Rotten fruit

“My daughter told me, ‘If you go to that church, that means you hate me.’”

A woman in her 50s spoke with me after her first Sunday at our church. She had told her daughter, who identifies as LGBTQ, that she was going to church. After looking up our doctrinal statement, the daughter decided our church was a hostile place. This woman, newly renewing her faith, had a lot on the line from the get-go.

“How are you processing your daughter’s comments?” I asked.

“Well,” she said. “I feel for her. She’s figuring out who she is. But I’m figuring out what God wants for me. And He wants me here, so I’m here.”

This woman was displaying more emotional maturity than many who’ve been in churches for a long time. This dynamic is why Joe Rigney, fellow of theology at New Saint Andrews College, wrote the book The Sin of Empathy (Canon Press, 164 pp.).

Rigney is preeminently concerned with phenomenology, with function. He describes the book as “not primarily interested in the ‘true’ definition of empathy, but rather with its use and influence in our culture.” A dynamic exists both in popular culture and in the church wherein “in our zeal to help the hurting, we can at times overthrow other virtues, such as charity, honesty, and justice.”

When we lose ourselves and our convictions for the sake of connections, Rigney notes, we arrive at a condition therapists call enmeshment, codependency, or fusion. A Biblical term could be “fear of man.” A leader lacking a clear sense of self, or differentiation, grows anxious for approval and thus lets “the sensitivities and concerns of the most reactive and least mature members of a community … set the agenda.”

Rigney observes how this plays out in parenting. He writes of therapists and doctors who might ask, “‘Would you rather have a dead son or a live daughter?’ This is a hostage situation, filled with manipulation … And out of a good desire to avoid causing harm, we commit to not saying or doing anything that might cause distress.” Rigney hopes to add steel to the spine of those who want to walk in fear of the Lord. “That censorious progressive sitting on your shoulder, critically evaluating everything you do? Knock him off and put Jesus in his place.”

Readers may squirm at the outset because of the confusion and debate about terms and their definitions. In most people’s vocabulary, empathetic, sympathetic, and compassionate mean approximately the same thing: An empathetic person is attuned to how others feel, has high EQ, or is willing and able to “weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice.”

In clarifying how he intends to use the term, Rigney offers two definitions: (1) “emotion sharing … a natural emotion” which is the positive use, and, (2) “the sin of (untethered) empathy … an excess of compassion, when our identification with and sharing of the emotions of others overwhelms our minds and sweeps us off our feet.”

Rigney uses the Biblical term compassion as the “gold standard” virtue: Its deficiency is apathy and its excess is empathy. To be like Jesus requires that we be compassionate. Rigney writes, “Often the best immediate response to deep suffering is a simple and heartfelt acknowledgment that the pain is real and deep. Or perhaps no words at all, just presence and tears.”

He offers an illustration that helps us understand his view: “If a sufferer is sinking in quicksand, an empathetic helper jumps in after them with both feet. A sympathetic helper, on the other hand, steps into the quicksand with one foot while keeping the other firmly planted on the shore.”

He defines empathy as the absence of conviction and courage rather. It’s what is missing, not what is present, that is most significant. Rigney’s preferred term throughout the book, “untethered empathy,” is a more accurate way of speaking about the phenomenon he describes than the title of his book suggests.

The primary function of the book is to call leaders, pastors in particular, to follow Jesus with resolve—a good and simple call in a world dominated by the “triumph of the therapeutic.” Rigney sees gender dynamics at the center of this discussion. Here I disagree. Excluding women from ideological and theological discussions because many men have difficulty disagreeing with them isn’t the answer. Men being more secure in Christ is. If not, aren’t we committing “the sin of empathy” in letting the fragility of men determine the rules of the game? Gender may be one factor, but highlighting it as the preeminent factor is sub-Biblical. For example: David failed to confront his son Absalom, and Peter succumbed to social pressure from the Jews.

Rigney’s work is a helpful call to Christians to recognize and resist emotional manipulation. But readers will have to sort through the specific examples he gives and discern how they map onto their own souls or contexts.