (14:28):
I think like when it comes to the people who
celebrate ice, you know, rating and deporting individuals, I think
the celebration is less about is less of cruelty about
those individuals who being deported, and more a gratitude that
someone finally decided that enough was enough.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
So I think it was after you know.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
Decades of politicians puttsing around and not doing anything as
millions and millions of people illegally enter the country and
distort and it was highly destructive to many communities. Right,
So this is a good example of the myopics. So
in the name of compassion for people refugees, or asylum seekers,
(15:09):
or even just migrants from other countries who wanted to
come here seeking better life. Well, what about the people
whose jobs they displaced? What about the wages that were depressed?
What about the factories that the jobs that were taken
from Americans who now had to compete with under the
table untaxed labor. And it's like, no one felt compassion
for that group of people. So now when that group
(15:29):
of people see someone finally standing up for the rule
of law and for a border, they rejoice. And that
fact not necessarily that, you know, individuals who were brought
here as children are being deported. I think that Americans
would have a far greater compassion if we actually had
a regulated system and a firm border. But this is
(15:52):
an issue that cuts right to the heart of the
scent of empathy question. A friend sent me a picture
a couple of weeks ago from the Mexican side of
the southern border, and written in big block letters on
the Mexico side in graffiti was the word empathy. And
I thought, that's actually a really good illustration of what
I'm getting at, because the idea of the graffiti was
(16:13):
this wall, this border wall is an affront to empathy
to compassion. Empathy means you don't get to have borders,
you don't get to have boundaries. You have to let anything,
anything goes. And I think that's a really good illustration
of precisely what I'm trying to avoid.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
No borders are good, right. Good fences make good neighbors.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
If you have a big border, if you have a wall,
you can also put gates in that wall and allow
the number of people that you think you can handle
to come in.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
All of that is made possible when you have boundaries.
Speaker 3 (16:40):
When you lose boundaries, it's just one big mess, and
is what we find ourselves in twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
So someone has texted our Common Spirit Health text line
with this question, if I understand correctly, compassion is good
if it's to white, straight folks, and beyond that it's
out of control and becomes a negative. How do you respond,
because that's a criticism that I see.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
Of their book.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
Yeah, sure, well, I don't know about the white part.
I think the race question, the ethnic question. Yeah, we
should be compassionate to all peoples of all all races,
insofar as we have the ability, and insofar as it
doesn't compete.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
With our other duties as far as the straight the
straight piece.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
Yeah, I'm a Christian. I think that homosexuality is wrong.
It's disgusting, and it's sinful, and therefore I don't want
society celebrating it endorsing it, because I think it's harmful
and destructive in both the short term and in long
term to people's souls. And so I want a society
that rather than flying the rainbow flag and encouraging vile affections,
(17:42):
I want a society that reinforces the basic institution of society,
which is the natural family, where a husband and a
wife covenant together for a lifetime for the good, for
their own mutual happiness and for the bearing and rearing
of children, which is the foundation of every other institution
of society. And because we've abandoned that institution, like a
lot of these other problems that you've mentioned here, whether
(18:03):
it's the homelessness which is often driven by mental health
and addiction, and what feeds that well, uh, single parent homes, right,
rampant divorce, the decline and.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
Decay of the natural family.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
Those that that one issue sprout so many other issues,
and we won't defend and preserve and maintain this fundamental
institution of society, and as a result, we're reaping what.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
We've sown and it's justified with what maintains it.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
Though, is this false notion of compassion that says, validate
and affirm everybody's desires. If you desire it, we affirm it.
If you want it, you can have it, do what
you feel.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
And instead we should say, no, what, how has God
made us? What? What? What standards does he put in place?
Speaker 3 (18:46):
He knows best how we're designed and has given us
a blueprint in his scriptures for how we're to live.
If we live according to his word, then we'll find
that we find there's life there, there's joy there, there's
health and wholeness there, rather than the decay and destruction
that surrounds us everywhere. Uh.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
Doctor Joe Rigney is my guest. The book is the
sin of compassion, and it is a excuse me, the
sin of empathy when we get back to the name
of the But you kind of threw me there because
my views and I understand the biblical perspective about homosexuality,
but I don't necessarily share that because so many of
my gay friends would love to be straight. They would
(19:26):
love nothing more to be straight, but that's not how
they're wired. And I happen to think that, you know,
God thought they were important enough to put on the earth,
and we'll disagree about that. I felt like I needed
to say that. I hope you understand, but ultimately I
do think that the overarching point goes well beyond white
or straight or anything else, because you can apply the
(19:46):
sin of empathy to so many different things that are
the problems that are being and I'm put air quotes
around solved and being solved badly because we have untethered
ourselves from anything that makes sense. Doctor Joe Rigney. I
put a link on the blog today so people can
buy the book. I really appreciate you coming on and
having this conversation, and I hope people buy the book
and begin to understand that we can be compassionate and
(20:08):
still not get sucked in to the things that don't
make any sense. Thanks for your time today.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
Thanks Madie,
I am very excited to talk to my next guest.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
His name is doctor Joe Rigney.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
He serves as a Fellow of Theology at the New
Saint Andrew's College. He's also a pastor at Christ Church
in Moscow in Idaho. He is the author of eight books,
including Leadership and Emotional Sabotage and the book we're talking
about today, The Sin of Empathy, Compassion and Its Counterfeits,
Doctor Ridney.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Welcome to the show. First of all, Hey, thanks for
having me, Mandy.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
I loved this book. I just told him off the air.
It took me maybe an hour and a half to read.
It's not War and Peace. It's a very simple, slim book,
but boy does it pack a punch. And I want
to just allow you to give what you must have
at this point, an elevator speech, a version of what
you're talking about that is easy to understand for my
(00:49):
listeners if.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
You would, Yeah, absolutely, I would say.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
The basic premise is that, like all good things, passion
is capable of being corrupted, and when it does, it
becomes highly destructive.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
So maybe one of the simplest.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
Way into it is if you have someone who's drowning
in quicksand there's sort of physics analogy using the book.
There's basically three ways that you could try to do
something about that. The first way would be to kind
of walk by on the other side of the road,
sort of the parable the good Samaritan the bad guys
in that story who just walk by, And we would
call that apathy.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
So you could be apathetic.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
Someone's drowning, someone's suffering, and you just completely ignore it.
But the other two responses are a little more interesting.
So one would be I'm going to reach in and
grab you as you're drowning, and I'm gonna have one
hand grabbing a branch on the side, and I'm going
to embrace in order to help pull you out. And
the word I would use for that is sympathy or compassion.
(01:51):
So I'm I'm joining you at some level in the pit,
but I've I'm still remaining anchored to the shore. And
I think that's kind of the historic Christian response to
pain and suffering is to say, that's what pity, that's compassion,
that sympathy tether to the shore, but reaching in joining
people in their suffering and pain in order to.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
Help them get out of it.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
But in the modern world, there's kind of been this
movement to upgrade that that sympathetic, that compassionate response, and
they've build empathy as compassion two point zero. And the
upgrade is you jump all the way in, You just
dive in with them. And this is presented as a
(02:36):
kind of improvement on the old version because it's a
more total immersion in the feelings and experiences and suffering
or whatever of other people.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
And so that's better.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
But the problem I have with it, the reason that
I call it a corruption of compassion, is that in
losing touch jumping in with both feet, you lose touch
with the shore, you lose touch. And then this analogy,
it's that's losing touch with reality, with what's true, with
what's good, with what's good for someone in the long run,
and focuses mainly on the immediate validation affirmation of what
(03:09):
everyone is feeling in the moment.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
And so that's what I call the sin of empathy.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
It's when empathy is untethered and when it does that,
it actually because the destruction comes when it's a tool
of emotional blackmail, of emotional manipulation, and you can do
a whole lot of destruction and.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
Evil in the name of empathy.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Now, in the book, this is not a book about politics,
I want to be clear, but I am going to
take it in a political direction and you can respond
in kind if you'd like. This feels very much like
what we're dealing with on some of the biggest social
issues that we're dealing with right now. And you know,
the trans situation that we've been dealing with in the
country for a long time, I think is the best
(03:50):
example of this. And you know, I am one of
those people that at my core, I'm a small l
libertarian type. So when you are an adult, if you
want to do whatever you want, I really don't care.
As long as you bear the responsibility for those actions
and have those consequences on your own, I don't care
what you do. You can have all the plastic surgery
that you want, you can take all the hormones that
(04:11):
you want, and go about your business. But when we
started talking about children, if you said this is not
a good idea, you were not argued with on the
merits of whether or not this was a good idea.
You were told you were transphobic, you were hateful, you
wanted these people to die, and that for me is
the clearest definition of how can we help someone who
is struggling and suffering, but also recognize that perhaps thrusting
(04:35):
them into a path of medicalization is not the way
to go, And that for me, compassion is how can
we help them. Empathy is we're going to just go
along with whatever they want to do, whether or not
it's going to damage them in the long run or not.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
And I mean you're right that you know at some
level the phenomenon I'm trying to unpack is as old
as dirt. Right, So you know, Adam and Eve came
out of the garden and we're trying to emotionally manipulate
each other. So and so in anybody who's ever been
on the receiving end of a pity party or a
guilt trip by a family member knows the phenomenon where
(05:09):
we're describing where they're they're taking advantage of the fact that.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
You care about them, right in order to steer you
to get their way. So this is not a new thing.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
This is a human thing, deeply human way of manipulating
people's pity and compassion. What is a little bit unique
perhaps about the last twenty thirty forty fifty years is
the institutionalization and of that phenomenon throughout all sort of
sectors of society where it became it became like the
(05:40):
entire society became hijacked in this way by appeals to compassion.
And the trans said one is the law is the latest.
It's in a long line of.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
This kind of manipulation.
Speaker 3 (05:51):
I think that the LGBT stuff was advanced in precisely.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
The same way.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
Here's people who just want to have the same rights
as you do. They just want to get quote unquote
married just like you do. And isn't it so sad
that they can't get married because we're such a bigoted
and hateful country. And so it was an appeal to
compassion in order to mute any resistance to the redefinition
of the most fundamental.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
Institution of society.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
So this radical move of redefining marriage and trying to
unmoor it from its biological covenantal realities was made on
the basis of compassion and appeal to compassion and empathy
for same sex couples.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
And then but it doesn't stay in place.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
It was just extended out as we're seeing with the
trans movement, where would you rather have a dead son
or a live daughter?
Speaker 2 (06:40):
When the medical.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
Community makes that statement to parents who have children who have,
somehow or other through their smartphone or internet access, have
been catechized and indoctrinated into gender ideology and are now saying,
I even though I was born a boy, I feel
like I'm a girl, and I want to get surgery
and get on puberty walkers and everything else. When parents
would put up any resistance, it was an appeal to
(07:03):
their natural human compassion for their child. Don't you love them?
Don't you care for them? Do you want them to die?
That was used to short circuit any resistance, And that's
a great example of that manipulation of our normal, good
human response to suffering and pain and hardship, which is
(07:23):
to share and identify with people. But it can get
easily get hijacked, and when it does it it does
become highly destructive.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
A lot of the criticisms that I've read quite a
few scorchers of columns that have people that really don't
care for your opinion on this. How does this square
because you're a pastor of a church, how does this
square with Jesus's commandment to love thy neighbor. And you
know we've all heard, you know, love the sin or
hate the sin. Where does all this sort of fit
(07:50):
into that overall dogma?
Speaker 2 (07:52):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (07:53):
Absolutely so well. I mean, Christ is the model for
Christian compassion. And we're told that he's a sympathetic high priest,
which means he was tempted in every way that we are,
yet without sin. The one thing that Jesus would not
do is join us in our sin. Now, he died
for our sins, but he himself would not celebrate, validate,
and affirm us in our sins.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
He came to rescue us from it.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
And so Christ is a great example of what I
would call tethered compassion. He's anchored to his father, he's
anchored to Oh, I'm gonna love God first, and then
because I love God, I'm able to love human beings
in their weakness, their brokenness, their sinfulness and try to
pull them out of the pit that they've put themselves in.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
That's tethered compassion.
Speaker 3 (08:32):
What he didn't do was put our emotions in the
driver in his driver's seat and say take me wherever
you want to go. In fact, the Bible tells us
repeatedly Jesus would never entrust himself to man because he
knew what was in the heart of man. He actually
when people tried to hijack and steer him, like his
disciples did at times, like no, you can't go to
the cross, get behind me, Satan, right. So there's a
(08:53):
number of places where Jesus absolutely refuses to do what
his followers or his enemies want him to do because
he's more committed to the mission that God has sent
him on than he is to whatever their desires might be.
And I think the larger biblical picture of compassion always
anchors our love for neighbor, in love for God and
(09:13):
what's ultimately good for them. And the challenge with this
untethered empathy is it frequently prioritizes the immediate feelings of
a person over their long term good. So I'll do
something that I think will relieve their immediate feelings.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
Of distress or pain. Transisu is a great example.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
They feel this way, so we'll castraate or mutilate, or
give them puberty blockers in order to try to alleviate
these feelings that they have, rather than their long term good,
which would be Let's try to bring their psychological identity
in line with biological reality. Let's remain anchored to what
is true and what is good, not get untethered by
(09:55):
their emotions.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
So how do you prevent someone And I guess you
probably can't prevent this. But my thinking is is, like
I read your book, I absolutely understood what you were saying.
I am of the sort that I want to solve
the problems. In Denver, we have a huge issue with homelessness,
and our mayor has chosen to just shove you know,
people who suffered great trauma who are now addicted to
drugs or alcohol or mentally ill, has just shoved them
(10:17):
into old hotels, which doesn't solve any of the underlying problems.
But to your point, this is exactly what you just
talked about, which is solve this immediate need without solving
any of the longer issues. So how do you prevent
people from saying, well, you know, the sin of empathy says,
I don't have to be concerned about that, you know,
(10:38):
I mean, this could be a double edged sword. Do
you know what I mean? Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (10:42):
Sure, it's certainly possible for someone to see the abuse
of compassion and empathy in our society and to actually
fall off on the other side and become heartless and apathetic,
indifferent to human suffering. And part of the reason that
I wrote the book, you know, it's passion and its counterfeits,
and the final chapter is commending real compassion in the
(11:05):
face of the counterfeits, because I don't want that to happen.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
But the surest way to keep to, the surest way to.
Speaker 3 (11:09):
Get the cruelty and apathy that people are afraid of,
is to continue allow to allow people to manipulate us
by empathy into doing things that are destructive and harmful.
So in the cases like homelessness or rampant criminality in
urban centers, or legal immigration for that matter, and these
kind of hot button issues, we are running the risk
(11:30):
of a kind of callous indifference to human suffering because
people are tired of being manipulated by the suffering of
others by advocates. So this is like, this is how
the setup often works, where you have here's real human suffering,
and then you have activists who are victims, and they
may be victims of real things or have real hardship
(11:50):
not of their own doing. But then you have activists
and advocates who come along as representatives, who speak on
their behalf, and they view the victims as a as
a tool to power and they know that they can
reorganize society however they want in the name of compassion.
So we will well reorganized. They'll set the agenda for
(12:12):
what everybody else has to do. They'll be the ones
in charge. And they discovered this was a very effective
way to hijack institutions, colleges, churches, schools, and it was
very effective.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
And so now we've got more of that.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
So then you have a backlash against it as people go, well,
if that's what compassion gets me, no, thank you. And
what I want to say is no, we actually need
to think in terms of what's good for people in
the long run, like what is actually going to get
down to root issues, So whether it's homelessness or immigration,
we want to actually think what's going to be good
for everyone, not just myopically focused. One of the things
(12:47):
empathy does is it acts as a spotlight and it
focuses on certain suffering and not other suffering.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
Others, certain suffering gets totally whitewashed.
Speaker 3 (12:56):
It's just totally gone, but other people at certain suffering
is elevated, so that we fixate on that, and I
want to say, no, we need to have a broader perspective,
rooted in justice, in what's true and what's good for
people and long run, what's good for society in the
long run, and out of that then you can make
wise decisions because you're not governed by the immediate passions
(13:17):
of the moment.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
I'm talking with Pastor Joe Rigney about his book The
Sin of Empathy, and to that point, Pastor, you know,
one of the things that has been irritating for me
for a really long time when it comes to the
immigration issue, is a perfect example of this. And you know,
I have a lot of compassion for people who live
in these crapholed countries and they just want to escape
and have a better life for their family. I think
(13:39):
most people can understand why you would want to leave
someplace where there's no opportunity in danger to make the
long trek to the United States of America. But so
much of it happened and was allowed that now we
see people rooting and cheering as people are dragged off
the streets by ice and it's like with the pendulum
swung so quickly too, I can understand why you'd want
(14:00):
to come here to Uh yeah, we don't care if
you get due process and we're going to toss you
out on your ear. It's it's been it's been an
interesting thing to see. But ultimately, I think we're seeing
more and more of a backlash against more of these
issues where empathy has been weaponized to use a better
you know, for lack of a better term. Do you
(14:21):
see a shift on some of these things, and are
we going to shift too far too fast?
Speaker 2 (14:28):
Well?
Speaker 3 (14:28):
I think like when it comes to the people who
celebrate ice, you know, rating and deporting individuals, I think
the celebration is less about is less of cruelty about
those individuals who being deported, and more a gratitude that
someone finally decided that enough was enough.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
So I think it was after you know.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
Decades of politicians puttsing around and not doing anything as
millions and millions of people illegally enter the country and
distort and it was highly destructive to many communities. Right,
So this is a good example of the myopics. So
in the name of compassion for people refugees, or asylum seekers,
(15:09):
or even just migrants from other countries who wanted to
come here seeking better life. Well, what about the people
whose jobs they displaced? What about the wages that were depressed?
What about the factories that the jobs that were taken
from Americans who now had to compete with under the
table untaxed labor. And it's like, no one felt compassion
for that group of people. So now when that group
(15:29):
of people see someone finally standing up for the rule
of law and for a border, they rejoice. And that
fact not necessarily that, you know, individuals who were brought
here as children are being deported. I think that Americans
would have a far greater compassion if we actually had
a regulated system and a firm border. But this is
(15:52):
an issue that cuts right to the heart of the
scent of empathy question. A friend sent me a picture
a couple of weeks ago from the Mexican side of
the southern border, and written in big block letters on
the Mexico side in graffiti was the word empathy. And
I thought, that's actually a really good illustration of what
I'm getting at, because the idea of the graffiti was
(16:13):
this wall, this border wall is an affront to empathy
to compassion. Empathy means you don't get to have borders,
you don't get to have boundaries. You have to let anything,
anything goes. And I think that's a really good illustration
of precisely what I'm trying to avoid.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
No borders are good, right. Good fences make good neighbors.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
If you have a big border, if you have a wall,
you can also put gates in that wall and allow
the number of people that you think you can handle
to come in.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
All of that is made possible when you have boundaries.
Speaker 3 (16:40):
When you lose boundaries, it's just one big mess, and
is what we find ourselves in twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
So someone has texted our Common Spirit Health text line
with this question, if I understand correctly, compassion is good
if it's to white, straight folks, and beyond that it's
out of control and becomes a negative. How do you respond,
because that's a criticism that I see.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
Of their book.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
Yeah, sure, well, I don't know about the white part.
I think the race question, the ethnic question. Yeah, we
should be compassionate to all peoples of all all races,
insofar as we have the ability, and insofar as it
doesn't compete.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
With our other duties as far as the straight the
straight piece.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
Yeah, I'm a Christian. I think that homosexuality is wrong.
It's disgusting, and it's sinful, and therefore I don't want
society celebrating it endorsing it, because I think it's harmful
and destructive in both the short term and in long
term to people's souls. And so I want a society
that rather than flying the rainbow flag and encouraging vile affections,
(17:42):
I want a society that reinforces the basic institution of society,
which is the natural family, where a husband and a
wife covenant together for a lifetime for the good, for
their own mutual happiness and for the bearing and rearing
of children, which is the foundation of every other institution
of society. And because we've abandoned that institution, like a
lot of these other problems that you've mentioned here, whether
(18:03):
it's the homelessness which is often driven by mental health
and addiction, and what feeds that well, uh, single parent homes, right,
rampant divorce, the decline and.
Speaker 2 (18:13):
Decay of the natural family.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
Those that that one issue sprout so many other issues,
and we won't defend and preserve and maintain this fundamental
institution of society, and as a result, we're reaping what.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
We've sown and it's justified with what maintains it.
Speaker 3 (18:30):
Though, is this false notion of compassion that says, validate
and affirm everybody's desires. If you desire it, we affirm it.
If you want it, you can have it, do what
you feel.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
And instead we should say, no, what, how has God
made us? What? What? What standards does he put in place?
Speaker 3 (18:46):
He knows best how we're designed and has given us
a blueprint in his scriptures for how we're to live.
If we live according to his word, then we'll find
that we find there's life there, there's joy there, there's
health and wholeness there, rather than the decay and destruction
that surrounds us everywhere. Uh.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
Doctor Joe Rigney is my guest. The book is the
sin of compassion, and it is a excuse me, the
sin of empathy when we get back to the name
of the But you kind of threw me there because
my views and I understand the biblical perspective about homosexuality,
but I don't necessarily share that because so many of
my gay friends would love to be straight. They would
(19:26):
love nothing more to be straight, but that's not how
they're wired. And I happen to think that, you know,
God thought they were important enough to put on the earth,
and we'll disagree about that. I felt like I needed
to say that. I hope you understand, but ultimately I
do think that the overarching point goes well beyond white
or straight or anything else, because you can apply the
(19:46):
sin of empathy to so many different things that are
the problems that are being and I'm put air quotes
around solved and being solved badly because we have untethered
ourselves from anything that makes sense. Doctor Joe Rigney. I
put a link on the blog today so people can
buy the book. I really appreciate you coming on and
having this conversation, and I hope people buy the book
and begin to understand that we can be compassionate and
(20:08):
still not get sucked in to the things that don't
make any sense. Thanks for your time today.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
Thanks Madie,
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