Interview with a Cultural Commentator - Joe Rigney

In this episode we chat with Dr. Joe Rigney about social justice, intersectionality, emotionalism, and more. Dr. Rigney serves as a Fellow of Theology at New Saint Andrews College. He is a conservative cultural critic regarding various political and religious topics.. He is the author of eight books, including the one discussed in this interview: The Sin of Empathy*Follow Joe:*https://twitter.com/joe_rigneyhttps://www.amazon.com/Sin-Empathy-Compassion-Its-Counterfeits/dp/B0DV3L5KR3*Follow Zach:*https://www.instagram.com/zachlee_isppc/https://twitter.com/zacharytleehttps://isppc.org/0:00 Exploring Social Justice Through Different Perspectives3:38 Biblical Justice Versus Modern Social Justice Perspectives12:10 Systemic Injustice and Its Evolution in Modern Society17:06 The Intersection of Postmodernism, Critical Theory, and Social Justice24:57 The Debate Between Empathy and Sympathy in Modern Society31:50 The Importance of Steady Hands Over Empathy in Surgery33:15 The Complexity of Sympathy and Empathy in Moral Contexts36:30 The Manipulation of Compassion in Modern Christian Contexts42:31 Determining the True Victim Before Offering Compassion46:46 The Dangers of Prioritizing Winsomeness Over Faithfulness in Churches53:24 The Fragmented State of Modern Cultural and Moral Debates#socialjustice #race #politics #gender #empathy #sympathy

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Disclaimer For all ideological interviews, this podcast is a
space for thoughtful conversation.
Hosting a guest implies neither their endorsement nor rejection
of our views, and a guest's appearance implies neither our
endorsement nor rejection of their views.
We encourage listeners to approach each conversation with
an open mind and emotional control, and to evaluate the
dialogue on the strength of the arguments presented, not one's

(00:21):
prior assumptions or biases. Once you've divided everybody up
based on whatever characteristics, now it's a
competition to see who the biggest victim is because the
biggest victim wins. That's the false worldly
definition of love that honestlyhas been as destructive as
anything else in history. I want there to be a sinful

(00:42):
compassion, and I think empathy is the word that we most often
use for it. And then I want there to be a
godly compassion and I want to commend that one against his
counterfeit. Hello, and welcome to another
edition of Ideological. I am your host, Zach Lee.

(01:04):
And today we have a very specialguest.
I have Doctor Joe Rigney with us.
Doctor Rigney, thanks so much for coming on the show.
Hey, glad to be here. Thanks for having me, Zach.
Doctor Rigney is a fellow of theology at New St.
Andrews. He holds ABA from Texas A&M and
MA from Bethlehem College and Seminary and MST Master of
Studies from New St. Andrews and then his PhD at the

(01:25):
University of Chester. And the reason I have brought
him on today is to chat a lot with us about kind of the other
side of the social justice issues.
So we had another and we had an activist come on a few weeks ago
and discuss one side of the social justice issue.
And so I wanted to kind of get apoint counterpoint.
But before we do that, Doctor Rodney, for those who might not

(01:48):
know who you are, can you tell us a little bit about your
background, your interests? You've written several books.
Very, I mean, the the one we'll talk about today, the sin of
empathy, you know, kind of beingforefront in my mind.
Tell us a little bit about yourself for the the people
listening that might not know you.
Yeah, great. I grew up in West TX, my, you

(02:09):
know, entire young life and thenwent to Texas A&M from there,
went to Minnesota for seminary. And I was involved with
Bethlehem College and Seminary for about 18 years.
So if you, if you, some of your listeners may know of Doctor
John Piper. And so I served there as a
professor for a number of years.There was also a pastor in the

(02:32):
Twin Cities, actually. So I, this is in the news
recently. I, I was one of the founding
pastors of Cities Church, which was in the news a couple, you
know, months ago because they were invaded by activists
actually, and who chanted slogans and things like that.
So that was my former church. And then for the last three
years I've been here in Moscow, ID, I teach theology, rhetoric,

(02:56):
literature, things like that, and oversee our Master Divinity
program at New St. Andrews.
Very good. Thanks so much for that.
OK, I'm excited to get into this.
I, I think there's a tendency for people to only view this
from one side. So I'm excited to get kind of
another side from you today. So I'll start with our first
question for you. So I recently interviewed a

(03:18):
social justice advocate, which we've posted on the site.
My understanding is that you have a different view than most
of our culture on this issue. Can you give us your thoughts on
social justice? Is that different than, you
know, historic definitions of justice?
Is that different than a Christian definition of justice,
kind of biblical justice versus social justice?
Wherever you want to take this, you can say whatever you want.

(03:38):
Yeah. So I do think that the the
social, so at one level, if social justice, if we just
defined it as justice among human beings, well, who could be
against that? And it's like, well, not me, but
I think that that that term has basically emerged out of certain
ideological movements in the 20th century, largely coming

(04:01):
from kind of Marxist understandings that basically
slotted people into oppressor, oppressed categories at the
outset. So irrespective of act people's
actual actions or behaviors, it simply said, if you have these
traits or those traits, you're in one of the categories.
And so in, in that understanding, I think that,

(04:22):
that, that understanding of social justice is fundamentally,
it's not merely that it's, it's not biblical, it's that it's
unbiblical. Like it's, it's, it's, it's not
just that it's not good enough, it's, it's bad because it
doesn't actually, like biblical justice actually pays attention
to what people do and say, not simply what sort of traits they

(04:43):
have through no fault of their own.
And so that's probably the, the 1st place to start is I think
biblical justice is conformity to the will of God.
So God's God created the world, he governs the world.
His law is the law for the world.
He's, he's embedded that law in our nature.
We call that natural law. He's also written it in a book

(05:04):
saying I think those speak with the same voice.
And so that's establishes the standard.
When we conform to that standard, we are being
righteous. We're being just and, and if it
deviates from that standard, if we break that or violate that
standard, that's unjust. And according to God's
standards, he judges us according to our deeds,
according to what we've done, not according to what socio

(05:27):
economic status we happen to have or according to what color
or skin we may happen to have orour gender or sexuality or
anything like that. These sort of traits are not the
the the linchpin of a biblical justice.
Instead, it's what we what we actually do.
Thank you. That's so, so, so chat with me a
little bit about so, so two things there I, I find

(05:48):
especially interesting. 1 is that we're, we're judged from in
my, I'm a, I'm a philosopher by training.
So I'll let you do the theology,But my, my understanding of what
you just mentioned is we're judged by what we do in a sense,
not what's been done to us. That's kind of, you know, not
the, the, the standard. The other one being, I think one
of the things you saw, especially in 2020 and beyond is

(06:11):
there's an understanding that humans want justice, but then
there is a different definition of love of justice of, you know,
whatever it might be, even within, even within, you know,
like the evangelical church or something like that.
So what are your thoughts on those terms being Co opted?
What are your thoughts on when people are born and like, let's

(06:32):
say you know, worse circumstances than somebody else
behind the curve, whatever it might be, What are your
thoughts? Yeah.
So I do think that the definition question becomes
really potent. I think that a lot of these
debates are because we are, or at least we're a Christian
civilization. Western civilization is a
Christian civilization. And so a lot of our definitions

(06:55):
historically in those terms, whether it's love or justice,
we'll talk later about compassion and empathy, things
like that. We're derived from Christian
theology and Christian reflection on the Bible as well
as the philosophical movements that sort of emerge out and
intersect with that. So that's where our definitions
came from and or operating. And I think what's happened is

(07:16):
they've been detached from theiroriginal source in the
scriptures in God himself and are now running amok.
Chesterton has a great quote that the modern world is full of
the old Christian virtues gone mad.
They've gone mad because they'vebeen detached from each other.
And so these different, what were, what were once virtues,
things like love and justice, mercy, compassion, those have to

(07:38):
be held together by the living God like that's, he's the origin
and source of all of those things.
He is that standard. He is the source of love and
justice and mercy and so forth. If you remove him from the
picture and you try to keep those, it won't work.
They'll run roughshod. And then you get the kind of
corrupt or twisted definitions of them.
And it becomes very confusing because people still use the

(08:00):
same words, but they now mean something very different by
them. So I think that that's kind of
where we are in in the modern world.
The second part of your questionwas about.
Oh, the second part is so you'rejudged for what you do, every
deed done in the body, whether good or bad, not necessarily
what's been done to you. Not that God doesn't care about
those things, but when it comes to justification and final

(08:21):
salvation and those kind of things.
Yeah, Correct. So.
Yeah, So I it's so. It's not.
It is. There's no sin in being sinned
against. It's not unjust to be wronged.
Now you may, you may commit sin because you've been wronged, you
may do something back or you mayact out in certain ways.
But I, I think part of what what's happened is to, you know,
in shifting that definition, this is I think a major part of

(08:46):
the social justice conversation is basically taking a Christian
principle. If someone's wronged, that needs
to be made right, someone's wronged that needs to be made
right. And elevating that and detaching
it from actual behaviors, actualsubstantive content, actual
standards of the due process andinnocent until proven guilty,
all of which I think are biblical and, and natural law

(09:08):
principles of justice. And simply now, now you're
assigned A verdict before your actions are actually evaluated.
And that's where that's, I thinkwhat we lived through over the
last, you know, 10 or so years was an inversion of justice
where simply your participation in a particular class or

(09:30):
identity group was enough to convict you or, or absolve you.
I think it works both ways. So certain people are guilty
simply because they're a part ofone group.
And certain people can do no wrong because they're a part of
a different group. And so at that point, it's just
tribal team sports. It's it's just power plays.
It's not actually about biblicaljustice or justice according to

(09:51):
God's standards. Thank you so much.
That one of things you mentionedalso reminds me so of like Tom
Holland's dominion or even Nietzsche's view that there's a
sense in which culture has kept a Christian ethic, but just now
reassigns it to others. So the fact that a lot of people
in culture want to take the victim, whatever they define
that as, and lift them up. That itself is a Christian

(10:11):
notion that God is choosing the foolish things of the world, the
weak things, those who need so, so it's, it's interesting.
I mean, Nietzsche and Tom Holland, both guys that are not
Christians but saw that same kind of thing.
OK, talk to us a little bit about evils being systemic.
One often hears this term in relation to social issues about
it being systemic. They have a tendency to classify

(10:33):
people, like you mentioned, by maybe race or sex or sexual
orientation or whatever it mightbe.
Do groups acts, do only individuals act?
Is that a good way of thinking, a bad way of thinking?
Is that a Christian way of thinking?
From your worldview, tell us your thoughts.
Yeah. Yeah.
So in principle, it's both individuals and groups can
commit evils. And so I, this is one of the

(10:55):
things that in the middle of the, the kind of the, the woke
wars or whatever you want to call it, where there were this
big discussion about, about these sort of issues and
systemic injustice. I, I felt sometimes like
opponents of social justice or, or wokeness or whatever you want
to call it, would often claim things that I, that I thought
were true because they would, they would say, try to dismantle

(11:18):
the entire idea of something like a systemic injustice, which
I wouldn't want to do. I want to say that that that's a
real phenomenon. Groups and corporate entities,
corporate bodies can act. They are, they can, they're
moral agents. So I think churches are moral
entities as a corporate entity. I think nations are corporate
entities. I think, you know, a business
can be, is a corporate entity and that that entity can act

(11:40):
and, and if it ethics can act, its actions can be evaluated
morally and it can conform to God's law or not.
So I'm, I'm on board with that and I'm on board with the idea
that it's possible for human beings to construct systems,
societal systems, ways of operating policies, procedures,

(12:02):
protocols that do wrong to people in sort of an automatic
kind of way. That's just the kind of the
operating system. And I think even I can point to
examples in history of that precisely happening.
So I, I think something like theJim Crow South or, or the North,
I mean, it was, it was universalat some level, at certain parts

(12:24):
of our history in which African Americans were discriminated
against solely by the by virtue of the color of their skin in
ways that were unjust. And that was a, that would be a
systemic kind of injustice. So I think that sort of things
exists. The problem in the recent
conversations was they didn't exist.

(12:45):
Like the, the sorts of things that were put forward as
evidences of the systemic injustice just weren't in fact.
And in fact, I think I think we've had enough removed that I
think that in attempting to rectify, if you go back to say
the 60s and the civil rights movement, the attempt to rectify
through civil rights legislation, the wrongs of the

(13:06):
past actually simply led to other forms kind of a reversal
and overturning of that system. It didn't actually remove this,
that kind of systemic discrimination or injustice.
It just changed parties. So Jeremy Karl as a friend of
mine and wrote a book called TheUnprotected Class about anti

(13:29):
white discrimination basically over the last 20-30 years.
And I think does a good job of showing, and I think it would be
accurate to describe the sorts of things he puts forward as
systemic discrimination or systemic injustice.
Because it's basically a violation of this.
The kind of core that the original core civil rights
principle. We want to be judged by the

(13:50):
content of our character, not the color of our skin.
That's we're going to be judged by our actions, not by what
identity group we belong to. And called us a good job of
showing how civil rights legislation and policy was then
kind of turned around and used to discriminate against or
disadvantage or committed justices against against whites

(14:12):
in the name of rectifying past wrongs.
So if someone were to respond and say, OK, I I hear that, but
there's this history of power, There's this history of, you
know, those who are in power andoppressing and those who are
not. Does that play into that or
should it not play into that or what are your thoughts?
So what I think I would say is it does, In other words, the 1A

(14:37):
biblical principle of justice islike restitution.
So if you've wronged someone, ifyou steal somebody's stuff, you
have to return it. And usually you have to return
it with with some kind of interest, like fivefold or
different depends on what's stolen.
But there's sort of biblical principles of justice and
proportionality that come into play when you're dealing with
the wrong. And I think the same principle
could be applied in this kind ofcorporate systemic way.

(14:59):
So I think the idea that OK, there's been this historic and
systemic injustice done based onskin color and now we've
realized that we're going to turn from it and and we're going
to try to make it right. I think there's ways in which in
the immediate aftermath to do certain things in order to right

(15:20):
wise it then made sense. But I think that those things
needed to be on a short leash, needed to have a time horizon,
and they needed to be sunsetted.And instead, what happened is
that they kind of metastasized into society.
And over time, rather than simply writing past wrongs, they
perpetuated new ones. And I was always struck by the,

(15:41):
I remember the, the Supreme Court case that was about
affirmative action in college admissions, I think is, I think
is what it was in. Can you basically privilege
historically disadvantaged groups or something like that in
college admissions? So that in effect, what you're
doing is you're saying we're going to this person's from a

(16:03):
minority group that's been historically underrepresented.
And so we're going to get that. That gets them extra points on
the admission cycle. And if you're in the
historically advantage group, inthis case whites, you're at
you're at a disadvantage, but you get fewer points.
So there's a so race matters. And I remember when Chief
Justice Roberts, you know, wrotethe, you know, the way to stop

(16:23):
discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating
on the basis of race. Like that was his line in the
Supreme Court opinion. And I think that's where that
that should have been the goal very quickly.
And I think that's our failure to do that has basically then
turned law into a weapon that different groups fight over to
see who they can privilege, who they can wrong.

(16:45):
And I that's where we are right now.
I think it's just a big contest over who gets to be at the top
of some kind of justice pyramid.That's an excellent segue to my
next question. Thank you for that, by the way.
Our podcast has episodes on bothpostmodernism and critical
theory. In what ways are contemporary
social justice issues affected by those movements?

(17:06):
Yeah. So I think, I think they have
their origins in them. I'm not, you know, I've done, I
took some philosophy classes, I've taught, you know, a little
philosophy, but not, not even a ton of postmodern or
contemporary philosophy. But from what I've been able to
ascertain, you know, being sort of a, an educated academic, is

(17:26):
that, you know, when you think about the, the Marxism, the
classical Marxism, which basically divided society along
class lines. You had the bourgeoisie who had
all the means of production, andthen you had the proletariat,
the people who were oppressed bythem.
And Marx was basically had oppressors and oppressed and it

(17:47):
was based on class. And then, you know, in the 20th
century, this kind of morphs a little bit and it becomes what's
called cultural Marxism. And now it's not simply based on
class, but it could be based on other sort of characteristics.
And that's where you get the kind of identity groups, whether
it's based on race, whether it'sbased on male, female gender,

(18:09):
whether it's based on sexuality,whether it's based on
disability. So you have ableism and there's,
there's various modes that kind of was the critical theory
component. And so you had critical race
theory and critical gender theory and critical sexuality
theory and so on and so forth. So all of those things I think
are in the background. And, and, and then to dovetail
with postmodernism and its suspicion of meta narratives or

(18:32):
its rejection of meta narratives.
And it's viewing of any attempt to have an overarching meta
narrative or ultimate standard as essentially a power play by
which certain groups assert their dominance over other
groups and that there's nothing other than that.
And so I'd reject that premise. I think that there is a meta
narrative. I think because I'm a Christian,

(18:53):
God made the world, he's writingthe story.
We're characters in that story. But it there is a story being
told by God and there's an ultimate truth capital T truth
ultimate G good. And then there if there's truth,
there's falsehood. If there's good, there's evil.
Those are actual objective standards defined by God and his

(19:14):
character and revealed to us in our nature and in his word.
So so that's so I reject the postmodern.
But at the same time they were seeing certain things truly that
there really are power plays that happen.
And in fact, I think that the attempt to assault the Christian
meta narrative was one such power play which they

(19:34):
successfully ran in in many different spheres of, of life
through that kind of critical theory mechanism, which
basically divides the populations up into oppressor
and oppressed. And what it created was an
incentive structure where peoplecompeted to be the biggest
victim because it it's so I've affectionately called this the

(19:58):
Victimhood Olympics. Because basically, once you
divided everybody up based on whatever characteristics, now
it's a competition to see who the biggest victim is because
the biggest victim wins, the biggest victim is in charge, the
biggest victim sets the agenda. And so, and this is where kind
of those different independent critical theories, class theory,

(20:21):
race theory, gender theory, gay theory, queer theory, all of
those dovetailed with intersectionality.
That was the idea that basicallyyou could combine your
oppression. And so if you're the.
Circles on your Venn diagram. Yeah, if the circles on your
Venn diagram touch the most the the one of the other guys we had
on the show, he had mentioned that he's like, hey, I'm

(20:43):
oppressed in a sense because I'mblack, but I'm also straight and
male, so I don't have those oppressor points.
And I was like, that's interesting.
It's, it's a, it's kind of a tally.
It is and that's, and that's again why it's, it's an
Olympics. It was sports.
And I, and I think this is to try to make sense of what
happened in America over the last, you know, 15 years or so.
I think that's the way to think about it is that people realize

(21:05):
that once the Christian met a narrative and Christian
definitions of justice which hadbeen deeply embedded in our
culture and our legal system, once those were removed and
replaced with this social justice, this alternative theory
of justice and rights and so forth, then once people realize
this is a competition I need to somehow win, they would begin to

(21:29):
manufacture identity groups. So we're going to even, you
know, so that's where like the disabled and abled fat and
skinny became, you know, that's one, you know, so you get points
if you're fat, you could lose points if you're young and
healthy and all of these different things combined
together to try to create the biggest victim because they got
their way. And I think the quite frankly,
you know, this is maybe jumping ahead, but the, the apotheosis

(21:51):
of that was like the trans movement actually, because and I
and I think even the the kind ofthe rise, the kind of where did
this come from? One of the places that you know,
so there's the social contagion dimension of the trans
phenomenon, particularly for girls.
I think Abigail Shire's demonstrated that pretty well
that for girls, it's, it's just a part of being a, you know,

(22:13):
girls want to be in with people.And so if one of your friends
does it, then you want to do it.That's why they wear the same
clothes. And there's a real communal
women tend to be that way. And this was just a social
contagion for women, but it was also a way of coping with the
fact that if you're a white woman, then you're close.
And and you're talking about thehierarchy, you're in terms of

(22:35):
oppressor, you're like what? close to the top of the
oppressor, the oppressor hierarchy, which means you're at
the bottom of the justice. You're like the almost the worst
of the worst straight white males, They're at the bottom,
but white women would be close. You have one oppressor
oppressive point because a victim point because you're a
woman. But the other one's sorry,

(22:56):
you're out of luck. But what the groups at the
bottom figured out is that in the new hierarchy, you could
shift. And so if all of a sudden, if
you're a white, straight white woman, but you go trans, you
just now leapfrogged everybody and now you're at the top of the
pyramid. You're you're in the catbird's
seat and now you're the most depressed.
Same thing with white men. If you're trans, you're now at

(23:18):
the top. And they figured out that it was
a get out of jail free card. You could do things.
You could do demented and evil things that if you were just a
straight white guy would be appalling, right?
If you expose yourself to children, for example, as a
straight white man, you'd go to jail.
But if you're trans and you wantto go into a locker room with a
bunch of kids and expose yourself, well, now you're just

(23:40):
living your best life. You're you're just living your
authentic self. And society would reorganize
itself around you. And for a lot of really selfish
and demented people, that's really attractive.
I want everybody to do what I say, even if I if I make up
pronouns. This was one of the more bizarre
things, like if I say you must call me these made-up terms that

(24:01):
nobody ever has ever called anybody in the history of the
world, but I just made them up and you must refer to me by
them. And entire corporations, the
government would say, absolutely, Facebook would put
you in the list of how many genders there are.
That's a lot of power. And you feel, you feel like
you're flying pretty high. So I think that that the
postmodernism, the power play, the critical theory, that's how

(24:24):
all of those things dovetailed. Thank you for that.
Fascinating. OK, I want to talk a little bit
about, yeah, you've written several books, but I want to
talk about one that I think directly deals with this issue.
The other guy I was speaking with, he was saying, obviously
as a social justice activist, the opposite.
He was saying empathy is what weneed, the sympathy is the
problem, but you say the opposite.

(24:46):
So chat with us a little bit about your work, The Sin of
Empathy, which has a, you know, a catchy and, you know,
attention grabbing title, but I also thought was pretty fairly
written. Tell us about the difference
between empathy, sympathy. Give us an overview of the
argument you put forward in thatwork.
Yeah, I'm actually curious. Your previous guest, I've, I've,

(25:06):
I've meet a lot of people who, or I've, I've interacted with
folks who, you know, want to privilege empathy.
And I've noticed that some of them disparaged sympathy in
order to do it. I used some examples in my book.
I'm curious why he thought sympathy was bad.
Yeah, So, yeah, he and it's, it's on the website and stuff
too. He, he was super nice guy.
I'm really glad that he, you know, was open to share his

(25:28):
views and that kind of stuff. So I, I, I, I, I really enjoyed
interviewing him. But yeah, his, his view is when
you do sympathy, it's a way for you to detach and keep the
status quo, right. So it's, it's a way to say, ah,
be warmed and well fed, but not have to do it.
And which is ironic because you don't feed somebody by also
starving yourself. And so there's, yeah, so, so I

(25:48):
think the idea is it's easy for us to give sympathy and not get
there in, in the trenches and hurt with people.
So it doesn't really affect our lives, which keeps the status
quo. Whereas, you know, obviously in
in your work you're you argue the opposite that no, actually
that makes it where nobody can actually ever get better.
So chat with us a little bit about that.
Yeah, good. So that's, that's helpful.

(26:09):
I, that's a good way to start in.
So I think so part of why I wrote what I did, which I've
been working on now for I think the first sort of stuff I did
was like 20/17/2018. That was the first public stuff
and I've been working on it prior to that for a couple of
years in in classroom discussions was noticing that

(26:29):
precisely what you just said, people disparaging sympathy in
favor of empathy. And as a Christian with a Bible
that uses the word sympathy a lot, it was kind of an
interesting thing. Why?
What are we doing and the argument.
Brené Brown is the example I usein the book.
She's got a famous little video where she claims that sympathy

(26:51):
breeds disconnection. It's it is aloof, it stands
apart. It doesn't seek to actually help
the person or the help it tries to give is superficial.
Someone's someone's hurt becauseof a wrong that's been done to
them, done to them, and you offer them a sandwich and it's
like what, that didn't really help.
And so sympathy is this bad thing this, this response to

(27:11):
pain that is inadequate. And that empathy is basically
the two point O upgraded versionof that that really gets it and
that really, you know, brings people together and is
vulnerable and all of this sort of stuff.
But when I began to notice, and it's related to all of the
victimhood Olympics conversationwe just had, was the way that

(27:33):
that demand for empathy, the call for empathy was frequently
a power tool in the hands of thesensitive into victims, real or
imagined, that was used to steerand manipulate communities,
particularly leaders into getting people's way.
It was, it was a it was a handy tool of manipulation.

(27:55):
And I think that as a phenomenon, that's a universal,
it's an old human phenomenon. I don't think it was invented in
the 20th century or, or there, you know, something like that.
I think it's an old thing. I think you can find it in all
kinds of literature. I think you could we see it in
the Bible. But my my claim was is that the
modern virtue scare quotes virtue of empathy is a

(28:19):
corruption of the older classical Christian virtue of
compassion or sympathy. So I I use compassion and
sympathy interchangeably. Most often they're ones from
Latin ones from Greek gets the same basic idea.
And it means to suffer with it means to, to suffer with
someone. But the and so the, the, the

(28:39):
width is important because it means you're with them, but
you're not them. You're there's a there is a
boundary. You're not.
You don't allow their emotions or their suffering to steer your
emotional vehicle. You're choosing to join them to
some degree. And that's the key qualifier in
their suffering, in their pain, in their emotions, even in the

(29:02):
Bible commends this. Yeah, weep with those who weep
is a biblical command. Rejoice with those who rejoice.
So sharing of emotions, that's agood thing.
But what the Bible also commandsis remaining anchored and
tethered to something outside the emotions of the sufferer.
So this would be in the Christian view, this is you
remain tethered to God. You remain tethered to Christ,

(29:24):
anchored to Christ. And so love for God is the first
commandment and love for your neighbor is the 2nd and it
follows from it, but it can't replace it.
And if you try to do that, if you, if you make the other
person basically into God, theirfeelings, their suffering,
become your lodestar and you have to follow wherever it goes,
you wind up in some very destructive places.

(29:47):
And so the analogy I used to illustrate this in the book is
if you have someone who's, you know, drowning, say they're say
they're sinking in quicksand andyou want to help them.
Well, actually there's three responses you could have.
The 1st is apathy, and I think that probably your previous
guest is reacting against something like that.
Apathy would be, I'm not going to do anything about this, ain't

(30:09):
my problem. We see that in the Bible and the
story that the famous parable ofthe Good Samaritan, right?
He's the Good Samaritan 'cause he actually helps the guy on the
side of the road. Whereas the previous two
characters in that particular story walked by on the other
side, said we're not going to get our hands dirty.
Or the rich man Lazarus kind of thing too.
Yes, exactly. So there's this, there's this

(30:32):
aloofness. That's apathy.
I don't care. It's callous, but then it's OK.
What is? What does it actually mean to
help? My claim is that the biblical
virtue of compassion basically steps in with one foot, that's
the width I'm with them, but also remains anchored to the
shore, grabs a branch, tree branch, braces 1 foot on so that
we can pull them out. And that the modern virtue of

(30:57):
empathy basically demands that we jump in with both feet.
You have to basically you're allin and you and I think you just
sync with them. You're now there's two people
stuck in the mud and it doesn't actually help.
And so that's what I think when I hear the modern virtue of
empathy, when I and why I wrote the book was I want to, I think

(31:18):
that's bad. I think that jumping in with
both feet in that way is harmful, destructive,
dishonouring to God doesn't helppeople.
And I want to rescue the biblical virtue of compassion
from its haters and say that theemotional distance there is a
little bit of an emotional distance, is actually really
important because it's what helps you keep your head and see

(31:40):
clearly to know what help actually means.
Yeah. Do you want your surgeon
freaking out kind of stuff? Yeah.
You want him to be very calm even though he wants to keep you
alive. OK, let let.
Me ask you what? So yeah, let me just illustrate
this. So like my I have a that's my my
wife had a stroke in last year or so.
I'm sorry to hear that. Yeah, appreciate that.

(32:02):
But. So the surgeon who operated on
her had very didn't, did not have a great bedside manner.
He would come in and check on usafter everything she said she's
good now. But after, you know, he came in,
he doesn't have a bedside manner.
He's not being empathetic. The nurses were being very
empathetic. They were all, what do you need
or how can we help? What?
You know, we need some more medicine.
Doctors do that. It's just math and science.

(32:23):
And I'm like, and and I'm like, but, but was he what?
But what I say he's and So what I say he's not compassionate.
I say no, why? Why is he doing this?
Why, why did he go into medicine?
Because he wants to actually help people like my wife.
Like he wanted to help her and he did help her and and he would
and I didn't want him. If I were to say what I really
want from this doctor is for himto feel everything my wife

(32:46):
feels. I'd be like no, what I really
want is for him to have a steadyhand, clear eyed, not be worried
about the emotions in the room and instead just help.
That's what I wanted. Yeah, yes, 100%.
I want the, the surgeon that most loves me is the one who can
best keep me alive. All the other stuff comes
second. So tell me if this is a fair
summary, just to, to kind of recap that 'cause I, I think

(33:06):
what you're mentioning is very interesting.
So you've got, you know, soon pathos to, to hurt with or to
suffer with or in pathos to hurtin.
And we're talking about the difference.
Would it be fair to say that sympathy is sorrowful yet always
rejoicing, whereas empathy wouldhave to be sorrowful yet always
sorrowful. Is that too much of A
simplification or is that a helpful?

(33:26):
No, I think that that biblical language, the sorrowful yet
always rejoicing is the the is communicating what I mean by
tethered, right? Like it's I'm anchored to
something outside the immediate suffering or the immediate
motions of the moment, somethingsturdy and stable, namely this
in, you know, it's God like the God is my strength.
He's my portion and I'm anchoredto him.

(33:48):
And therefore, yes, I'm sorrowful, but I there's a deep
joy underneath it. I think that's right.
And I think in the other case, when when you lose touch with
reality, you don't anchor yourself and you make other
person's emotions or suffering your North Star.

(34:09):
How do you know like, like you do weep with those who weep.
Well, what if they're weeping about something terrible?
Like what if? What if they're evil people who
are mad because they can't do more evil?
Yeah. Do you weep with Epstein?
Do you weep with Epstein? Is kind of like, yeah, exactly
like when Epstein was arrested. He's going to be super sad,
right? He's in prison and he's weeping.
Should I go in there and be like, I'm going to just totally

(34:30):
join you in your sadness or should I go?
You know what? What he and and and maybe say
he's not even weeping because he's sorry.
What if he's weeping because he doesn't get to do it anymore?
Right? Or I remember another another
example. I remember a watching after I
watched there's ATV show, a clipof ATV show.

(34:51):
I don't even know what TV show that went around on the Internet
a few years ago. And whatever show it is, they
support this, they support this podcast.
We'll just throw them up as likea sponsor.
Exactly. So free advertising, yeah.
They, but it was, it was a show like it was the opening montage
and everybody's like glued to the TV screen, like coming on
and seeing something has happened on the screen.
And everybody like puts their hands in their mouth and starts

(35:13):
to cry. And it looks like there's some
great tragedy has happened. And these people are crying.
They're looking at each other with like, Oh no, what are we
going to do? And so you're watching this and
you're going like, wait. And, and they're not telling you
what happened. They're just watching people and
they're, they're giving out, youknow, they're hugging their
daughter and they're, you know, looking at each other with these
serious and sad expression. And they're clearly there's this
emotional moment. And it finally, at the end of

(35:35):
like the two-minute clip, it pans out and you realize that
what has caused all of this consternation and sadness and
grief and, and whatever is that Roe V Wade was overturned.
OK, So they're sad because abortions can now be made
illegal in America. They're sad about this.

(35:56):
Should I, as a Christian, join them in their sadness?
And the answer is absolutely notlike what they're weeping over
is bad. They're crying over they're,
this is a, this is a moment of, of this should be a moment of
rejoicing because this is a goodthing.
It's good that we that, that RoeV Wade is overturned.
And so when we, when we tether our emotions, our emotions to

(36:20):
other people's emotions, we haveno standard by which to evaluate
are these good emotions or bad emotions 'cause there are, there
are righteous ones and unrighteous ones.
And that's a key principle of biblical justice.
There's you should fear certain things and you should not fear
other things like fear could be a sin.
You have the sin of fear, the sin of anger.

(36:41):
So in fact, this is a big part of my, my project in this book
was basically to say, I want to do with empathy and compassion
what we do with all sorts of other emotions.
We know that there's sinful desire and righteous desire,
There's sinful fear and godly fear.
There's sinful grief and there'sgodly grief.
There's sinful anger and godly anger.
I want there to be a sinful compassion, and I think empathy

(37:04):
is the word that we most often use for it.
And then I want there to be a godly compassion and I want to
commend that one against his counterfeit.
OK, I want to ask you so that that that's a good springboard
for me to to kind of ask this. So you mentioned this from a
Christian worldview. You identify as a Protestant
Christian. You've written a lot about how
unchristian ideologies have kindof permeated the church.

(37:24):
I'll, I'll kind of combine thesetwo questions together because I
think they're important. Why do you think that certain
some of these ideologies we've been discussing have permeated
the church so easily and so quickly?
And then conversely, would you say that this is something that
for, for for my audience membersthat don't identify with the
Christian worldview, is this something they can also support

(37:45):
sympathy over empathy? Or would they need a unique,
like a uniquely Christian worldview to do that?
I'll start with the first the second question first.
I think this is the sort of thing that they can I think that
even a non Christian could recognize it's bad to link your
emotions told to jump in with both feet.
I think that they could say thatseems like a terrible idea.

(38:05):
And and I think that I in some ways the easiest way in for most
people to get. What do you mean by sin of
empathy is to ask them, have youever been on the receiving end
of a pity party? Meaning.
And and I think almost everybodyhas everybody's been in a
situation where someone you careabout puts on a long face,
frequently exaggerates what's happened to them in order to

(38:28):
manipulate you into getting their way.
And I go, OK, good. So if you, if they've, if, what
are they doing? They're using your pity, which
is just another word for what we're talking about that that
impulse to relieve people's suffering.
They're using it against you. They're using it as a weapon of
manipulation, a tool of a blackmail.
I'm so sad. Do what I want.

(38:50):
And we hate it. Like nobody likes being on the
receiving end of a pity party. We feel I'm being manipulated
and I'm saying good. That's right.
That's why it's an old human thing.
It's human. Humans have been doing this to
each other since, you know, the Garden of Eden.
And so everybody, I think can get that concept.
I think that as a Christian, so that and so that all that gets

(39:11):
you is my, my compassion needs to be tethered to something.
It can't just be let loose. And then as a Christian, I'm
going to say, well, the sturdiest thing in reality is
God, like he's just the most stable.
He made you. He knows you.
He knows how all these emotions are supposed to work.
He knows how these virtues are supposed to work.
Anchor yourself to him. That's what that that's what I
would come in. But I think that someone could

(39:32):
recognize the problem even if they didn't share my faith.
So how did it get into the church?
I think is a really fascinating question and I think there was a
couple of things that that went into it.
The first is the Bible does comein compassion.
It says be compassionate, be tenderhearted, be kind.
We put those who we these are biblical commands.

(39:53):
So that's, that's one, as Christians know, we have an
obligation to be compassionate, merciful, kind, tenderhearted.
The second is we want to be known for those things.
We want to have a reputation as compassionate for people.
And I think that basically what happened over the last 20-30
years is that certain groups within Christendom and in

(40:15):
certain groups outside of Christendom figured out that the
biblical command to be compassionate and Christian
desire to be known as compassionate was a very potent
steering wheel. It was a.
It was a way. To get Christians to do what
they wanted to do, to do what others wanted them to do, or to
stop doing things that opposed say the a progressive or a, a

(40:40):
left wing agenda. And they figured out it was very
effective because all they had to do was say, if you don't
support X, then you're a heartless person.
You're not. Where's your compassion?
Jesus said to love your neighbor.
Jesus said, Jesus said be kind. And so they would appeal to
biblical slogans, fill them in with their own modern

(41:00):
progressive definition, and thenuse them as a cudgel or a
steering wheel to get Christiansto to be quiet, to back off or
to come over to their side. And so I think that that's where
whether it was with the racial discussion, whether it was with
the gender, you know, manhood, womanhood kind of discussions,
whether it's with the sexuality,LGBT discussions, all of those,

(41:24):
the common thread running underneath it was the use of
compassion, empathy, kindness asa tool of manipulation.
This person is sad because they can't get gay married.
So you need to redefine marriageto, to allow them.
So we need to overthrow all of human history and the biblical

(41:45):
definition, the natural definition, we need to totally
ditch that because this person'ssad because they can't get
married. It was.
That was the way that many left wing causes were advanced over
the last 2530 years. Would you say that it is So
there's something interesting happening where they're taking a

(42:06):
biblical word or biblical term, let's say love.
So let me let me say it this way.
I think there's a better way to say it.
Can you even know how to love somebody or sympathize with them
without having some standard of truth first?
Like even apart from a Christianworldview, like if a guy, I
remember hearing about somebody that said, hey, before you ever
ask what happened, if you go to somebody's house and their child

(42:26):
has died and they're weeping, you should just weep with them
first. And I thought, well, not if they
murdered the child. And so is there a sense in which
you cannot know what love is, cannot know what compassion is,
cannot know any of that unless you have some view of truth and
goodness and these kind of things, regardless of worldview?
Is that an oversimplification oris that fair?
No, I think that's right. You had like, it's the same

(42:48):
thing. If someone comes into like I'm a
pastor, say someone comes into my office and says my, my
parents abused me and it's like,wow, do I do?
I have this was a big thing during the whole me too, me too,
me too movement is I just have to believe them.
And it's like, what if they're lying?

(43:08):
They're like, they're like in other ways, they're lying.
They're not the victim. The victim is the person they're
accusing like that. That would be the victim.
This person's about to be slandered as an abuser when they
haven't done anything. And so I need to know what's
true before I can know what might, what the appropriate
emotional response is, which requires me to maintain a
certain kind of sober minded distance to be able to evaluate

(43:32):
what I'm hearing. And I, you know, if you, most
people like there's a whole bunch of people that if you say
that like, hey, you need to knowwhat happened before you can
know how you should respond. That's just common sense.
But there was a bunch of people who said, no, we, we need to
suspend that. And you just need to believe all
women or you just need to believe all victims.
And it was like, if you, if you establish that as a rule, you're

(43:55):
incentivizing gross evil. Like it's, it's not again, that
it's just insufficiently good. It's that it's actually
promoting injustice because you basically said as long as
someone claims to be the victim,the victim is always right.
You they can't be questioned, challenged.
You can't get seek more information.
Now, having said that, if someone comes in and says I've

(44:16):
been abused, there needs to be agravity about this one way or
the other. This is serious, right?
Whatever the truth ends up being, this is a big deal now.
And so there needs to be a gravity.
Don't be flippant. But you also, I think, are
forbidden to simply accept the claim of the first person who
comes in and claims the victimhood status.

(44:37):
Because if you, if you do, I, I've, I've known situations
where that was the initial thought and people immediately
sided out of compassion with thefirst person to make the
accusation. And then over time the, the
situation entirely reversed and they realized, oh, wow, I sided
with this person. But they were actually the one

(45:00):
who was doing all of the bad stuff.
They were lying, they were cheating, they were doing all
sorts of things. And this was a way of
deflecting. Oh no, what have I done?
I I even think in the me too thing, you can, you can see how
empathy gets manipulated frequently.
Abusers actually, like this is well studied.
How do, how do abusers know how to manipulate the empathy of

(45:21):
their victims? Right?
They do something and they say, don't tell anybody.
I'll get in so much trouble. What's that?
That's saying, Hey, I would be sad if you went and told your
parents what just happened. And I you don't want me to be
sad, do you? And if and if someone gives into
that, it's like, what are they doing?
They're protect the covering up evil out of out of quote UN
quote compassion. I'm saying don't, don't do that.

(45:43):
Go to if someone commits evil, like do go, you know, call the
cops, tell, tell your parents, do do what you got to do to
expose the evil. Don't allow evil people to
manipulate you by your compassion.
Yeah. Is it Is it a crass summary or
is it fair to simply say that you want to be on the side of

(46:04):
the victim, but you have to ask questions before you know who
the victim really is? Not the perceived victim or
cultural's victim, but our culture's victim, but the actual
victim. But still then be on the side of
an if God were to see someone asa victim, like objectively you,
you would say that that we do need to support them, but we
just have to figure out who thatis.
Exactly right. So yeah, you got to know who's
who 1st. And then now you know what to

(46:26):
do. Now you know how to respond.
Compassion here, you know, righteous indignation over here,
you know, Swift, you know justice, all of that needs to be
in play. But in order to do that, this is
the point. You have to be clear headed,
sober minded, which means you can't let your emotions or other
people's emotions be in the driver's seat.

(46:46):
To what degree do you think churches should or should not be
winsome? What is the balance between
trying to let your light shine before men?
But also, Jesus has promised that the world will hate you.
So there, there's this, there's something that has happened in
the last, I don't know, maybe 15or 20 years where there's this
idea of winsomeness and being attractive and that kind of
stuff. Is that right?
Is that wrong? Is there an element that's

(47:07):
right? Is that pelagianism?
What are what are your views on on that stuff?
Yeah, I, so I, at a base level, I think it's actually, it's a
similar kind of conversation as as the other.
So, so at one level, winsomenessis, is a good thing, right?
It, it as a biblical principle, Paul, Paul says I become all

(47:27):
things to all people in order that I might win some or, you
know, I might save some. And that's where the idea of, of
winsomeness comes from. From a biblical perspective.
It's it's in, it's in an attemptto remove unnecessary barriers
to people hearing the good news of Jesus.
That's that's what winsomeness at its best is.

(47:50):
And I think in that sense it's good.
But just like all good things, like compassion, for example,
which can be corrupted, winsomeness can go wrong because
rather than trying to win peopleover, you can try to please them
or pander to them or coddle them.
And when, when that happens, you're not just removing a
distraction like in a obstacle to the gospel, you're removing

(48:13):
the offense of the gospel, whichyou, you're not allowed to do.
And so I, and I think this was areal danger.
I think this was all a part of the same movement.
I think that part of what happened was over the last 20-30
years in Christian circles is that certain high profile
Christian leaders LED movements that basically said, we want to
remove barriers to the gospel for particular groups of people.

(48:37):
And in particular, it was, it was progressives.
It was that's that they were thought of as the world, that's
the, the progressive world, the secular world.
And so we're going to communicate to them that we
share their sensibilities like we, we, we think the way they
think about things. That's a removable of a barrier.
We share their sympathies, the things they care about, we care

(48:57):
about. And often we share their
hostilities, the things that they hate, we hate.
And as a result, they often, youknow, a lot of a lot of these
folks would, who are big advocates of winsomeness would
throw other Christians under thebus in order to ingratiate
themselves with their secular audience.
We're not like those moral majority Christians.

(49:19):
We're not like those fundamentalist Christians.
We're not like them. We actually share your disgust
and contempt of them. And and So what was happening
there was winsomeness was being elevated as this ultimate value,
and it resulted in people fixating on how the world thinks
about us. And when you do that, you be got

(49:39):
you become God's PR agent. You're always trying to figure
out what your target audience wants to hear and how to give it
to them in a way that's palatable, which means you you
pare down the rough edges of theChristian faith.
You say, you know, so we'll whisper about certain sins
because it would offend our audience.
We'll Thunder about other sins because they'll I appreciate it.

(49:59):
Shout out to JD Greer there. Shout out to JD Greer.
And shout out to JD Greer there.That's exactly what his what he
was doing. And I think he was it was a
rationalizing moment for him of trying to say I want I know that
there's secular people in my audience who will flinch at
Christian teaching about sexuality.
They won't like it. And so I will try to communicate

(50:21):
to them. But hey, the Bible only whispers
about this. Where is it thunders about these
other things that his secular progressive audience also wanted
the Bible to Thunder about? And so you, you in you,
basically you, what you do is once you've started operating
that you've given your adversaries a steering wheel,
right? Because all they can do is they

(50:43):
can steer you by what you're known for.
And so as long as you're known for the right things, we'll like
you and you can have a seat at our table and you can be a part
of this. But the minute that you're known
for something that we don't like, we're you're out, you're
banished and we don't want to hear what you have to say.
And so Christians learn to mute themselves on certain issues,
usually about sexuality, for example, abortion, for example.

(51:03):
And then to play up the Bible really cares about climate
change. The Bible really cares about
this, this racial discussion, which it does at one level, But
in America, the 21st century, itit wasn't acting like America,
the 21st century was the Jim Crow S was crazy.
It was crazy. But we have to act that way and

(51:24):
and treat microaggressions as real aggressions,
microaggressions and lynchings. They're the same.
And all all of that stuff was a way of trying to communicate.
We care about what you care about.
And so listen to us. And it was people pleasing and
basically it allowed the world to, I call this in my book, I

(51:46):
call it the progressive gaze, gaze living under the
progressive gaze. Because it's like you had a
little progressive on your shoulder who is evaluating how
good of a Christian you are. And if you conform to their
definition of Christian virtues,their definition of empathy,
their definition of justice, social justice, then you were a
good Christian. And if you didn't, if you

(52:08):
resisted, you were a bad Christian.
And you don't want to be a bad Christian, do you?
Because the world is watching. That was a major way that
winsomeness impulse very easily became a pleasomeness impulse.
We're going to please man. And the Bible says you can't do
that. You can't please man and serve
Christ. You, you have to serve Christ.
And then he let the chips fall where they may.

(52:29):
He may let your light shine before men and people see it and
give glory to God. That's He.
He can draw people. It's the realm of life to them.
God does that, or they may hate you.
And your job is not to control outcomes, but to be faithful.
Yeah, there there's something interesting.
A lot of churches that think that they are very culturally
aware and culturally relevant, typically I've found are very

(52:50):
not on this issue. When we talk about being winsome
and becoming all things to all men, like Paul becoming a Jew to
Jew or Greek to Greek, it seems like there's culture.
You don't become winsome on doctrine and adjust that.
But what what a lot of these churches don't realize is that
the cultural issues of our day are doctrinal issues.
They are ethical issues. So to try to become winsome,
there is then to change doctrine.

(53:12):
They, they want them to still beseparate.
Like it, it, it wasn't certain periods of, of, you know,
Western history, but it's, it's,it's ironic to me that the
people that think they best understand culture typically
don't see what's happening. That's absolutely right.
Like, so I think there was a time in Western civilization, in
American history, where all parties had A at least a share,

(53:34):
some shared vision of ultimate goods.
Like, what are we aiming at? And the debates were about the
best way to get there, you know,So we all went to do this good
thing. But is the best way through
government intervention or through private action?
And your political debates wouldbe about that, Yeah.
Economics. Social Security, not ethical
issues. Right, the best means of

(53:55):
accomplishing a shared end. What we live in now is we live
in the in a a fragmented tribal situation where we don't even
agree on what good is. We don't, you know, is, is
abortion good or bad? Like is, is the murder of an
innocent child? Does it have, does the child
have rights or not? We don't even agree about that.
We don't agree about what we don't know what a man is.
We don't know what a woman is. We don't know what a human is.

(54:16):
We don't know what a can a boy turn into a girl?
We don't know, like as a society, we don't have shared
understandings of what good is. And, and so because of that,
debates about the best way to doit can't even happen because
we're having more fundamental worldview debates about who who

(54:37):
God is, what good is, what man is, what woman is.
Those are the debate what sexuality is, what marriages.
Those are the debates we're having.
And if you try to be winsome to both sides there, you're just
going to give away the farm. Interesting.
Thank you for that. OK, so I think that is a great
transition to, to my last question.
And then I want you to be able to, to mention any helpful

(54:57):
resources. So we're going to put a link to
Doctor Reading's book when this goes out to the center of
Empathy. But you, there's also other ones
that you that you can check out.My last question is this.
What you, what you just mentioned, I think is huge.
This whole thing seems to be 1 big equivocation.
What does love mean? What does goodness mean?
What does compassion mean, etcetera.
Could you give us what we hear alot of slogans in our culture

(55:18):
love others. Love is love.
Be kind. You never see like a sign in
somebody's yard that says like be correct.
It's always be kind, right. What what do you believe it
means to love somebody? Give give a good definition for
me, if you will, of what you would say love is.
Yeah, love is seeking someone else's good.

(55:39):
To love someone is to seek theirgood.
And so then that, so if, if I love you, it means I'm seeking
your good and, and I might add ultimate good.
And so that, that means I have to ask questions about if I say
love is seeking someone's ultimate good and I have to go,
what, what is their good? Well, what are they?

(55:59):
Are they, it's a human being. So what are human beings made
for? What's, what is the good of a
human being? If I use the word ultimate, I'm,
I'm implying there's a hierarchy.
There's ultimate goods and then there's lesser goods.
OK, so I need to ask, well, am Iseeking their ultimate good or
only their proximate, their secondary good?
Am I only seeking their their, their temporal or earthly good?
Or am I seeking their ultimate happiness, which comes from

(56:21):
knowing Christ and having eternal life?
So loving someone biblically is seeking their ultimate good,
which means seeking to make themhappy in God, seeking for them
to know God. That's what they were made for.
And so then all of my other actions become of love, become
means to that end, which means that sometimes what might love

(56:42):
look like love might look like giving them, feeding them,
clothing them. That's love, right?
Because I'm, I'm trying to show I'm caring for your earthly
goods, your earthly needs, because I want to communicate
that I'm seeking your good. And in seeking your good, maybe
you want to know about your ultimate good.
And so there's, there's that. So I'm, I'm, I'm loving them
that way. But other times love might mean

(57:02):
saying no, like when we with ourkids, no one thinks loving your
kids means doing whatever it is they want all the time.
They'll they'll die, they will not be good.
So love means saying no, no, youmay not do that.
That's not good for you. It's not good for you to eat,
you know, candy every hour of every day.
It's not good for you to have unlimited screen time.
It's not good. These aren't it's not good for

(57:23):
you. And I love you.
So I'm going to seek your good by saying you can only watch one
show instead of unending shows. And so I think all of us
recognize that in certain areas and then we, you know, certain
people forget it in others and, and want to act like, no, there
all love means is affirmation, validation, whatever anybody
says goes. That's the false worldly

(57:45):
definition of love that honestlyhas been as destructive as
anything else in history. Like we have.
There's a generation of people right now who have permanently
mutilated their bodies through chemicals and surgeries because
in the name of love, people simply affirmed and validated

(58:09):
their delusions. Like, and if you want to talk
about systemic, right, it wasn'tjust their parents, it was the
educational system, it was the medical establishment.
Everything was rearranged. And, and when you start to press
through it, you go, why would these people, why would these
doctors tell all these lies? It's like, well, how much money
do they make on hooking people up to permanent, you know,

(58:32):
pharmaceuticals in order to maintain the the fiction that a
boy can turn into a girl. How what is it?
What is a top surgery run these days?
When you start to like, it's really remarkable, I think that
progressives, which ostensibly are always looking out for the
little guy in the face of the big money grabbing corporations,
somehow missed the fact that abortion is a big business.

(58:54):
The sexuality transition industry is a big business.
It's a lot of money. And so maybe there's other
motivations happening here, but all of it was covered over.
All of it was masked behind, like you said, slogans.
Love is love, right? Love, love, you know, tolerance.
Be kind, be empathetic, and all of it was just false, false,

(59:15):
false definitions of love that was highly destructive,
dishonouring to God and and harmful to people.
One of the things you said, I, Ithink is really interesting is
to ask, I, I agree with your definition, by the way, that
love is doing what's best for somebody.
It pushes the question back to then what do we mean by good?
One of the things I find interesting, even even outside
of a, a Christian worldview. So Aristotle's view that human

(59:36):
happiness is objective. We really have a tendency to
think happiness, sadness, joy, whatever is subjective.
It's how I feel. Whereas for Aristotle it's like,
no, what promotes human flourishing?
If you're wanting to do something that makes you sad,
that's good for you. Working out, eating your
vegetables, whatever, that's actual happiness because it
promotes human flourishing. And so it, it seems like in this

(59:57):
debate, regardless of 1's worldview, there's not this idea
that wherever somebody finds it,that it's objective, it's just
purely subjective, that that what makes me happy is what I
think will make me happy. Not saying, well, what is a
human for? What should they be doing?
What is objective human flourishing mentally,
spiritually, socially, physically, whatever it is, is

(01:00:17):
that is that a fair? Is that a fairpoint?
That's absolutely right. And I think that actually it's a
good way of illustrating, again,the difference between that kind
of false worldly empathy and sort of biblical faithful
compassion. Empathy often is oriented to
people's immediate feelings likethey So what do they feel right
now? How do I make it go away?
What's the, what's the nearest and quickest way to relieve what

(01:00:40):
I, you know, the, the feelings. Whereas I think compassion is
always oriented to their good, which might mean again, crossing
their immediate feelings in order to pursue their ultimate
good, right? That like that biblical
compassion will do that and say,this isn't good for you.
I know you feel this way, but it's not good for you.
And so I'm going to, I'm going to again with our kids.
We know this like you, like yourkid wants to stay up all night

(01:01:03):
long and, and eat ice cream and you're going, this is not good
for you. I know you feel that way, but it
will be better for you. You'll, you'll be a much happier
kid tomorrow if you go to bed right now, right?
And I'm not tired. It doesn't matter.
You're going to go to bed. And we're, we're, we, we have
our eye on they're good. We in a way that they can't
because their immediate feelingsare clouding things.
And so we don't want to join thecloudiness.

(01:01:24):
We don't want to join that fog by orienting to their immediate
feelings. Those feelings matter, but
they're not ultimate. Instead, we should aim for their
ultimate good. Man, thank you so much.
Very fascinating for the last thing in any resources.
So let's say that somebody I I would encourage everybody
listening go listen to the social justice activists, listen
to the doctor ready. Listen to the different stuff,

(01:01:45):
wrestle, talk, chat with friends.
What are some resources though, if if somebody's like, hey, this
is new. I've, I've never really thought
about maybe how the church has taken in some things from
culture with different definitions, biblical
definitions, originally love andthen it gets redefined and then
the church is like, we're supposed to be about love.
So let's do that. What are some resources on that?
Resources on empathy versus sympathy, resources on the

(01:02:06):
social justice movement. For somebody that just wants to
know more and this is maybe their first exposure to this,
what would you recommend? Yeah, so my book Scent of
Empathy deals with a whole bunchof this stuff, so that'd be one
place to go. Allie Bastuckey has a has a book
in the similar vein called ToxicEmpathy.
She applies it in particular to a lot of our political slogans.

(01:02:27):
Abortion is healthcare, love is love, those kind of things.
So she's she's looking, she's taking, we're on the same page
basically in terms of our substantive and that she's
applying it particularly in someof those modern political
questions. Vodi Bochum's Fault Lines is a
great book, I think on kind of the social justice question and
why Christianity kind of crackedup over some of these issues and

(01:02:51):
what was running underneath the surface.
So so that'd be a great book on on that subject.
So those would be a couple of resources, I think that that may
help. And then in terms of antidote,
I've got a there's a companion book to the leadership in the
center of empathy called Leadership and Emotional
Sabotage. So those kind of pair, well, the
sabotage 1 gets into the empathystuff, but really is more of a

(01:03:11):
positive vision for what does sober minded, courageous
leadership look like that resists these attempts to steer,
manipulate, sabotage you, especially as a leader.
But that could be leader as a husband, as a father, leader in
a church, leader in a business, any kind of leadership.
How do you become the kind of sober minded leader in these

(01:03:34):
different areas who can who can lead well with compassion but
not be steered and manipulated by sabotage?
Fantastic Doctor Joe Rigney, thank you so much for joining
us. Thank you for those listening
and watching. We are appreciative of you and
we will see you on ideological next time.