About the responses to the Great Empathy Upset of 2021

Not to beat a dead horse, or try to resurrect one, but perhaps this horse at this stage is only mostly dead. After I published the article on empathy, all three of the main proponents of the “empathy is a sin” micro-fad responded. Those responses are revealing, but perhaps need a little elucidation why.

The responses were interesting in that all three admitted that what they were doing was a little semantic tomfoolery. Two actually conceded I am right: Rigney more openly and Doug as *cough* mumbling as possible. White conceded, too, in his own way: by shouting louder and pounding the podium in an irate tantrum, but never actually addressing the point made. We’ll get to that disappointment in a minute.

More than one of these guys seems to suggest that part of the problem lies in the fact that the word “empathy” admits to more than one meaning. Thus, all the confusion. But this is an exaggeration. Yeah, it admits to more than one meaning, but that does not mean it will admit to any old meaning. It surely doesn’t admit to the extreme imposition of something like “completely surrendering your own emotional and mental faculties and approving of the other person’s delusions.” This obliteration of all existing meanings and shoehorning of one’s own fabrications into the differently-shaped hole that is left should unsettle everyone who observes it, and they ought to know enough and feel strongly enough about it to say so.

So, I want to look briefly at each of the three men’s respective admissions.

Doug Wilson

I won’t take the space to respond point-by-point. It is not necessary. I want to keep as the baseline the fact that empathy doesn’t mean what these guys say it means, and has never meant what they say it means, and that their novel definition is reckless, dishonest in some ways, and damaging.

As far as it relates to the argument over his redefinition of empathy, Doug’s article can be reduced to the following three contradictory propositions:

They were defining empathy our own way.

They were not defining empathy.

The Bible says my definitions are right.

Now if that seems overly simplistic, I am sorry. Maybe it is a bit, but it fits. But I’ll leave you with this much explanation for why. When Doug argues they were using empathy “as we defined it,” rather than as it is generally understood, he is implicitly admitting that they actually defined empathy—in this case, as sinful.

But he goes on to argue it was only for rhetorical effect, like the irony of Aimee Byrd’s “Recovering from Biblical Manhood and Womanhood.” This is of course suggesting that empathy is not really a sin; it is just sometimes possibly sinful in certain contexts, when people go to the extremes they describe. Problem is, neither the analogy with Byrd nor the explanation work for Doug.

Byrd’s ironic title is not trying to redefine a well-known general term. It is referring to “Biblical Manhood and Womanhood” as an established niche brand—which it most definitely is. It is the Grudem and Piper, et al, project, and it has led to problems and abuse in many ways, and it most definitely needs to be recovered from in many instances. Byrd is perfectly right to call it out for the niche, near-cult that it has become. On the other hand, no one else in Christendom, hardly, walks around talking about “biblical manhood and womanhood.” They study these topics and write about them, but the phrase is never used outside the niche-branded market that sells the books and conferences for it.

Secondly, Byrd is not stepping in trying to redefine that phrase for the general public. She takes it as it is, and the problems it has caused, and shows why it needs to be recovered from.

Neither of these is anywhere close to the case with “empathy.” It is not a well-established niche brand, it is not sinful, does not need to be recovered from, and Doug’s straw man of it would be laughable were it not actually persuasive to some people.

Most of all, however, the pivot to “we’re just being provocative,” suggests “we don’t really mean it” when we say “empathy is a sin.” Which suggests of course they are not defining it. So, which is it, are you defining it your own way, or are you not really defining it, just being provocative?

Such doublespeak is often in the works with Doug, I have learned. It is often the case that whatever he is saying or not-specifically-saying, or actually did say, he is just as unclear as he needs to be to provide himself an escape hatch in case accountability comes calling.

Finally, the “Bible says I’m right” part is the reference to Hebrews 4:15, which speaks of the sympathy Christ has for us, using the Greek word sympathei. This is of course true, but opens a can of worms that creates quite a rabbit trail. Doug knows this, of course. The trap is that to respond is either to lose the reader in two thousand words of exegesis and history, and not to respond is to appear to concede his point by letting it stand. Suffice it to say that there is a reason that older translations like the Geneva Bible and KJV did not translate sympathei as “sympathy,” and part of it is because the meanings of English transliterations don’t remain constant over time, and neither do the Greek meanings themselves! Like I said, huge rabbit trail. But this is enough to see the “that settles it!” argument from Doug here is bogus (and I think he knows it, too).

Buried, however, (almost indiscernibly due to unnecessary rhetorical cuteness) in his article, you can find this fleeting retreat:

[Doug and Joe’s show] did not rain down anathemas on those persons who use empathy and sympathy as equivalent words in casual conversation. There are plenty of situations where those terms [empathy and sympathy] can be used, as the Internet gag has it, as cinnamons [i.e., synonyms].

Let me translate this for you:

My critics made a strong point that I cannot refute but also do not want to name by name and concede openly. So, I will mutter under my breath and pretend I addressed it all along: I never said the two words can’t sometimes in some casual conversation . . . let me see, how can I water this down by qualifying it further, hmm . . . among muggles and internet rabble be used as, ugh, the same, kind of.

That’s the escape hatch nonsense. It is created to deflect from the substance of any critique. Doug can now say he stands by everything he said and yet he is not touched by any criticisms of it. Anyone who points to the emperor’s drafty truth will be called “tedious” and “out of their mind.”

Let’s just be honest with ourselves, here. Listen to the show. Empathy is defined as sin in the title, and it is treated as sin all the way through. There is no broader understanding.

The context focuses throughout on this cultural argument the guys wish to target: some liberals abuse empathy to advance the extremities of the far-left cultural agenda. But the logical jump is made: therefore, “empathy is a sin.” It doesn’t follow, but the pull of the part about the liberal agenda is powerful. So, let me come back to this in a minute. . . .

Joe Rigney

Rigney quickly points out that he basically agrees with what I wrote, and that where he is implicated or named in my critique, it does not apply to him. He actually said some openly nice things about “empathy” in his long article on it, so, he offers, he’s in the clear.

I do like very much the part where he essentially says I am right. I do agree he said a paragraph or so about how empathy can generally be positive. But I do not agree that he is so easily absolved.

The vast balance of his article(s) and threads treats empathy the other way—as if it is indeed a sin and an opposite of sympathy. The running gist through 5,000 or so words is that sympathy is moored in objective reality while empathy turns over its mind to the sinner. But if you believe that empathy is indeed a natural good as you say (briefly), I do not see why you do not follow through with it in more substance. Instead, the “empathy is good” part is limited to little more than lip service that can provide plausible deniability later. The substance is all against empathy as a compromise or sin.

Perhaps you can see (and this takes a little empathy in my opinion) where average readers might find the “no I really think empathy is a good” defense suspect when the writings are all dominated by the “Sin of Empathy” motif, and the show is 100% dominated by it.

If the potential for confusion is not clear merely from the surface of it, consider this representative exchange from the video:

DW: “Empathy is headlong, all-in. Whoever the victim is, or whoever the person demanding the empathy is, they’re like God, the will not share their glory with another.”

JR: “That’s right.”

DW: “They demand everything from you.”

JR: “What we’re called to do is we’re called to grieve with others. We cannot lose ourself in the grief of others. . . . There is no ‘me’ left. So what you’re doing in that situation, with empathy, is, you’re putting someone else in your emotional driver’s seat. . . .”

DW: “So, sympathy remembers to love God while loving the neighbor. Empathy abandons God for the sake of the neighbor.”

JR: “Right. Turns the neighbor into God.”

There is no room for confusion on this. This is full-on “empathy is a sin” talk. This is not merely provocative rhetoric. It pains me to hear Rigney pretend like he is just misunderstood in all of this. If people accuse him of redefining “empathy,” it may be because they got lost in his “That’s right,” hearty agreement with the claim that “empathy” is a Luciferian attempt to play God, i.e., satanic.

And no viewer anywhere should have to “oh, go look at the 5,000 words I wrote elsewhere” to see the minor caveats made. You don’t get to pretend people just misunderstood you or didn’t “get it” like they should have or if they’d done their homework. No, you should take responsibility and say, “I should have been clearer up front.” Or, perhaps say, “Yes, I do believe empathy is indeed a sin,” and then just own it.

I was taught long ago (though I have not always lived up to it well), that the responsibility is on the teacher, not the listener, to make himself clear. When that responsibility is failed, the teacher needs to own up to it squarely—not backtrack and pretend everyone listening made a mistake, or is stupid, or is morally compromised, etc. That would be classic narcissistic behavior.

Going back to the subject itself, I mean, yeah, some secularists do abuse empathy. But that does not give you a license to abuse language and trust, then dodge responsibility when called out.

By the way, liberals also abuse the word “love.” What’s your next move? (Note: the English word “love” is not necessary for translating the biblical categories of “love.” I’ll wait while you start retranslating to avoid all those leftist coopted words.)

Perhaps the most interesting point in Rigney’s long article comes in the end. After all the talk out there blasting empathy because “in-feeling” means turning over your mind “into” someone else’s feelings, while sympathy, “feeling with,” is so much better, Rigney ends his article speaking of the deepest need being that of feeling . . . get ready . . . in, not with. Go figure. He writes,

I simply want to insist that comforters maintain their integrity while joining others in their pain. . . .

It’s moving deliberately and intentionally into the pain of others while clinging to Jesus for dear life. . . .

But our feelings, and our sharing in the feelings of others, must be tethered to Truth, to Reality, to Christ.

Sounds a lot like proper empathy to me.

But then another phenomenon, perhaps deserving its own article, arises. A couple of other thoughts Rigney shares at the end also contradict strongly the vibe we are getting from others in the “empathy is sin” brigade. He writes,

In all of this, my main concern is not to correct sufferers in the moment of their pain, nor to call into question the deep distress of those who are suffering. . . .

It’s maintaining hope in the face of another’s despair, even as you wisely choose the timing of encouragements, exhortations, and corrections. . . .

I’ll come back to these thoughts in a minute, too.

In the end, Rigney essentially concedes, even more openly that Wilson does, that empathy is after all not a sin. Despite spending 90 or so percent of his time bashing “empathy” as a sin, he takes his escape hatch and admits it is not.

Whatever the sincerity or effectiveness of these admissions from Wilson and Rigney, they at least stand as monuments to the power of the truth (or at least sufficient public pressure). They clearly concede that empathy is not sin. But this leads us to the oddest of the three responses. If these guys allegedly held all along that empathy is not actually a sin after all, it makes James White’s absolute doubling down on it seem all the more strange. It seems he was the only person who did not get the memo, or the lesson about escape hatches.

James White

James’s response to the pushback was predictable, but still disappointing. It was also filled with the irony of a guy criticizing an allegedly purely “emotionalized” culture by himself getting angry, visceral, flailing, shouting, literally growling, and everything but frothing at the mouth. He is one of the most emotionalized people I have ever watched, and in this case, at least, it appears to rule his judgment.

The vast bulk of James’s response is to double down and emphasize the part that has the strong emotional pull: that liberals abuse empathy, and therefore empathy is bad. He does not once, not even in a single place, address the argument that these guys have redefined empathy and created a straw man of it. He does not address what empathy really means and is, or how it is most commonly used. He spends no time on that. (In fact, he seems to suggest that his critics are the ones redefining terms!)

He simply assumes that the straw man definition is the correct one, and then takes the liberty to call all of his critics “woke,” and throw out all of the names like “neomarxist, “intersectionality.” I have to admit, these guys have made real boogeymen out of all of those terms, and they seem to be effective for their audiences.

He also still seems to have trouble understanding what “validation” is in regard to emotions, even though it was spelled out for him.

He concludes what approaches an angry-grandpa moment by saying no one with a Bible in their hands could dare to defeat his argument. And what is his argument? That empathy means “you need to enter into someone else’s lived experience which flows out of rebellion against God’s created order and validate it [i.e., approve of it] to be loving to them.”

Well, I have a Bible in my hands (figuratively speaking, else it would be hard to type), and I can defeat that argument. Here goes: “Wrong.”

Wrong, meaning, it is false to say that empathy means that. It does not. That is a straw man of empathy. Empathy does not require you to surrender to someone else’s sinful emotions or approve of their rebellion. Just as Rigney and Wilson have now conceded, empathy is generally a synonym for sympathy, and it is a good and natural thing that, like anything else btw, can be corrupted. It does not require you to approve of sin or surrender your mind to it, and never has.

The dread fear that by empathizing, perhaps in a counseling session, with a sinner experiencing the consequences of sin, you will somehow automatically surrender your own emotions and reason altogether to sin yourself, is not only unfounded, it is refuted by these same teachers.

These guys on the one hand decry the idea that an empathetic listener will listen “without judgment.” See! They will say, you let sin pass and give it at least tacit approval! Sad, demonic thing, this empathy!

Return now to those last statements of Rigney’s long article:

In all of this, my main concern is not to correct sufferers in the moment of their pain, nor to call into question the deep distress of those who are suffering. . . .

It’s maintaining hope in the face of another’s despair, even as you wisely choose the timing of encouragements, exhortations, and corrections. . . .

What Rigney is describing here is pure empathy and a perfect example of listening “without judgment” in the moment of listening. When Brené Brown, for example, talks about listening “without judgment,” this is what she is talking about. It simply means that you are not interrupting the moment you spot some sin (or imagine one, as could be the case) to shut down, correct, shame, etc. Indeed, you must wisely choose when to respond even with encouragement, let alone correction. (Sometimes, it takes several sessions. The people who think it doesn’t often create much greater problems when they rush in ahead of the angels.)

We can, of course, discuss when exactly that moment may be for this or that case. But wise counselors know that patience here is the greatest virtue, and listening empathetically will end up leading to far more cured souls than manhandling the conversation (“man up!”) and using the Bible as a bludgeon.

Nevertheless, it is instructive, I think, that Rigney realizes there is a “moment of pain” for many counselees in which a wise counselor will withhold correction, i.e., withhold judgment, and only engage with wise timing.

James seems to have missed the memo on all of this. He did not apparently see that empathy actually does not always mean sin in the way these guys defined it, and they admit so. He doesn’t seem to have even understood or interacted with the reasoning for it at all. He seems also to have missed a lot about how empathy actually works in practice. Too much time spent being grumpy and chest-thumpy does not speak of the fruit of the Spirit, but the confidence in one’s knowledge anyway puffeth up.

Conclusion

I apologize for having written yet another long, ponderous review of all of this. I am convinced, however, of its high importance.

Think about it. These guys are among those who purport to lead the vanguard of Bible-based resistance to a leftist, frontal assault on culture. Yet they can’t get something so basic as empathy right. In fact, many of the liberals they pretend to combat are out there getting empathy right more often than not, and almost always more often than these guys.

Aside from Rigney’s few (and counterweighted) overtures to a proper view and practice of empathy, they see it as an evil, godless thing. In fact, they see it as at war with God. So, when confronted with the actual need to engage in empathetic listening and counseling (whether formal or casual), they will defy it (perhaps Rigney except, based on his last few statements).

How in the world do you expect to build relationships and have any positive impact in society, or even in your own church, if your methodology begins with the idea that empathy is satanic war against God? That you don’t need to listen to others and validate (properly understood) their experience and sometimes withhold judgment? On what basis can you have a meaningful relationship with anyone on this doctrine, except by their full submission to your dictatorship?

But perhaps we can see why there are so many cases of sexual abuse, spousal abuse, ecclesiastical abuse, etc., throughout the multiple micro-denominations, movements, and churches that gravitate towards these faux-macho teachings. As I have said multiple times now, the rejection of empathy is not the mark of orthodoxy. It is the number-one character trait of psychopathy. It is narcissism on steroids. It demands control for itself first before listening or understanding (that’s why it is really at war with empathy). It is a teaching that empowers narcissists and psychopaths and attracts them. They find a place beneath its umbrella where they can control people while refusing to listen to their hurts, all the while naming Scripture as a justification for harming others in this way.

I do not belabor this point merely to dredge up old rivalries. I do it because I know for a fact there are many people trapped in these circles who need help and encouragement to be liberated from them. Pointing out these obvious failures of reasoning and emotion of some of these leaders is not meant to convince them or their most ardent (i.e., emotionally-invested) followers. It is meant to speak to those who need help getting away from them.