The Auron MacIntyre Show - Emotional Blackmail and the Sin of Empathy ｜ Dr. Joe Rigney ｜ 4⧸11⧸25

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00:00:30.000 Hey everybody, how's it going?

00:00:31.640 Thanks for joining me this afternoon.

00:00:33.360 I've got a great stream with a great guest that I think you're really going to enjoy.

00:00:37.600 Over and over again, we hear that Christians have to be empathetic.

00:00:43.000 They have to bend over backwards in every situation.

00:00:46.220 They have to be accommodating.

00:00:47.600 They have to be compliant.

00:00:48.940 Just yesterday, Russell Brand was talking about how Christians should be learning to

00:00:53.000 accommodate the LGBTQ community. 1.00

00:00:55.880 But is that ultimately what Christ really asks from us?

00:00:59.180 Is that really what biblical compassion is all about?

00:01:02.960 Joining me today is Dr. Joe Rigney.

00:01:05.220 He's a pastor, he's a theologian, and he's an author of multiple books, including his new

00:01:10.180 one, The Sin of Empathy.

00:01:12.400 Joe, thanks for joining me.

00:01:13.960 Hey, thanks for having me on.

00:01:14.840 Good to be here.

00:01:16.040 Of course.

00:01:16.820 Before we get started, some people might be unfamiliar with your work.

00:01:20.540 Could you give a little bit of background of what you do, how you came to where you are,

00:01:24.320 and why you wrote the book?

00:01:25.920 Yeah.

00:01:26.420 So I'm currently a professor at New St. Andrews College in Moscow, Idaho.

00:01:31.140 I'm also a pastor here at Christ Church.

00:01:33.460 And so I've been here now for about two years.

00:01:35.620 Prior to that, I was the president of Bethlehem College and Seminary in Minneapolis.

00:01:39.620 I was a professor there for 15 or 20 years.

00:01:42.660 If you're familiar with John Piper, that's the school that he founded.

00:01:46.040 And then now I'm out here with Doug Wilson, if your audience is familiar with him.

00:01:49.480 And I've been working on the empathy stuff, gosh, now for over 15 years, probably, teaching

00:01:56.760 some leadership classes at Bethlehem for a long time.

00:02:00.260 And then about seven years ago, kind of went broader than that with an interview actually

00:02:06.180 with Doug Wilson on The Sin of Empathy.

00:02:08.340 That was kind of where the phrase came from.

00:02:10.200 And since then, I've just found myself again and again, you know, sort of pulled back into

00:02:14.940 these empathy wars and whether or not that's whether or not empathy is the virtue around

00:02:21.240 which we should orient all of society or whether there are some particular problems that come

00:02:27.000 when we elevate it in the way that we have.

00:02:29.280 Yeah.

00:02:29.740 And obviously, this is a discussion that only becomes more and more important.

00:02:33.740 Unfortunately, I've only been able to read the article that you wrote on The Blaze and

00:02:37.120 not the full book.

00:02:38.040 But from what I saw, it looked really great.

00:02:40.680 And you really focus on the way in which, for instance, the immigration debate has centered

00:02:45.140 around empathy.

00:02:46.260 So I certainly want to get to that and how that is often used to manipulate Christians 1.00

00:02:51.420 and drive them towards bad theological and political ends.

00:02:55.540 But before we do, let's hear from today's sponsor.

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00:04:01.980 All right, Joe.

00:04:02.920 So I think a lot of people look at this topic, and if you've ever been online, maybe you've

00:04:08.000 seen this meme.

00:04:08.940 It's the smarmy atheist liberal saying, oh, well, I don't believe in Christianity.

00:04:15.280 But, you know, Jesus said you had to be nice to the poor people, and you have to care about

00:04:19.060 the stranger.

00:04:19.520 And I know you believe in Christianity.

00:04:21.480 So even though I would never validate any of that, you know, Bronze Age thinking, I expect 1.00

00:04:27.440 you to do what I say because I pointed out that Jesus is love or had compassion, and therefore

00:04:33.080 you have to do whatever I say is compassion or empathetic.

00:04:37.540 And I guess, you know, when you write a book called The Sin of Empathy, you're going to blow

00:04:41.540 some people's hair back.

00:04:42.660 I noticed just a few reactions from the title of your book were very hostile.

00:04:48.100 Yeah.

00:04:48.200 How could you say this?

00:04:49.140 How could you claim that empathy is bad?

00:04:50.960 Obviously, this is just the center of Christianity.

00:04:53.840 So I guess my first question would be, why does it seem so easy for Christians to be manipulated

00:05:00.260 by this discussion around empathy?

00:05:04.240 Yeah, it's because compassion or sympathy is a real virtue, one that is modeled for us

00:05:11.760 by Christ and commended to us over and over again in the scriptures, that God is a God who

00:05:15.220 is merciful and gracious.

00:05:16.160 He abounds in compassion.

00:05:17.760 And one of the things that I learned from C.S. Lewis is that it's the greatest goods that

00:05:23.640 become the worst devils whenever they go wrong.

00:05:26.860 And so I think this is a case study in the way that something that is really, really good.

00:05:32.100 So I think some people hear The Sin of Empathy and they think I'm against all forms of kindness

00:05:35.540 or all forms of compassion or all forms of mercy or something.

00:05:38.520 And I'm not.

00:05:39.440 I'm actually trying to defend those things against their corruptions and counterfeits.

00:05:43.740 And so one of the sparks for this for me has been the way that in the modern world, empathy

00:05:50.040 is often presented as a kind of improvement on that old-fashioned virtue of sympathy or

00:05:55.360 pity or compassion or whatever word you want to use.

00:05:58.020 The notion being, we used to be sympathetic when people were hurting, but sympathy actually

00:06:02.580 is aloof and distant and it doesn't really fully enter into the pain and suffering of

00:06:06.760 others.

00:06:07.480 And so we need to give it an upgrade, a facelift.

00:06:09.800 We need compassion 2.0.

00:06:11.620 And so enter empathy as that thing.

00:06:14.320 But in doing so, the concern that I have and the thing that I think we've seen societally

00:06:20.060 is the way that when we try to give it that upgrade, when we say we're going to make the

00:06:25.580 suffering of certain people or certain groups our lodestar, is that we become unmoored and

00:06:31.140 untethered from what is true and what is good.

00:06:33.340 We leave reality behind because other people's feelings and emotions, other people's suffering

00:06:39.000 is really, really powerful and it has a tendency to sweep us off our feet.

00:06:43.600 And so in trying to give compassion this upgrade, I think we actually lost touch with

00:06:48.400 the shore of reality.

00:06:50.100 And I think that the last 20 years have basically been a vindication of that fundamental point.

00:06:55.780 You know, this is something that I notice so often for everyone.

00:07:00.040 I think this is just a problem of modernity, but it really becomes obvious when you bring

00:07:04.460 it into the church, into Christian practice.

00:07:06.780 So often, the biggest difficulty for people is that unmooring from reality that you're talking

00:07:13.860 about.

00:07:14.360 In many ways, I won't be the first one to make this observation.

00:07:17.540 Wokeness is Christianity without Christ, right? 0.98

00:07:20.820 It is decontextualized from the biblical truth.

00:07:24.060 It takes some of the things that people tend to say that they like about Christianity, some

00:07:28.640 of the compassion, some of the charity, these things, but it completely unmoores them from

00:07:33.240 the biblical standards and the judgment and the things that also come, the other side of

00:07:38.940 Christianity.

00:07:39.440 And it tries to create this kinder, gentler Christianity.

00:07:42.800 Also, we see attempts at charity and evangelism, but they tend to be removed from the actual

00:07:49.760 communities where the people live.

00:07:51.480 Everyone wants to give money to someone in Africa or they want to fund a missionary that's

00:07:57.320 going somewhere.

00:07:57.960 And of course, that's part of the call.

00:07:59.940 But they will neglect the people right next to them.

00:08:02.700 The idea of actually going and being a part of their community and serving that or speaking

00:08:07.840 to someone in their community about Christ is something that would be a bridge too far.

00:08:12.480 And so there's a lot of telescopic philanthropy or evangelism.

00:08:16.160 Nothing is grounded.

00:08:17.560 Nothing is actually serving people in the church, serving the community, interacting with the actual

00:08:24.020 people.

00:08:24.300 Everything tends to get just deracinated, pulled out in a way, disembodied.

00:08:29.720 And so I feel like this is something that is certainly prevalent when it comes to the

00:08:35.920 discussions around empathy.

00:08:37.300 But I think this is just a wider problem that modern people are having.

00:08:41.040 But this really blows up, I think, a lot of church doctrines once they get completely

00:08:45.080 ungrounded from the communities they're supposed to serve in.

00:08:49.160 Yeah, that's absolutely right.

00:08:49.880 And it is a part of the argument that I'm making is that that phenomenon is actually

00:08:55.780 an ancient one, right?

00:08:58.460 So anybody who's ever been on the receiving end of a pity party or a guilt trip will ought

00:09:05.100 to have a pretty good idea of the sort of thing that I'm concerned about, because that's

00:09:08.080 an attempt by someone that you care about to manipulate you by virtue of your love and

00:09:12.960 care for them.

00:09:14.160 And most of us have been on the receiving end of it.

00:09:16.900 Many of us have also been on the giving end of it.

00:09:19.000 We've put people on guilt trips.

00:09:20.280 We've exaggerated our pain in order to get our way.

00:09:23.480 And so that's as old as dirt.

00:09:25.060 That's a universal human problem.

00:09:26.920 What's a little bit new, and I think this is where Christianity does have something to 0.97

00:09:31.100 do with it, is what you said about wokeness is Christianity without Christ.

00:09:35.660 It's try to keep as many of the Christian things that have been woven into Western civilization 0.98

00:09:41.720 over a couple thousand years.

00:09:43.120 And what happens if you take Christ out of that?

00:09:44.840 Well, Chesterton 100 years ago said, the modern world is full of all the old Christian virtues 1.00

00:09:50.120 gone mad, and they've gone mad because they've become disconnected, disembodied, and wandering

00:09:56.660 alone.

00:09:57.240 And he actually uses pity as his example.

00:10:01.600 He says that the humanitarians want to talk about pity, but their pity, I'm sorry to say,

00:10:06.400 is untruthful.

00:10:07.260 So he speaks of untruthful pity 100 years ago.

00:10:11.500 And so I'm coming along and saying, yeah, the modern term for that thing, that thing

00:10:15.320 that he recognized in his day and which has been sort of elevated in the modern world is

00:10:19.600 untethered empathy.

00:10:21.120 So if we're going to be real precise, untethered empathy is the thing that I'm on about.

00:10:25.200 Some people, they don't think a lot about language.

00:10:27.680 And so empathy to them just means sharing some emotions and weeping with those who weep.

00:10:32.040 And I'm not interested in wrangling about the particular terms.

00:10:35.440 I'm interested in this phenomenon and it's empathy that often is the headline over it.

00:10:41.780 In fact, the article that you mentioned, this was a great illustration of that point.

00:10:46.200 A friend sent me a picture of the Mexican side of the border wall.

00:10:52.120 And on the wall, written by some graffiti artist, was in big block letters, empathy.

00:10:57.660 And it was clear that the message that this artist was trying to communicate was empathy

00:11:04.580 means you're not allowed to have this wall.

00:11:06.500 This wall is unempathetic.

00:11:08.340 It's callous.

00:11:09.040 It's heartless.

00:11:09.700 It's cruel.

00:11:10.640 Your desire to have boundaries, your desire to have a border is not compassionate, not

00:11:16.300 empathetic.

00:11:17.060 And I thought that's precisely what I'm trying to target is that Western civilization as a 0.99

00:11:23.200 whole, and Christians in particular, are very susceptible to manipulation at precisely

00:11:28.860 that point, because God tells us you must be kind and tenderhearted and full of mercy.

00:11:34.720 You ought to weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice.

00:11:37.740 So those biblical commands mean that we want to obey those and we want to have a reputation

00:11:43.880 for obeying those, which means that all the enemies of God have to do is threaten that

00:11:48.840 reputation and redefine what compassion means.

00:11:52.600 And they now have a very potent steering wheel on our backs.

00:11:55.400 So what do you feel are some of the biggest ways in which Christians are lied to about

00:12:01.360 compassion and empathy?

00:12:02.680 Because I noticed, as you just kind of alluded to there in that article, your focus on boundaries

00:12:07.060 and borders and how much it seems like the deployment of empathy is really weaponized and

00:12:13.880 aimed at these boundaries.

00:12:15.820 That, yes, we know in theory it would be good if you're compassionate to people, if you were

00:12:20.320 kind to people, if you were caring.

00:12:21.720 But it seems like the focus is always increasing on breaking down those boundaries.

00:12:28.860 Can you really have a country?

00:12:30.760 Could you really have a border wall?

00:12:33.060 Could you really have a natural hierarchy in marriages, families, civilizations?

00:12:39.080 If you were compassionate, if you really saw the other person, how could you deny them

00:12:44.760 entry into your home or into your country or deny them their ascent on the ladder of status

00:12:53.000 or employment?

00:12:54.200 These seem to be the things that are regularly broken down with this focus on empathy.

00:12:59.820 Right.

00:13:00.360 Because empathy at its most basic means emotion sharing.

00:13:04.180 And emotions are good, but they're also very powerful.

00:13:07.260 There's reasons that we talk about the way that we could be blinded by anger or overwhelmed

00:13:11.640 by grief or paralyzed by fear.

00:13:14.580 These other emotions or the older theological word was passions.

00:13:18.720 The passions are very, very powerful.

00:13:21.160 And empathy then says, well, you should share those.

00:13:23.980 Pat, you need to share your emotions.

00:13:26.560 You feel sad.

00:13:27.500 I feel sad.

00:13:28.140 You feel happy.

00:13:28.720 I feel happy.

00:13:29.320 That's kind of at a base level.

00:13:30.800 That's what empathy is.

00:13:31.560 And I go, insofar as that's what we're talking about, that's deeply human.

00:13:34.140 It's something that if it leads us to righteous action, good action to benefit others is a

00:13:40.780 good thing.

00:13:41.200 Christ was moved with compassion and therefore sought to relieve the suffering of those around

00:13:44.680 him.

00:13:45.600 The challenge is that our emotions are so powerful that they frequently do sweep us off

00:13:49.240 our feet.

00:13:50.080 And so then when you hook everybody up via empathy, you wind up not with a number of

00:13:55.260 individuals linked together in solid bonds of community with clear differences between I

00:14:00.700 and you and we and them, like where those kind of boundaries would come into play.

00:14:05.460 But instead, you basically get one big blob of emotion.

00:14:08.880 And that emotion then has a tendency to be highly reactive and it sweeps people back and

00:14:13.400 forth.

00:14:13.680 You end up with the kind of social stampedes that we see in society.

00:14:16.980 You have these anxiety storms that sort of cascade through the world via social media

00:14:22.860 that acts as an amplifying machine, turns up the outrage or whatever the emotions are.

00:14:27.860 And empathy is basically one of the ways that incentivizes and it connects us in such a way

00:14:34.500 that we lose touch with ourselves and with reality.

00:14:38.160 One of the thinkers who was influential to me is a Jewish rabbi named Edwin Friedman, who

00:14:43.020 wrote a book called Failure of Nerve.

00:14:44.700 And he was one of the ones who turned me on to the, he called it the fallacy of empathy,

00:14:47.620 the danger of empathy.

00:14:48.420 Um, but he was really concerned with that point about boundaries because he said, individuals

00:14:53.300 need to be self differentiated.

00:14:54.940 There needs to be a boundary between me and you in order for me to do good to you in order

00:14:59.240 for us to, um, uh, collaborate on common projects.

00:15:03.000 If you're hurting in order for me to help you, I have to have a certain kind of emotional

00:15:06.800 distance to be able to see the situation and go, what would be good for you?

00:15:10.740 And empathy as it's presented in the modern world breaks down that boundary and says, you're

00:15:15.740 not allowed to keep that emotional distance.

00:15:17.800 You need to just jump into my emotional vehicle and go wherever I want to go.

00:15:21.920 And that, and that means that we can go to some very dark and destructive places as we've

00:15:26.280 witnessed again over the last, uh, especially 15 to 20 years.

00:15:29.960 Yeah.

00:15:30.440 And again, this really speaks to it again.

00:15:32.120 You mentioned this in the article, the, the, the power of victimhood, right?

00:15:35.320 Because now the person who is feeling the feelings, the person who needs the empathy,

00:15:40.020 they are in the driver's seat that you, you, if you are not empathizing with me, if you

00:15:44.020 are not feeling these feelings along with me, then you are being callous.

00:15:47.380 You are being cruel.

00:15:48.280 You are not being a Christian. 1.00

00:15:49.740 And so if I am the one who is victimized, if I am the one who's in need of empathy, I

00:15:54.660 now get to determine where we're going and what we're doing.

00:15:57.860 And I hate to say this, but that obviously drives a lot of behavior in the church.

00:16:03.940 It's very clear, uh, that unfortunately many churches are involved in pushing this idea

00:16:11.500 that ultimately empathy is the way to go.

00:16:13.380 And the victim is always correct. 0.97

00:16:14.960 And we need to find ways to break this down.

00:16:17.380 As I mentioned earlier, Russell Brand, obviously recent convert to Christianity, uh, struggling

00:16:23.560 with a lot of issues.

00:16:24.600 He shouldn't know everything.

00:16:25.840 He's not going to know everything.

00:16:26.820 This isn't the bag on him, but it, you know, he gets in this podcast and he says, we need

00:16:31.900 to figure out how to accommodate the LGBTQ community.

00:16:35.920 And, uh, this is something of course we hear over and over again.

00:16:39.300 Uh, this is, this is something that many churches capitulate on because ultimately if we're setting

00:16:44.340 standards, if we're putting up barriers, what we're really putting up are barriers to Christ.

00:16:48.040 If people, you know, approach Christianity and see that there's something that is wrong,

00:16:52.860 that they have, you know, that we're not feeling their feelings in this area, not understanding

00:16:56.580 them and on that level, then they're just never going to find their way to God.

00:17:00.880 What, what do you think is, is the largest problem with what is kind of being taught

00:17:05.340 in churches about empathy?

00:17:08.320 Yeah.

00:17:08.480 So I think it is this notion, well, there's, there's layers to it.

00:17:11.780 Um, but one is that we presume to know better than God, what's good for people.

00:17:16.680 So, so it's, it's an attempt in some ways, one way to put it is that empathy is our attempt

00:17:20.720 to be more compassionate than God is, um, to, we're going to out, out mercy him.

00:17:25.080 And so when it comes to, um, like the example you gave with Russell Brand, I think that the

00:17:30.340 LGBTQ movement as a movement, um, was highly, um, adept at manipulating the compassion of

00:17:38.600 Christians. 0.51

00:17:39.500 And, uh, so in Friedman's terminology, one of the, the, the symptoms of a highly reactive

00:17:44.980 and anxious passions driven society is that it does tend to accommodate, um, not just

00:17:50.700 accommodate, it allows the most reactive and immature members of it to steer.

00:17:55.300 They, they get to set the agenda.

00:17:56.520 Um, and so in this case, once you elevate empathy is that, that cardinal virtue, like

00:18:01.800 it's the virtue around which other virtues must bow.

00:18:05.060 What you do is you, you do incentivize victimhood.

00:18:07.180 So we have, what we've seen over the last 15 years is the victimhood Olympics, where you

00:18:12.100 compete to be the greatest victim because the greatest victim wins and they get to set

00:18:16.360 that agenda.

00:18:16.880 And so when the LGBT movement presents themselves as we've long been.

00:18:20.700 persecuted, um, for our identity, um, we, um, there's historic wrongs that need to be

00:18:26.840 righted and, and, and they present themselves as, and, and then they'll often do all we want

00:18:31.260 is the same rights as everybody else.

00:18:32.880 So they'll link justice, uh, to some concern with this.

00:18:36.520 It becomes very potent and it's really hard to kind of keep your eye on the ball of like,

00:18:41.080 but what does God say?

00:18:42.560 Like, what's true though?

00:18:43.980 Like, is, is this simply, am I being uncompassionate?

00:18:47.340 Am I being callous or unempathetic?

00:18:49.140 Uh, if I say, but God said you can't, but God said that's not true, but God said that

00:18:54.240 that's, those are vile affections and you shouldn't indulge them.

00:18:57.900 And it's really hard in that moment to say, I'm going to stay tethered to what God said

00:19:02.900 and who God is because other people's feelings are so potent.

00:19:06.200 And, and the other, the other element of this, that's probably worth talking about

00:19:09.740 is in terms of the social dynamics, it's, there's both the, what you might call, um,

00:19:14.860 the victim class.

00:19:16.320 Then you have the advocates on their behalf, right?

00:19:19.420 Who are sort of agitating for justice for whatever victim group, but the actual threat

00:19:23.780 and the reason my book is called the sin of empathy and not the sin of manipulation

00:19:26.840 is that the, the real weakness in that system is actually the nice and respectable people

00:19:31.840 around you, they're the ones who will leverage social pressure to get you to cave, right?

00:19:37.780 So, um, you might be able to say like, I, I, I know intellectually this isn't good for

00:19:41.520 them, but if you resist, it's a good chance as a Christian that it's other Christians who 0.97

00:19:45.840 are going to come along and say, but you need to be kind and compassionate.

00:19:48.760 You need to be empathetic.

00:19:50.180 They're the ones who are actually going to try to police you to, um, drop your resistance

00:19:54.980 or to not, um, to not say things like, but sodomite marriages, is, uh, vile, right? 0.99

00:20:00.800 Like just even statements like that, like it's the, the, the sanitation of our language,

00:20:04.980 right?

00:20:05.840 Was a part of this because if I say sodomite, that's hurtful, don't say sodomite, right? 0.98

00:20:11.600 It's a person with a homosexual orientation or they're gay or you, you, we use these other 0.94

00:20:15.240 languages because the older language was hurtful and harmful to their feelings and you need 0.98

00:20:20.540 to take their feelings into account.

00:20:21.680 But as a result, over time, you have a weakening of the larger moral order of society, um, that

00:20:28.520 then leads to greater and greater capitulations over time.

00:20:30.900 And what we're seeing, I think right now is actually a somewhat of a backlash because

00:20:34.540 of how far off the rails it got.

00:20:36.620 I think the trans movement for a lot of people was kind of a bridge too far, but it is the 0.79

00:20:41.060 natural result of these earlier forms of capitulation, whether we're talking about feminism 1.00

00:20:46.840 or gay marriage or what have you.

00:20:49.640 Um, all of those things are, I think part of my case in the book is basically that running

00:20:54.520 underneath all of the, um, ideologies and issues that we typically lump under wokeness, whether

00:21:02.780 it's race, whether it's gender, whether it's sexuality, all running underneath is this common

00:21:07.360 emotional dynamic involving untethered empathy.

00:21:10.040 Like that's what it ran on.

00:21:12.000 And so while there is an ideological dimension to it, right, whether it's critical theory or

00:21:16.580 intersectionality or all of these sorts of things, I think that that intellectual level

00:21:21.180 runs on this more emotional and social dynamic, which is why you can write what's happening

00:21:27.880 now is that corporations under, in light of the backlash are dropping their DEI extensively.

00:21:35.380 They're going to, they're dropping at least rebranding it.

00:21:37.380 Yeah.

00:21:37.660 Yeah.

00:21:37.860 They're at least rebranding it.

00:21:38.820 Um, but they haven't actually altered the, um, the fundamental fuel that it's running on.

00:21:44.440 And so it's just going to reappear in another form.

00:21:46.520 Yeah.

00:21:46.960 You haven't actually gotten down to the root.

00:21:48.680 Um, and that's true, I think on both sides of the aisle, that's not simply a comment

00:21:52.380 about the Democrats who are going to go into hiding.

00:21:54.600 I think this is deeply affected, even conservatives and, uh, uh, the Republican party.

00:21:59.040 Um, you, I could give you multiple examples of Republicans doing appealing to this in a

00:22:04.440 kind of what I would call people talk now about, um, there's the woke left and there's

00:22:07.580 the woke, right. 0.89

00:22:08.280 So I think it's silly.

00:22:09.520 Um, but there is such a thing as woke light and woke light is whatever it is that the Republicans

00:22:14.200 tend to do on these issues.

00:22:15.240 When I found out my friend got a great deal on a designer dress from winners, I started

00:22:20.620 wondering is every fabulous item I see from winners like that woman over there with the 1.00

00:22:26.220 Italian leather handbag.

00:22:27.420 Is that from winners?

00:22:28.840 Ooh, or that beautiful silk skirt. 0.99

00:22:31.360 Did she pay full price or those suede sneakers or that luggage or that trench, those jeans, 0.99

00:22:37.080 that jacket, those heels.

00:22:38.740 Is anyone paying full price for anything?

00:22:41.140 Stop wondering, start winning winners, find fabulous for less.

00:22:46.520 So one of the other ones that I see faced routinely, uh, by churches is the immigration issue.

00:22:53.640 Uh, many of them feel, you know, I'm supposed to serve the poor.

00:22:57.640 I'm supposed to serve the needy.

00:22:59.440 Uh, I I've had this exact argument been made to me who, by people who are actively helping

00:23:05.060 illegal immigrants saying, well, they're my neighbor now, right? 1.00

00:23:09.200 However, they got here.

00:23:10.240 They're my neighbor.

00:23:10.940 Now they're the person who doesn't have food.

00:23:13.180 They're the person who doesn't have a place to stay.

00:23:15.480 So however they ended up here, whether they followed the rules or not, my job as a Christian

00:23:20.400 is to take care of this person because now they are my neighbor.

00:23:24.180 And I think this is a really difficult, uh, thing for a lot of people to approach because

00:23:28.920 of course, you know, you hear the story of the good Samaritan.

00:23:31.160 You want to be kind to the people around you, but underlying, this is really the truth that

00:23:36.640 ultimately, if people are coming across the border illegally and then immediately receiving

00:23:41.700 food and care and assistance, what you're involved in is facilitating their lawbreaking.

00:23:48.040 You are involved in, in creating an incentive for them to come here because if, even if they

00:23:53.620 can't find a job or they don't know what they're going to do, maybe, even if the government

00:23:56.820 is trying to deport them, ultimately they're your neighbor now. 0.81

00:23:59.740 So it's your job to take care of them, feed them, protect them.

00:24:03.560 And I think a lot of Christians really struggle that they know that maybe there should be borders,

00:24:08.300 but once that border law is breached, well, I mean, ultimately this is still my Christian

00:24:13.980 brother, right?

00:24:14.620 So I've got to take care of them.

00:24:16.440 How should churches think about that issue?

00:24:18.980 How should they address that breach of hierarchy and boundary, even though now this person is

00:24:25.240 their neighbor?

00:24:27.000 Yeah.

00:24:27.220 So, I mean, I think to distinguish between things like, let's say that you came across

00:24:32.760 an illegal immigrant who was actually starving, right?

00:24:35.580 Like in other words, they have no food or they're out, or you live in Minnesota and it's

00:24:39.660 winter and they're going to freeze to death.

00:24:42.040 I do think that the Christian obligation there is to provide some sort of, you know, out of compassion

00:24:47.460 and mercy, provide relief to that kind of suffering.

00:24:51.360 That's different than saying, and therefore we have to provide it with open-ended commitment

00:24:57.200 forever.

00:24:58.500 Okay.

00:24:58.800 So like if you were to take the parable of the good Samaritan and let's just put the

00:25:02.220 immigration issue in the middle of it, that the guy on the side of the road was an illegal

00:25:06.220 immigrant.

00:25:06.960 I think it would be entirely appropriate for the good Samaritan to do exactly what he did,

00:25:11.340 take him to a hospital, you know, get a nurse and back to health, and then send them

00:25:15.780 back to where they came from.

00:25:17.120 Like that, like that would need to be a part of the, of love because it's, it's about loving

00:25:21.780 not only that neighbor, but all of your neighbors.

00:25:23.980 Right.

00:25:24.060 And if you do create this incentive structure, like you're talking about, where you can move

00:25:28.740 to America, as long as you can get across the border and then you're guaranteed housing

00:25:33.140 and you're guaranteed a job or you're guaranteed welfare or whatever it is, you are just in,

00:25:40.320 you're going to get more of what you subsidize and you're, that's what you're subsidizing.

00:25:43.420 And therefore in the long run, you're not loving your neighbor because you're contributing

00:25:47.740 to the breakdown of social order.

00:25:49.600 And I think this is one of the hard things is that empathy tends to be myopic and it

00:25:55.080 tends to fixate on certain groups and not other groups.

00:25:57.920 This is one of the fundamental things.

00:25:59.280 This is why Paul Bloom, who is a secular author and wrote against empathy, wrote it in 2016.

00:26:05.040 He always said that when most people hear the word empathy, they think of kindness.

00:26:08.320 He says, I think of war because of the way that empathy sort of hijacks us to where we

00:26:14.100 focus on certain groups to the exclusion of others.

00:26:16.960 And so it leads to indifference.

00:26:18.500 So empathy for say the migrant, the illegal immigrant is often goes hand in hand when it's

00:26:24.780 untethered from rational and moral concerns, goes hand in hand with a neglect of the neighbors

00:26:29.880 who are already here and whose hospitals and social services are overwhelmed by this influx

00:26:35.420 of immigrants, the sort of things that ended up getting Trump elected because of the various

00:26:39.960 communities that were highlighted that had had, say the Haitians had been sort of just

00:26:43.620 dumped there in the name of compassion for the Haitians. 0.98

00:26:46.460 But what about compassion for the people in Ohio?

00:26:48.900 And so that myopia takes over because empathy short circuits and becomes untethered from the

00:26:55.080 larger moral picture.

00:26:56.260 What's good for everybody?

00:26:58.740 And so biblical compassion, true compassion, I think keeps that larger good in mind.

00:27:03.380 It doesn't merely focus on the immediate distress or the immediate dangers, but actually thinks

00:27:08.480 long-term and big picture because it has the emotional space to do so.

00:27:13.880 And so that's a big part of what I would want to commend in those situations is, yes, if there's

00:27:18.200 an immediate need in front of you, God's providentially placed this person, feed them, clothe them.

00:27:24.140 But that's not at any way at odds within saying, and now they need to go back to their country 1.00

00:27:28.680 of origin.

00:27:29.080 Is another big part of this, the abstraction, right?

00:27:33.100 Is that, like we said, we're disconnecting, you know, the story of the Good Samaritan is

00:27:38.180 about a person doing something for another person.

00:27:42.060 It's not about the Samaritan building a network of NGOs in order to support this.

00:27:47.420 It's not about him, you know, building a perpetual machine to take care of everyone who walks in.

00:27:52.380 It's, you know, it's the difference between having one person, a sojourner who is Haitian 1.00

00:27:58.300 traveling through your town who you help in a moment of crisis, as opposed to moving 5,000

00:28:03.920 people from Haiti to your town and thinking that this is the same thing.

00:28:07.640 Is that a part of what the problem is there?

00:28:10.380 Absolutely.

00:28:11.240 And I'd go even a step farther, because the modern compassion was, it was you moving 5,000

00:28:16.920 Haitians to somebody else's town. 0.99

00:28:18.680 Yes, yes.

00:28:19.380 Right?

00:28:19.660 So it wasn't, and this was one of, you know, sort of one of the brilliant political moves

00:28:23.500 that I think first Ron DeSantis and then others picked up on Governor Abbott, I think in Texas,

00:28:29.880 where they would move the immigrants to the communities that were ostensibly in favor of open borders

00:28:34.380 and say, okay, you guys want these, here they are.

00:28:36.760 Right.

00:28:37.360 Right.

00:28:37.720 So like, if you really want to love them, if you really want to show compassion to these

00:28:40.980 particular people, have at it.

00:28:42.800 And then how quickly, you know, there was sort of oftentimes, I think in that moment, there

00:28:47.420 was like an initial like, oh, we better, we better do something, but not sustainably,

00:28:51.340 not long-term.

00:28:52.060 It was like, no, eventually they need to go someplace else.

00:28:54.500 But it was always, it's the, and I think this is one of the chief challenges on this issue

00:28:59.180 is the way that compassion and empathy have become left coded and therefore left defined.

00:29:07.720 So meaning if you ask your normal person on the street, which of the political parties

00:29:12.240 is more compassionate, people will say, you know, if you did that survey, I would assume

00:29:16.200 that the Democrats would win on the compassion thing.

00:29:18.440 And if you ask one, which one's more concerned about law and order, the Republicans are going

00:29:21.580 to win.

00:29:22.060 Right.

00:29:22.280 But that means that then that in our popular imagination, the definition of compassion is

00:29:27.700 defined according to leftist notions.

00:29:30.240 They're the ones who decide who's empathetic or not.

00:29:33.180 And as a result, they can do all sorts of really, really unjust and wicked things in the

00:29:38.200 name of compassion and yet maintain that reputation.

00:29:41.220 So, um, set aside the kind of indifference, you know, who, do you have compassion on the

00:29:46.360 immigrant or, um, the coal miner in West Virginia, whose communities now overrun by, and whose 0.65

00:29:52.540 jobs have been taken and all this kind of stuff.

00:29:54.160 So set aside that, think about the kinds of cruelty that you can do in the name of empathy,

00:29:59.420 how, um, castrating children, murdering unborn children, right?

00:30:03.080 There's, it's amazing how much evil you can do.

00:30:05.620 And yet still think of yourself as an empathetic, compassionate person, um, because you've absorbed

00:30:11.340 an ideology that has defined compassion according to the whims and desires, uh, of human beings

00:30:16.860 rather than something sturdy like the law of God or the moral order that he's embedded

00:30:21.180 in the universe.

00:30:22.780 This one might be a little more controversial, but I think it's hard for people not to notice

00:30:27.840 that as the focus on perhaps the feminine, uh, trying to attract more women, uh, elevate

00:30:35.720 more women into leadership, these aspects have become to the forefront of many churches.

00:30:40.060 They prioritize these, uh, to kind of, uh, you know, work with, uh, the kind of modern culture

00:30:45.060 and its priorities.

00:30:46.020 We've also seen a rise in empathy.

00:30:48.480 And if you look when it comes to, you know, support for mass immigration or for LGBTQ causes,

00:30:54.300 it's disproportionately much more popular with, uh, females than with males.

00:30:59.620 Do you think that that gender dynamic plays a role in the rise of empathy and its focus?

00:31:05.280 And if so, is there any solution to that problem or is that a dynamic that's just going to exist

00:31:11.220 inside the church now?

00:31:12.280 What do you think about that?

00:31:13.580 Yeah.

00:31:13.700 So there's a, there's a chapter in the book called feminism, queen of the woke for this 1.00

00:31:17.180 reason, because this is a fundamental element, uh, of the rise of empathy, the feminization

00:31:22.120 of our politics, the feminization of our wider culture, because women sort of by nature are 1.00

00:31:27.260 the more empathetic, compassionate, nurturing sex.

00:31:30.220 And, um, in saying that, I want to say that's an enormous blessing for everybody, provided it

00:31:36.500 stays where it belongs.

00:31:37.520 It's provided that empathy, like empathy in certain places is a great blessing.

00:31:41.260 It's why women excel, um, at nurture and care, uh, for infants, for children. 1.00

00:31:46.760 Um, it's why they're, uh, they, they go into the nursing profession.

00:31:49.420 Like why if left to themselves, right.

00:31:51.860 And people get to choose their thing, women gravitate to those kinds of caring, nurturing 1.00

00:31:55.580 professions.

00:31:56.200 And that's a great blessing.

00:31:57.440 But what's a blessing in one place becomes a liability in another.

00:32:00.820 If, if you say, um, Hey, we need someone to guard this wall.

00:32:05.400 We need somebody to set this boundary and enforce it and make sure that nothing, um,

00:32:10.460 evil or unclean or nothing, um, harmful or destructive makes it in.

00:32:15.240 Um, empathy is probably not the virtue that you want there.

00:32:17.940 You want someone who's going to be shrewd and wise.

00:32:19.780 You're going to want somebody who's going to be able to make hard decisions, even in the

00:32:23.160 face of ostensible tears.

00:32:24.920 Um, and in that sense, therefore, um, I'll use the church as kind of the, the, um, example.

00:32:31.440 Um, it's one of the reasons I think that God restricts the pastoral office to men is because

00:32:36.740 when it comes to guarding the doctrine and worship of the church, female empathy is actually 1.00

00:32:42.000 a liability.

00:32:43.120 Um, because when a, an aggrieved group comes to you and says, you know, your, your scriptures,

00:32:47.320 um, really hurt my feelings.

00:32:49.180 Your, your scriptures oppress us.

00:32:50.640 All of these hard rules that say that we can't love who we want, or we can't do these things

00:32:55.360 that we want to do.

00:32:56.180 That really hurts us.

00:32:57.220 And we're really sad about that.

00:32:58.660 Female empathy kicks in. 1.00

00:32:59.740 And there's a reason that all of the denominations say the mainline denominations that in the

00:33:04.900 fifties, sixties, and seventies decided to ordain women to the priesthood or the, or 0.97

00:33:08.920 the pastorate, um, within 20 years had all sanctioned sodomy, were ordaining, um, homosexuals 1.00

00:33:14.700 to the priesthood, and that eventually were supporting of gay marriage and now beyond all the 0.90

00:33:18.380 rainbow churches, right.

00:33:19.760 Went on that trajectory.

00:33:20.920 Why?

00:33:21.460 It's not just, it's a slippery slope.

00:33:23.460 It's the logic of that's it's working its way out.

00:33:26.700 It's what cancer does and left untreated.

00:33:29.060 And female ordination was a kind of watershed on that because the, the pastoral office, the 0.66

00:33:34.440 theological office was designed to guard the doctrine of worship of the church.

00:33:37.840 And so then you can extend that out.

00:33:39.440 I think societally, that's not, that, that doesn't stay isolated.

00:33:41.980 Uh, and is why, um, I think one of the places on the, so if I, if we can see it clearly on

00:33:49.280 the left as sort of the, um, this is the, uh, nine months pregnant version, but there's

00:33:55.060 a six month pregnant version on the right.

00:33:56.720 This is woke light in which, uh, when Republicans brag about how many females they've elected

00:34:01.960 to office, right.

00:34:04.620 They're doing the same thing.

00:34:05.760 It's just an earlier stage of the same problem.

00:34:08.160 Or, um, I think an actual, a really interesting example was the recent controversy in Congress

00:34:12.900 about whether they would allow proxy voting for, uh, new mothers, right.

00:34:17.660 And that, that's a good example where here's a mother who wants to nurse her child and she 0.94

00:34:21.220 has to come into the office.

00:34:22.440 She has to go into Congress in order to cast her vote.

00:34:24.620 And they want to sort of, what do they want to do?

00:34:26.800 Rearrange all of society in order to make this accommodation.

00:34:29.760 That request was the same kind of request that the trans people are making. 0.92

00:34:35.480 It's, it's the same fundamental kind of logic, as opposed to saying, you know what, you're

00:34:40.420 a mother now.

00:34:41.120 Like you have one of the highest callings on planet earth.

00:34:45.040 You're caring for and nurturing an eternal soul.

00:34:47.540 Your baby needs you go be a mom, like pour yourself into it.

00:34:52.080 And does that mean that women can never run for political office or serve? 1.00

00:34:55.420 That's not, that's not what I'm saying.

00:34:56.880 But I think a society that views widespread female political rule or ecclesiastical rule

00:35:04.140 is one that is deeply sick and will suffer from a lot of other pathologies as a result

00:35:08.920 of it, because that's not where that female empathy belongs. 1.00

00:35:12.720 It doesn't, it doesn't belong there.

00:35:13.940 It belongs in its place.

00:35:14.880 And in its place, it's, it's the glue that holds societies together.

00:35:17.980 It's what makes homes warm and inviting.

00:35:19.960 It's the, it's the thing.

00:35:21.560 Um, uh, it's what's, it's glory.

00:35:23.820 The Bible talks about as woman is the glory of man.

00:35:26.100 Like that's where the glory comes from.

00:35:27.480 But when it comes to setting boundaries and guarding doctrine, um, and making hard decisions

00:35:32.920 in military context or, or in political context, it's, it's not the way that God has designed

00:35:38.320 women. 0.81

00:35:40.920 So now that we know the nature of the problem, how can we protect ourselves against this?

00:35:47.500 How can we make sure that we are not being manipulated?

00:35:50.640 We are not falling into this emotional blackmail.

00:35:54.120 What are some common strategies or some things to watch out for and ways that we can guard

00:36:00.240 ourselves against this attack?

00:36:02.640 Yeah.

00:36:02.780 So I think, uh, I think the first, first step is to become more self-aware.

00:36:07.140 Um, so at a very personal level, um, all of us know the circumstances in which we, there's

00:36:12.680 some true thing that we're wanting to say, and it catches in our throat because we're afraid

00:36:17.120 of how it's going to land on people, right?

00:36:20.000 The, the last little bit of the conversation might be an example.

00:36:22.820 Like I can, I can, I know what I think, but if I say it out loud, I know the sorts of reactions

00:36:27.300 I'm likely to get.

00:36:28.540 Um, and I know the way that I'm likely to get police.

00:36:30.520 So growing in our own awareness of, um, are we actually able to talk about the elephant

00:36:35.780 in the room?

00:36:36.320 Can we actually have the conversations at a rational level?

00:36:39.060 I think there's a way in which even the feminism thing affects men in this way. 0.72

00:36:42.160 Um, and that men have been taught from a young age, right?

00:36:44.420 You don't hit girls, especially good men are taught you treat girls different.

00:36:48.080 And therefore, if you enter, introduce women into, um, combat, theological combat, political 0.82

00:36:53.540 combat, it changes the dynamics.

00:36:55.120 Men will defer in ways that they would not otherwise, if it was a male making the exact 0.69

00:36:59.500 same argument.

00:37:00.320 And that's just a fact of human nature that has to be faced head on.

00:37:03.740 And then you need to then go, okay, so what do we do in light of it?

00:37:06.440 Um, but I think, so I think recognizing your own hesitations, reluctances on these issues.

00:37:10.680 Um, I think calibrating your definitions of what compassion is by what God says and not

00:37:17.300 what the world says, not what the left says.

00:37:20.220 Um, so, um, does God think that there are times when empathy is inappropriate or pity or

00:37:26.320 compassion?

00:37:26.760 And there is, there's times where the Israelites in the old Testament were commanded, you shall

00:37:31.200 not pity them.

00:37:32.260 And it was usually circumstances like, um, here, you know, the son of your, uh, your son or

00:37:37.080 your daughter or your wife or your best friend are trying to entice you into idolatry.

00:37:42.220 Right.

00:37:42.780 It says you may not pity them.

00:37:44.140 It forbids pity.

00:37:45.460 And I think that's the sort of thing that evangelicals in general, Christians in general,

00:37:49.880 conservatives in general need to recover and say, there are times when we're talking,

00:37:54.640 they're high stakes.

00:37:55.880 Things are important.

00:37:56.740 Um, if someone says, um, uh, does your compassion reserve the right not to blaspheme God, not

00:38:03.060 to tell lies in order to appease, um, certain groups, those are, those are the sort of, it

00:38:09.560 requires both an intellectual and then a, uh, internal fortitude to sort of press through

00:38:16.100 it, knowing that you're likely to provoke a very intense reaction and response.

00:38:20.420 And then I think the other thing is you should actually be compassionate.

00:38:22.860 Like you should actually model in your own life, a real concrete compassion, um, flowing

00:38:27.380 from the mortal duties that God has assigned you.

00:38:29.480 Are you a husband?

00:38:30.140 Are you a wife?

00:38:31.200 Um, are you a political leader?

00:38:33.640 What, what, are you a pastor?

00:38:34.880 What station in life has God called you to?

00:38:36.680 Are you showing compassion to those under your care?

00:38:39.500 Those who, for whom you are responsible, that needs to be worked out in a very concrete,

00:38:43.300 specific way, as opposed to what you were talking about, which is this abstract notion of

00:38:47.880 universal, uh, compassion that often neglects the things close at hand in favor of the

00:38:52.860 these abstractions, because it's easier.

00:38:54.740 It, it's easy to post a little, to put up a little, um, uh, black square or a rainbow

00:39:00.860 flag to sort of signal your virtue.

00:39:02.860 You're signaling, I'm a compassionate person.

00:39:04.700 I care about the right things.

00:39:06.620 Um, it's much harder to do the real work, uh, of upfront people are harder and loving,

00:39:13.100 um, people is harder than that.

00:39:16.780 Everything is the heat map meme.

00:39:18.460 Yeah.

00:39:18.900 Um, the heat map meme, I, I'll say I've been working on this for seven, seven or eight years.

00:39:22.380 And the heat map meme was like, yeah, that's it.

00:39:24.440 Like there really is, there really is something there.

00:39:27.120 And I think people misunderstand.

00:39:28.540 The point is not that you never work your way out to the extent it's that you can't be

00:39:34.380 faithful where you're not.

00:39:36.100 You, you have to work from where you are as a human being, limited, finite in a particular

00:39:41.480 location, embedded in a particular web of relationships.

00:39:44.620 Start there.

00:39:45.760 Don't dream about your feats of compassion and glory on the other side of the planet.

00:39:50.200 Like be faithful where God has planted you.

00:39:52.840 It's not that you never get to the outer rings.

00:39:54.740 It's that you need to fill every ring before you get to the outer ring.

00:39:57.740 Exactly right.

00:39:59.100 So, uh, I think for a lot of people, like I said, unfortunately, some of this bad doctrine

00:40:03.880 is coming out of their church.

00:40:05.200 It's, it's, they are being discipled in this model.

00:40:08.700 And so my next question would be, if you have a pastor, uh, that has this understanding

00:40:15.640 of empathy, uh, what would be the approach?

00:40:18.460 Is that something, you know, do you just go find a new church?

00:40:20.840 Do you have a discussion with them?

00:40:22.440 Do you confront them somehow?

00:40:23.520 Is it like, what, what would be your approach?

00:40:25.940 If you've got a good church, otherwise you feel like you're serving the community.

00:40:29.440 Most of the doctrine is good, but they are just hitting on empathy as like the central

00:40:34.160 Christian approach to this stuff.

00:40:36.400 If you're sitting in the pew there, obviously you're, you know, you're in the front, but

00:40:39.760 if you're, if you're sitting in a pew there, what would you think would be the Christian

00:40:42.700 response there?

00:40:44.020 Yeah.

00:40:44.140 So oftentimes I think these, those situations are hard because, um, like many things, the,

00:40:49.900 the falsehood is embedded in a lot of truth.

00:40:52.320 There's a lot of truth.

00:40:53.260 So you're saying there's a lot of good things happen and you can see those and you're not

00:40:56.440 sure.

00:40:57.000 So you hear maybe a comment from the pulpit or something in the pastor's newsletter that kind

00:41:01.820 of piques your interest.

00:41:02.760 I think the first thing that you should do is press for clarity, right?

00:41:06.160 So have the conversation, ask the questions with your goal being, bring clarity as much

00:41:10.500 as possible to the issue.

00:41:12.000 Pastor, did you mean this?

00:41:13.040 Did you mean that?

00:41:13.880 What did you mean?

00:41:15.040 Um, and then if you, as you do so, you'll likely discover fairly quickly if those questions

00:41:19.740 aren't even, aren't even welcome, right?

00:41:22.080 You can't even ask those questions without, um, provoking a kind of, uh, emotional reaction

00:41:26.480 or attempt to shut it down.

00:41:27.940 Um, then I think it's a pretty good indication that you probably need to find a different church

00:41:31.020 or you might discover that the, in pursuing the clarity that, yeah, you were right.

00:41:34.700 You were, you were picking up something.

00:41:36.160 There was something embedded in there that was a problem.

00:41:38.760 And in the same case, you probably are looking for, for an exit.

00:41:41.760 Um, or you might discover that they simply hadn't thought about it.

00:41:44.640 They've, they've absorbed certain categories.

00:41:46.740 And then I would say you ought to try to, um, uh, bring the other side and say, well, can

00:41:51.860 you say that out loud too?

00:41:52.900 You said this out loud.

00:41:54.580 You, in other words, the thing that, um, I think this is one of the, um, the things

00:41:58.680 that happened among evangelicals over the last 10 years, um, was that as, um, we came

00:42:05.020 to live under the progressive gaze and there was a way in which evangelicals came to have

00:42:09.340 a little progressive on their shoulder that was evaluating all their rhetoric, all their

00:42:13.820 priorities, the things they cared about, the things that they opposed, um, which is,

00:42:18.260 which is how the steering happened.

00:42:20.700 And part of that progressive gaze included who are worthy objects of empathy and who isn't.

00:42:25.320 So there was a kind of, we got to differentiate from the Christians who care about the wrong 1.00

00:42:28.580 things, those culture warriors, that moral majority.

00:42:31.380 Um, and we need to be the Christians who care about the right things and the right things

00:42:34.760 are defined according to the left's list of list of priorities.

00:42:37.240 So we can talk about climate change because it's a left priority.

00:42:40.240 Um, and we can talk about immigration, but only from a leftward frame.

00:42:44.320 And so there became two sort of, um, postures for pastors.

00:42:48.260 That were permissible.

00:42:49.340 One is either the left is correct about this.

00:42:52.400 This is a place where we can actually learn.

00:42:53.980 So, so on paper, we're still pro-life on paper.

00:42:56.220 We're still pro-traditional marriage.

00:42:57.560 Yes.

00:42:58.220 But the, you know, the left is actually right about this or it's, you know, we're neither

00:43:02.420 left nor right.

00:43:03.740 Like we're, we're not either.

00:43:04.920 We're going to be the third way thing.

00:43:06.140 And I think that progressive gaze was a fundamental tool.

00:43:10.520 I think, uh, leftists intentionally exploited that.

00:43:15.000 Like they funneled money to places where they thought there was fertile ground, um, to either

00:43:19.360 mute Christian resistance to their policies, um, or to, to hijack it altogether.

00:43:24.240 Uh, but I think a lot of churches just absorbed this by osmosis.

00:43:27.660 It was just in the air.

00:43:29.100 It was the cultural air that we breathed.

00:43:30.720 And therefore certain things were just ruled.

00:43:32.480 You can't even talk about that.

00:43:33.780 So you think about, so if I'm in a church and you're trying to go, is this my church?

00:43:37.160 It might be, well, if, if your pastor were to say to you, the world is watching, remember

00:43:41.980 Christians, the world is watching. 0.99

00:43:44.240 What does the world mean in that statement?

00:43:46.400 Is the world always elite, secular, progressive, coastal, or does the world include the coal

00:43:53.480 miner in the red hat who hasn't been to church since he was eight?

00:43:56.760 Like, is he the world?

00:43:57.700 Do you, are you, whenever the world is watching, is he watching?

00:44:00.400 Are you concerned at all?

00:44:01.660 What, what are his, what are his priorities?

00:44:02.880 Can you show the way that the gospel subversively fulfills his aspirations and dreams, right?

00:44:08.020 So like, but it was always selective and it was always tilted left, which is why the church

00:44:12.840 has slowly migrated that way, uh, over time.

00:44:16.160 Now, thankfully, I think there's an awareness of the way that our compassion was manipulated,

00:44:21.820 that we were emotionally blackmailed.

00:44:24.140 Um, and so, um, I'm hopeful that certain churches at least are going to recognize this

00:44:28.900 and anchor their compassion to something sturdy.

00:44:31.180 Um, but if you don't know, that's the sort of question I'd be asking in your own church.

00:44:35.480 Yeah, it really makes a case for the much maligned cultural Christianity, because it 1.00

00:44:39.700 turns out that even churches who think that they're serving Christ will eventually drift

00:44:44.600 towards the world if they think that if that's what's impacting their understanding of what

00:44:48.800 is good and right in the frame every day.

00:44:51.000 Uh, so the last thing I want to ask you before we move to the questions of the people real quick,

00:44:55.540 uh, really dovetails into what you were just talking about.

00:44:58.520 I think ultimately, which is recently, obviously we had a stabbing, uh, at a high school event,

00:45:06.660 a track meet, uh, tragically Austin Metcalf was killed in this and we still don't know all

00:45:11.180 of the details.

00:45:11.880 Uh, but from what we can tell, uh, it looks like Carmelo Anthony, uh, the alleged, uh, killer,

00:45:17.340 uh, was the one that ultimately after being, uh, getting a bit of a tussle produced a knife and,

00:45:22.720 and killed Austin Metcalf.

00:45:24.480 Now his father rushed out and immediately said, I forgive the killer.

00:45:28.760 And as I've said before, I did a whole episode on this, uh, I don't want to retread the whole

00:45:33.220 thing, but, uh, you know, as I said at the beginning, this is not to attack his father.

00:45:37.140 I understand in a, in a moment of that level of, uh, loss.

00:45:41.320 I mean, there's, there's just, you're just reaching for whatever you can.

00:45:44.180 You're trying to do the right thing.

00:45:45.840 Um, but I, I think that the fact that, um, he placed a non-reciprocal, uh, forgiveness

00:45:54.240 or a forgiveness that had no, uh, there, there was no, uh, repentance.

00:45:59.600 There was no ask for repentance.

00:46:01.040 There was, uh, none of that.

00:46:03.880 And then he rushed out and, and provided that forgiveness before even a discussion on justice

00:46:08.080 had occurred, uh, I think really, uh, hit a lot of people's nerves.

00:46:12.420 And there were a lot of people who ran out there and immediately said, oh, of course you

00:46:15.020 have to forgive.

00:46:15.680 Jesus said, you know, forgive them.

00:46:17.500 I know what they do.

00:46:18.520 And that's the model of forgiveness in all situations for all of humanity.

00:46:22.140 Uh, and, and, you know, I, I, uh, did this episode and I'm not a pastor, but I consulted,

00:46:28.000 uh, my friend David Shrock and I think over at Christ overall.

00:46:30.680 And I think he, he had an excellent article he referred me to, and I tried to use that

00:46:34.480 as a basis, but you know, a lot of people look at that situation, even people on the

00:46:38.760 right, like people who think they're very right wing came out immediately and gave this

00:46:43.200 model of Christian forgiveness, which is no repentance, no remorse, no justice.

00:46:48.800 Uh, just you immediately forgive without a second thought.

00:46:52.120 Uh, and, and that's all there is to being a Christian.

00:46:55.540 I feel like that really speaks to how deeply a lot of Christians have had their understanding

00:47:01.000 of forgiveness itself manipulated by kind of the, the, the moral blackmail.

00:47:05.740 And very importantly, uh, you know, the, the cultural zeitgeist around this, you know,

00:47:10.260 we're, we're never going to see anyone rushing out being like George Floyd's family.

00:47:15.240 If they're Christian needs to immediately forgive Derek Chauvin before any justice or any repentance. 0.98

00:47:20.700 And yet that's exactly what we see.

00:47:22.560 Anytime someone who is white is victimized in this way.

00:47:26.880 Yeah.

00:47:27.120 And I think that it's, it's re it's recognizing like it, what it reveals, what reveals it is

00:47:31.860 when you do precisely what you just did.

00:47:33.720 When you, when you put the shoe on the other foot and say, would we require, is this a

00:47:36.960 universal human obligation, then it ought to apply to all universal humans.

00:47:41.580 Instead, what we have is, um, a adapt, adaptation of a human obligation, extend forgiveness, um,

00:47:49.160 to particular social circumstances in an American context that is highly fraught on all of these

00:47:53.720 issues.

00:47:54.260 So I, when I think about that, um, when I think about the father, um, I read him as wanting

00:48:02.320 to communicate.

00:48:03.260 This is, this is a way for him of clinging to faith in an unspeakable tragedy, right?

00:48:09.720 This is his way of signaling.

00:48:11.060 I'm still anchored in Christ in, in God, um, in the midst of this tragedy.

00:48:15.720 So in that sense, I think it's a very noble thing and I, I admire him for it, but I think

00:48:19.420 it does evidence a kind of, um, a catechism that's that like the, the shape of it is, is

00:48:27.060 influenced by the world.

00:48:27.980 So that if you, if you were to ask, okay, but what if he would have said, um, I just

00:48:32.240 want to know that I, I, um, I forgive, or I at least extend forgiveness, um, offer, the

00:48:37.160 offers there, I'm willing to forgive, however you want to say it to this young man who killed

00:48:41.440 my son.

00:48:42.260 Um, and I hope that he's, um, he receives a just trial and is prosecuted to the full

00:48:46.920 extent of the law.

00:48:47.640 Like what if he'd added the second part?

00:48:49.460 Yeah.

00:48:50.160 Would, would we have said, well, man, he, that would we have said that's actually a full

00:48:53.980 orbed Christian response.

00:48:54.980 He's, he's allowing, um, civil justice to have it say, and is, is praying and encouraging

00:48:59.840 that and also offering extending forgiveness at a personal level to the person who's, um,

00:49:05.180 killed his son.

00:49:05.920 Um, and he could have added, you know, and I'm praying that he also in the midst of all

00:49:09.440 of this finds salvation in Christ for all of his sins.

00:49:12.660 Like that, like that's a fuller picture, but what we've done is we've taken one, this is

00:49:16.540 Chesterton's point.

00:49:17.220 We've taken one of the virtues and we've isolated it from the others.

00:49:19.940 Um, Lewis made a similar point in his day when he said mercy, when it's detached from

00:49:24.700 justice grows unmerciful, mercy detached from justice grows unmerciful.

00:49:29.420 And he compares it to a certain kind of plant that can only grow in a mountain climate, right?

00:49:34.040 So mercy grows well in the rocky crags of justice.

00:49:36.780 But if you try to transplant that, that plant into the swamp of humanitarianism, it becomes

00:49:41.920 a man-eating weed and it becomes, and it says it's all the more destructive because

00:49:45.700 it still shares the name with the mountain variety.

00:49:48.080 So the mountain variety goes by the name mercy and it is mercy.

00:49:52.280 The, the swampy variety also goes by the name mercy, but it's now become highly destructive

00:49:56.480 in a man-eating weed.

00:49:57.480 But the shared name is what gives them was what makes it so dangerous.

00:50:01.380 And I think this would be another case that they're both called forgiveness.

00:50:04.920 They're both called compassion.

00:50:06.420 They're both called empathy, whatever it is.

00:50:08.340 Um, and yet there's something missing.

00:50:10.380 There's, there's other elements that need to be in play.

00:50:13.280 And if they're not, this really, really good thing becomes a really, really destructive

00:50:17.480 thing.

00:50:18.840 Yeah.

00:50:19.360 I think that's a good bit of wisdom.

00:50:20.940 And I really hope that people will look at this article and the book if they enjoy it,

00:50:26.060 because I think this is one of the most important topics that churches are facing right now,

00:50:31.100 that Christians are facing right now, especially in a moment of political upheaval where a lot

00:50:36.120 of changes need to be made culturally.

00:50:38.480 Um, people have difficulty finding a ground to be strong and push back in those moments.

00:50:44.560 And so I think this is a good way to allow people to understand when are we still acting

00:50:50.300 as Christians?

00:50:50.980 When are we, you know, how, how should we go about being compassionate, being kind, but

00:50:55.280 understanding that actually having these barriers, having these natural hierarchies, having these

00:51:00.780 Christian understandings is not opposed to any of that.

00:51:03.460 These are not competing forces.

00:51:04.960 They are critically working in tandem.

00:51:07.460 And if you separate the empathy from the rest of this, as the left has done, it makes you

00:51:12.420 particularly vulnerable to all of the different attacks that you're talking about.

00:51:16.380 Uh, Joe, we're going to go to a few questions from the audience real quick, but before we

00:51:19.780 do, where can people find your work, the book, everything that you need them to find?

00:51:23.580 Yeah, good.

00:51:24.260 So, uh, I'm on exit Joe underscore Rigney.

00:51:26.640 Um, I regularly, uh, I write for American reformer.

00:51:30.120 Um, there's a lot of old articles at desiringgod.org.

00:51:32.460 Uh, Canon plus is a place that you can find a lot of my stuff these days.

00:51:36.520 And if you want the book, um, and it's companion, there's a, there's a second book called leadership

00:51:41.080 and emotional sabotage, which fits into the same kind of mold.

00:51:43.940 You can go to sin of empathy.com or emotional sabotage.com.

00:51:47.220 You can find both of those there.

00:51:49.160 Perfect.

00:51:49.680 All right.

00:51:50.200 Creeper weirdo says, Jesus said, be nice.

00:51:53.000 Is the cartoon character agrees with me of philosophical and political arguments, low rent

00:51:58.980 and low IQ.

00:52:00.620 Yeah.

00:52:00.820 I don't know.

00:52:01.360 I don't want to be overly semantic, but do you think there's a significant, significant

00:52:04.920 difference between being nice and being kind?

00:52:07.640 Yeah, absolutely.

00:52:08.260 I think that like on a lot of these things, uh, modern virtues are kind of degenerative

00:52:13.080 forms of real things.

00:52:14.540 And so kindness degenerates into niceness.

00:52:17.360 Uh, clarity, I think is a biblical virtue, uh, often degenerates into selective nuance,

00:52:22.920 right?

00:52:23.380 We're going to be nuanced, which is usually we're going to be nuanced with certain people.

00:52:26.220 And then we're absolutely not going to be nuanced with other people.

00:52:28.660 Uh, we're, we're going to try to represent certain people fairly in others.

00:52:31.220 And then I think the same thing, uh, biblical compassion degenerates into this untethered

00:52:35.340 empathy.

00:52:35.620 So in all of those cases, there's a kind of, um, and it's, it's, again, they all go by

00:52:40.680 the same name.

00:52:41.980 The good name gets hijacked.

00:52:43.220 The good name gets, um, corrupted.

00:52:45.980 Uh, and I want to commend the real virtue and yet be willing to attack the pretenders.

00:52:52.560 BJJ wins again, says the worldly tendency to empathize with a 0.98

00:52:56.160 criminal more than the righteous doesn't seem random.

00:52:59.160 What makes them value the pain of the evil more?

00:53:03.880 Yeah.

00:53:04.460 So I think, uh, it's, it's not just, so we think it's criminal, but it's actually because

00:53:09.720 certain classes have been categorized certain ways.

00:53:12.880 So, um, certainly in other words, certain criminals aren't going to get any empathy from

00:53:18.060 society, right?

00:53:19.220 So there's certain criminals that if they did, Derek Chauvin was a criminal, right?

00:53:22.080 He was tried.

00:53:22.800 He didn't get any sympathy from anybody.

00:53:24.700 Not a lot of white supremacists are going to get a lot of calls for sympathy.

00:53:28.380 You know, won't someone fundraise money for this guy who's, you know, guilty of shooting 0.97

00:53:32.880 up a black church. 0.92

00:53:33.940 That's probably not coming anytime soon. 0.96

00:53:35.960 Right.

00:53:36.460 Um, and I think that there's ways in which actually that's instructive for us.

00:53:39.100 Like we can say like, oh, okay.

00:53:40.180 So we do know how to treat criminals, evil people who have done really wicked things.

00:53:43.620 We do know how to treat them.

00:53:44.700 We do know how to exercise justice.

00:53:46.880 Our problem is that we're selective.

00:53:49.440 And I think this is again, one of the, the, that selectivity is really driven by, um,

00:53:55.040 and over that overemphasis on empathy leads us to myopically identify with certain groups.

00:54:01.920 And this is also why actually, um, empathy and outrage or empathy and hatred do go hand

00:54:06.880 in hand because empathy for the groups that I'm with or for is often accompanied by intense

00:54:13.580 hatred for their enemies.

00:54:14.540 I must, I like it like they're, they're corresponding, uh, emotions.

00:54:19.200 So, um, I, there is no mob, like an empathetic mob, like the empathetic mob that really,

00:54:26.340 really was outraged, say by the death of George Floyd, right.

00:54:29.560 Was willing to burn down cities in order to like express that outrage and then dismantle

00:54:34.680 all of society in pursuit of quote unquote justice.

00:54:38.060 Um, and it was fueled by, and you go, but I thought these were the empathetic people.

00:54:41.560 Um, they actually do studies on this, interestingly, um, when they try to measure, like, what are

00:54:46.020 the implications of empathy?

00:54:47.340 People who report high empathy are often the most polarized.

00:54:50.900 This is, this makes sense because empathy for your people means hatred for others.

00:54:54.940 And so there's the tribal that we, people lament tribalism.

00:54:58.120 Okay.

00:54:58.280 People lament the tribalism of America.

00:55:00.020 I'm saying that you need to dial down.

00:55:01.600 You need to anchor your empathy to something else because otherwise tribalism is the fruit

00:55:06.420 of untethered empathy.

00:55:08.960 In the absence of a shared moral vision and basis for truth, you ultimately end up in

00:55:14.280 the most tribal situation possible because it's all relative to who you're aligned with.

00:55:19.160 That's correct.

00:55:20.040 Yeah.

00:55:20.920 Uh, Templar says always important to remember the good Samaritan brought the injured Jewish

00:55:26.940 man to Jewish doctors in Judea, not Samaria.

00:55:30.140 He, uh, he placed the, uh, healing responsibility on their own.

00:55:34.480 See also Chronicles 28.

00:55:38.020 Yeah.

00:55:38.540 So that, yeah.

00:55:39.160 Well, and I think there's second Chronicles 20.

00:55:40.880 Yeah.

00:55:41.280 So the interesting thing about that, the good Samaritan does have something to say to our

00:55:45.820 politics, but it does, but it doesn't work.

00:55:50.000 Um, but it establishes a kind of principle.

00:55:52.660 It doesn't, you can't apply the whole thing all the way down the line.

00:55:56.300 Right.

00:55:56.820 Jesus is asking, like, he's, he's got a guy who's trying to evade moral duties.

00:56:00.600 Who's my neighbor?

00:56:01.800 How do I get it?

00:56:02.520 And he knows that because these people have gotten out of all sorts of other moral duties.

00:56:06.060 They've tried to evade their, uh, honor your father and mother.

00:56:09.500 How does Jesus criticize the Pharisees?

00:56:11.220 Right.

00:56:12.100 Right.

00:56:12.340 Honor your father and mother.

00:56:13.140 Oh no, we'll just pronounce all of our wealth.

00:56:14.760 Corban is a gift to God.

00:56:16.120 It's, it's now walled off.

00:56:17.680 We don't have to, I don't have to care for mom and dad in their old age, um, because I'm

00:56:21.620 exempted.

00:56:22.140 And so Christ's criticism of the Pharisees was always that they're trying to choose the easy 0.51

00:56:25.960 way out.

00:56:27.120 And so when he's giving this parable in response to that, who is my neighbor question, that's

00:56:31.840 the thing he's dealing with, which isn't the thing that we're always dealing with.

00:56:35.660 Right.

00:56:36.020 Like that's not the universal problem.

00:56:37.400 That's that guy's problem and may apply to us.

00:56:39.420 But I think, I think we get on shaky ground.

00:56:41.380 The more that we try to, um, we, we pick, we pick and choose.

00:56:45.840 We pick out elements of the story that are going to surface.

00:56:48.100 Cause the other thing would be, um, if the good Samaritan's the model, then it really

00:56:51.200 is like, it's about proximity and moral proximity.

00:56:54.540 It's like, so I shouldn't help the person, the, the neighbor.

00:56:58.080 I should never, ever think about the guy across the country because he's not on my Jericho

00:57:02.700 road.

00:57:03.400 And it's like, if, if we were to conclude that, that then, then our heat map never gets

00:57:07.140 to the edges because of the parable of the good Samaritan.

00:57:09.560 And everybody would go, well, that's not what that's meaning.

00:57:11.560 It's like, exactly.

00:57:12.580 You have to do more careful biblical interpretation before you know how to apply it.

00:57:16.360 It turns out wisdom, wisdom and discernment are just always important.

00:57:20.320 You never escape the need for them.

00:57:21.760 You never get to set up some automatic rote way to understand these things.

00:57:25.840 You've just actually have to apply the level of wisdom and prudence provided to you.

00:57:31.280 All right, guys, we're going to go ahead and wrap this up.

00:57:33.920 I want to thank Dr.

00:57:35.000 Rigney for joining me today and make sure to check out his work and his book.

00:57:38.920 If it's your first time coming by this channel, please make sure to subscribe, click the bell,

00:57:43.240 notifications, all that stuff.

00:57:44.800 So, you know, when YouTube is going live, if you want to keep these broadcasts as podcasts,

00:57:49.800 you need to subscribe to the or Mac entire show on your favorite podcast platform.

00:57:54.160 And if you'd like to support the show, don't forget.

00:57:56.200 Of course, we've got the or Mac entire collection over at shopblazemedia.com.

00:58:00.600 You can pick up some merch there.

00:58:01.960 If you'd like to rep the show, thank you everybody for watching.

00:58:04.840 Have a great weekend.

00:58:05.800 And as always, I will talk to you next time.

00:58:13.240 Thank you.

00:58:23.800 Thank you.

The Auron MacIntyre Show - April 11, 2025

Emotional Blackmail and the Sin of Empathy ｜ Dr. Joe Rigney ｜ 4⧸11⧸25

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