Hello, fellow wayfarers … Why the demonization of empathy will lead to a church that coddles sin … What I realized about how teaching students helps me do all the other things God has called me to do better (and more happily) … How the experiences of Asian American immigrants can help the rest of us navigate this crazy time … A California Desert Island Bookshelf … This is this week’s Moore to the Point.
The Case for Hellfire-and-Brimstone Empathy
If empathy is a sin, most of those saying so don’t seem to have been tempted beyond their ability to bear it.
That’s one reason I’m not too worried about the latest rhetoric of empathy as the great danger to the church and the world, mostly from those who previously told us that danger was yoga, or yoga pants, or Harry Potter, or hip-hop.
Plus, this rhetoric fails the Screwtape test. “I’m with the Devil and I’m here to recruit you” is not the kind of language that works except with those already committed to the bit. The really dangerous stuff tries to be a little subtler.
Even so, perhaps I should not be so dismissive. We live in crazy times, after all, and we cannot count on biblical literacy when discourse is shaped not by Athens or Jerusalem but by Silicon Valley. And the memes and vibes are definitely against empathy.
“The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy,” Elon Musk told podcaster Joe Rogan. “The empathy exploit. They’re exploiting a bug in Western civilization, which is the empathy response.”
For a certain kind of very-online young man, this sort of language seems strong and aggressive and full of meaning—even if he doesn’t recognize that he is buying into the pagan critique of, well, Jesus Christ.
The problem is not with the aspiring theocrats who parrot this kind of thing but with those who empower them by minimizing what seems unfashionable in order to seem “strong” enough not to be called a liberal.
The ironic danger is that an anti-empathy religion becomes—and very quickly so—a sin-coddling religion the like of which the old religious liberals could only dream.
Empathy is not a biblical term. It refers specifically not just to compassion for others (though it certainly includes that) but to a specific aspect of that compassion: the process of seeking to understand a person through imagination.
What most people mean by empathy is not the compassion itself but the ability to see the need for compassion in the first place—to imagine not just the propositions a person holds or the actions they carry out but what it would be like to be in their situation.
Intimacy is not a biblical term either, but it aims at something the Bible does describe. When we call out sexual immorality and refer to it as “intimacy,” for example, we are not saying that intimacy itself is a sin. We are saying that sinning sexually is a fake intimacy—something altogether different from what Ephesians 5 or Song of Solomon describes.
Can some justify sin under the professed rubric of “empathy,” saying that to understand something is to excuse it? Of course—they do the same for explicitly biblical virtues like love and patience and mercy.
Flannery O’Connor warned that a certain kind of “tenderness” ends logically in terror, in “forced labor camps and in the fumes of the gas chamber.” When does this happen? “When tenderness is detached from the source of tenderness,” she wrote. This is precisely what Jesus warned the Pharisees: When obedience to Scripture is detached from the actual Scriptures, the end result is disobedience (Matt. 23:23–25).
Some Christians recognize that not everything that goes under the name of empathy is, in fact, empathetic. But the real problem is that some of them seek to ask the same question the lawyer once asked Jesus: “Who is my neighbor?” And they often ask for the same reason—to justify cruelty or neglect toward another (Luke 10:29, ESV throughout).
Behind the rejection of empathy is a problem with the mechanism of empathy: imagination. This is how the anti-empathy argument ends up not just coddling the sins of those who wish to justify themselves but also evaporating the very way the Bible teaches us to recognize sin at all, whether in others or in ourselves.
When David killed Uriah after taking Uriah’s wife into his bed, the prophet Nathan confronted the king with a story. The story—that of a rich man who took his poor neighbor’s only ewe lamb—put David empathetically into someone else’s story. He could imagine what it would be like to be the robbed peasant, even down to Nathan’s evocation of the way the lamb ate from the poor man’s cup and grew up with his children.
Nathan knew that accusing David straight-on with the facts of his sin would be impeded by the king’s intellectual self-justifications. To get David to see his sin, Nathan had to prompt David to feel it, to kindle the king’s anger against the injustice by having him identify with the one sinned against (2 Sam. 12:1–5).
Upon ascending to the throne, David’s son Solomon asked God for wisdom. This was not a request for algorithmic knowledge or algebraic expertise. Solomon specifically asked to be able “to govern your people, that I may discern between good and evil” (1 Kings 3:9).
Scripture describes Solomon displaying this wisdom in judging a dispute with empathy. Two women came before Solomon, with one accusing the other of having stolen her baby after she accidentally smothered her own child in the night. Wise Solomon suggested that the baby be cut in two.
Solomon knew human nature well enough, in his God-given wisdom, to be able to imagine the perspective of a grief-stricken mother—who would rather lose her child to another than to allow the baby to be killed (1 Kings 3:27).
A church severed from empathy is a church lacking the compassion of Jesus, but it is also a church unable to call people to repentance of sin.
The lawyer questioning Jesus believed himself to be in the right—loving God and his neighbor as himself—but only in the abstract. Jesus put aside the abstractions and put the man imaginatively in the flow of a story, where he had to visualize a specific scenario.
Jesus forced him to sense the callousness of the priest and the Levite who left the beaten man on the road, to feel the compassion with which the Samaritan saw the wounded man, to move mentally through the specific acts of generosity the Samaritan showed. Then Jesus asked him, “Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” (Luke 10:36).
Jesus did this all the time with his parables. He evoked the sense of rejoicing one might feel when recovering a lost coin or a lost sheep or discovering a hidden treasure in a field. He prompted people’s imagination to feel the outrage of a worker finding out he is paid the same for working all day as one who came along at the end.
The parables were not just “illustrations” of abstractions. They required people to have “ears to hear and eyes to see” in order to understand them (Mark 4:10–13).
It is one thing for me to agree that I should forgive. It’s another for me to listen to a story where I feel the perturbation of the older brother who sees a party thrown for the one who wrecked the family—only to then see that that feeling, as justified as it seems, is the very problem the kingdom of God confronts (Luke 15:11–32).
Without empathy, the problem is not simply that we will deny the humanity and created goodness of other people (although that’s certainly a problem). It’s that we will have a superficial view of sin—seeing it in the cartoonish terms of a person who sets out to be a villain. Jesus, though, said that a time is coming when whoever kills his disciples “will think he is offering service to God” (John 16:2).
Anyone who has ever had to confront someone leaving a spouse for someone else knows that this requires empathy—not to excuse the sin, but just the opposite. It requires knowing human nature and the situation well enough to imagine all the stories the sinning spouse is telling themselves in order to believe that what they are doing is okay.
Preaching a call to repentance requires having the kind of empathy that can imagine all the strategies a person might use to evade the call to repentance—even if they are the opposite strategies the preacher himself might use. A preacher confronting drunkenness had better be able to imagine what it would feel like to say, “I deserve this bottle because I’ve worked hard this week,” as well as what it would feel like to say, “I am so terrible a person that I’ll never be anything other than a drunk.”
It’s hard to imagine a biblical figure less empathetic than John the Baptist, who cried out, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come!” But it’s precisely through empathy that he was able to do this. He had already imagined how these religious people would tell a story that exempted them from condemnation: “And do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father,’ for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham” (Matt. 3:9).
Without empathy, it’s easy to see people as categories, as types, as worldview-holding rationalists who can repent by trading in one set of propositions for another. It’s hard to get a more “progressive” and less biblical view of humanity than that.
Data doesn’t sin. People do. A religion without empathy doesn’t only lead to forgoing the sweetness and light of the gospel. It rids itself of the hellfire and brimstone too. People used to call that “liberal.”
Why I’m Glad to Get One Foot Back in the Classroom
When I became provost and dean at a theological seminary, I remember the horror I felt when some of the older guys in the same role at other institutions said to me, “The first year you’ll stop writing. The second year you’ll stop reading. The third year you’ll stop thinking.” I thought to myself, I have to make sure—whatever it takes—that that doesn’t happen to me.
One of the ways I did that was to realize I would be miserable if I were not doing part of what God has called me to do: teach students. And I’ve found over the years that when I’m not doing that regularly, something really important goes missing from every aspect of my life.
During my time as president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, I was still supervising students and also teaching daylong seminars at our buildings in Nashville and Washington, DC. But it wasn’t the same. I didn’t really realize that that part of me was missing until the fall semester after I left, when I would teach once a week at the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics.
I found that my interactions with students fueled the creative energy of my writing, my preaching, my podcasting, everything—more than anything else. Questions asked in class or afterward in my office would light up my thinking in ways I just couldn’t replicate any other way.
So when Lipscomb University here in Nashville asked me to teach a couple of courses for them each year as the Bill and Crissy Haslam Endowed Distinguished Visiting Professor of Faith and Reason, my wife and my close friends said, “You have to tell them yes.”
That’s especially because I am excited about what’s happening at Lipscomb—what I think is one of the best models of Christian education I’ve ever seen—and because of the admiration I have for the Haslams, who are dear friends and what I consider to be among the best models of Christian leadership.
Nothing there will change anything about my role here at CT—except that I think it will foster an even more catalytic partnership between these two great Christian institutions. And I will be happier and more productive with students helping me think through the future of the church and of the world.
What One Asian American Journalist’s Experience Can Teach the Rest of Us About Being “Strangers in the Land”
One of the things that many of you mention to me, and that we’ve addressed here many times, is the feeling of being “homeless” or “not quite fitting” into the categories this crazy American moment demands. This is not, of course, an unusual situation at all for the people of God (Heb. 11:13–16).
Michael Luo, executive editor of The New Yorker and author of the new book Strangers in the Land: Exclusion, Belonging, and the Epic Story of the Chinese in America, has a unique perspective on that whole question. I asked him to talk with me on the podcast about what he’s learned about our country’s treatment of its Chinese residents, an exploration that drew Luo to trace his own family’s path to the United States.
We discuss not only American sentiments toward Chinese populations but also how our country deals with perceived strangers, the unique challenges of Asian American churches grappling with whether to become multiethnic, his own experience of being a Christian in very secular media spaces, and how his friendship with Tim Keller informed his view of Keller’s unique gifts and legacy.
I found Luo’s insights fascinating, and I think you will too. You can listen to the conversation here.
Desert Island Bookshelf
Every other week, I share a list of books that one of you says you’d want to have on hand if you were stranded on a deserted island. This week’s submission comes from reader Jordan Quinley of Yucaipa, California, who writes: “I was unsure whether the Bible is presumed. If not, I would gladly knock off any book below for my NIV Bible.”
Here’s Jordan’s list:
- Daily Prayer for Baptists ed. by Patrick S. Morrow and W. David Stone: As a kind of BCP (Book of Common Prayer) for Baptists, this liturgical and devotional guide meets me where I’m at. The collects, the prayers, and the psalms would help tune my heart to sing God’s praise.
- Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad: One of my favorite classic novels. This tale sheds light on the fact that we bring the darkness with us.
- Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton: One of my favorite modern novels. A high-minded warning against technological hubris, certainly. A modern Babel. But also a ton of fun. There aren’t any dinosaurs on this island, right?
- Frankenstein by Mary Shelley: This masterpiece bored me to tears when I first had a go at it in middle school. It’s not like the movies! But I loved it as an adult. It is, in fact, a brilliant and moving contemplation of a host of moral themes written in unsurpassed prose. And it helped to have read Paradise Lost first.
- Watership Down by Richard Adams: I was flabbergasted that a rabbits’ tale could draw me in. Behind the high-stakes plot and well-formed (rabbit) characters is an amazingly constructed rabbit culture, with hierarchy, custom, mythology, history, and heart.
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J. K. Rowling: The most important chapter in the whole Harry Potter series is found near the end of this book. Offense, repentance, redemption, self-giving love—it’s all here.
- A collected poetry of Emily Dickinson: The master of slant rhyme. Beautiful.
- A collected poetry of Robert Frost: Frost’s work is often perceived as more simplistic than it is, and most people only know the two or three poems of his taught in high school. But he was a prolific poet, and many of his pieces are subtly profound.
- The Lost Words by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris: Words, our names for things God has made, act as the bridge in our custodial relationship with those things. This book celebrates the names and the things named in poetry and art. I’ve never seen anything quite like it.
- The Creator and the Cosmos by Hugh Ross: Astronomy and cosmology are super cool. If you liked A Brief History of Time but wish the author had given God the glory, you’ll love The Creator and the Cosmos. By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God.
- Systematic Theology by Stephen J. Wellum: Yes, I actually do enjoy this kind of thing. Dr. Wellum’s ST, in particular, is one I was waiting for for years before its release. As a castaway, I’d finally get a chance to read it.
- The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien: In truth, I tried to keep LOTR off this list because it is such a popular choice. In the end, I couldn’t do it. If you don’t understand why, perhaps it’s time to get a copy and settle in for a long story. Maybe on a desert island I could even go through the appendices. Plus, I think there is something in here about catching conies.
Thank you, Jordan!
Readers, what do y’all think? If you were stranded on a desert island for the rest of your life and could have only one playlist or one bookshelf with you, what songs or books would you choose?
- For a Desert Island Playlist, send me a list between 5 and 12 songs, excluding hymns and worship songs. (We’ll cover those later.)
- For a Desert Island Bookshelf, send me a list of up to 12 books, along with a photo of all the books together.
Send your list (or both lists) to questions@russellmoore.com, and include as much or as little explanation of your choices as you would like, along with the city and state from which you’re writing.
Quote of the Moment
“I love the Prophet Jeremiah because he is the one who lived the catastrophe before, during, and after and knew how to speak about it.”
—Elie Wiesel
Currently Reading (or Re-Reading)
- Matt Smethurst, Tim Keller on the Christian Life: The Transforming Power of the Gospel (Crossway)
- Matthew D. Hockenos, Then They Came for Me: Martin Niemöller, the Pastor Who Defied the Nazis (Basic)
- J. T. English, Remember and Rehearse; An Invitation to Participate in God’s Story (B&H)
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Russell Moore
Editor in Chief, Christianity Today
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