A Response to Critics
Generally, authors welcome engagement with their views, if for no other reason that such interaction shows that their work has touched a nerve. That’s certainly the case with my work on empathy over the years. Since the release of The Sin of Empathy, I’ve seen a number of criticisms of the work. Some of them, such as Russell Moore’s recent article, don’t even bother to attempt to understand the arguments, but are content to vaguely strawman unidentified fellow Christians. Dr. Moore’s failure of imagination when it comes to the dangers of untethered empathy is particularly ironic since he commends empathetic imagination. And his claim that those (like me) who criticize empathy in the modern world are liberals is, well, something else.
Two other reviews of my book stand out for at least attempting to engage with my actual arguments, and for the way that together, they represent common criticisms that I’ve received. Dr. Alastair Roberts wrote a critical review for The Dispatch Online, and Dr. Dani Treweek wrote a sustained review at Mere Orthodoxy (and a follow-up on her substack). Given that Treweek’s review was commended by some for its care and clarity, and that she relied in various places on Roberts’s criticisms, it seems worthwhile to respond to them together and at length. And since a key part of their claims is that I misrepresent my sources, I’ve chosen to include substantial block quotes so that interested readers can decide for themselves without having to chase down citations across the internet.
I’ve divided my response into clear sections for ease of navigation. I engage six criticisms:
- That I sacrifice clarity and precision for provocation
- That I use language inconsistently
- That I fail to make biblical and theological arguments
- That I fail to guard against the danger of callousness
- That I make selective use of sources (especially the work of Edwin Friedman)
- That I offer a distorted, political, partisan, and gendered account of empathy by making empathy “left-coded” and “female-coded.” (Indeed, according to Treweek, I am a misogynist).
Criticism 1: Rigney sacrifices clarity and precision for provocation.
Let’s begin with provocative rhetoric. Roberts claims that I “sacrifice illumination and precision for provocation,” exchanging “light for publicity-producing heat.” Rather than carefully separating, distinguishing, and analyzing complex emotional dynamics, I simply cut the Gordian Knot with “recklessly flailing terms like ‘sin,’” offering an analysis that “swings too clumsily and wildly.” Roberts suggests that a phrase like “sinful empathy” or “disordered empathy” would be more accurate than “sin of empathy,” which is subject to great misunderstanding.
Critics have faulted the provocative rhetoric of “the sin of empathy” since I introduced it in 2019. Since I included an appendix in the book addressing the rhetorical issue, I’ll only note here that Christ himself used provocative rhetoric at various times (“Eat my flesh and drink my blood”). Such rhetoric at times confused his hearers, divided his audience, and led some who were seeking him to forsake him. Of course, Christ was also willing to explain himself to those who were genuinely confused (one thinks of Nicodemus coming to him at night). But he also saw through rhetorical traps laid by his enemies and refused to be steered by them.
Over the last eight years, I’ve sought (however imperfectly) to imitate the Lord in this way. I’ve used phrases that have provoked thought and provoked reactions. I’ve patiently clarified myself to those who are genuinely confused (as Roberts notes, I frequently clarify “the sin of empathy” using the term “untethered empathy”). And I’ve come to recognize that some critics feign confusion (often on behalf of others) because such confusion allows them to dismiss the substance of the arguments.
Now Roberts argues that he has criticized the same dynamics that I have criticized, but without receiving the strong negative reaction. “It’s quite possible to do!” he says, and he attributes the non-reaction to the nuance and care of his analysis.
While I agree that Roberts has addressed these dynamics (indeed, I’ve learned a lot from him on the subject, quoting him multiple times in the book), I would attribute the differing reactions to the fact that Roberts tends to write near-book-length articles using phrases like “patterns of discourse,” “heterotopic arena of male agonism,” and “orthodox alexithymia.” In other words, the different reactions aren’t primarily because I used provocative rhetoric, but because Roberts writes for a much narrower, academic audience.
Indeed, Roberts himself once (provocatively) wrote, “Among the threats to Christian ethics in the contemporary world, empathy stands out as the greatest,” which sounds like the sort of thing Canon Press has used to market my book.
Nevertheless, Roberts’s criticisms of the rhetoric does highlight a difference between the two of us. If he were to write a comprehensive and nuanced dismantling of these corrupt emotional dynamics under the heading of “sinful empathy” or “disordered empathy,” he would receive nothing but an “Amen!” from me. I don’t want semantic differences to get in the way of substantive agreement, a position that I’ve sought to maintain for years.
And speaking of substantive agreement, I’d just like to echo Roberts’s desire for a richer emotional vocabulary and framework. Roberts mentions Dixon’s excellent work on the subject, and I would like to commend Matthew LaPine’s The Logic of the Body, a book that has deeply shaped my own thinking and which I’ve sought to popularize over the last five years. (Here’s an example of my efforts; there are also relevant sections in my books More Than a Battle and Courage, as well as these popular-level articles at Desiring God.)
Criticism 2: Rigney uses language inconsistently.
A more substantial criticism of my language comes from Treweek, who faults me for a lack of “definitional clarity” and substantial inconsistency in my terms. Indeed, her entire review is based on a comparison between my book and the nonsensical and sham trial in Alice in Wonderland. For example, she rightly notes that I use sympathy, compassion, and pity interchangeably to describe the virtue. But then she gives an example where I substitute pity for the “sin of empathy.”
Yet, on other occasions, Rigney inclines towards using pity as a stand-in for empathy (“‘The anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God’ (James 1:20). Neither does the pity or empathy of man,” p.143.) Once again, the reader is left uncertain: is pity a biblical virtue akin to compassion? Or is it the manipulative tool of those who would throw “pity parties and guilt trips […] to steer us” (p.50)?
But there is nothing unclear about the latter use. The modifier “of man” clarifies why pity is a vice in this case. Pity, in general, is a virtue, but the pity of man (like the anger of man) doesn’t produce the righteousness of God. Modifiers matter.
Treweek’s greater concern is with my allegedly inconsistent use of the term “empathy.” Treweek notes that, like Edwin Friedman, I enter into the discussion by distinguishing sympathy (“to suffer with”) from empathy (“to suffer in”), and use that to make a larger conceptual point about the corruption of compassion. However, according to Treweek, I do not consistently follow the “with” vs. “in” paradigm.
Early on, Rigney explains that sympathy (synonymous with compassion) literally means “to suffer with”, while empathy means “to suffer in”. This distinction is central to his argument, for “the shift from ‘with’ to ‘in’ is of more than philological importance. At stake is the difference between virtue and vice, goodness and sin.” (p.17) To illustrate, he describes a sufferer sinking in quicksand. A compassionate person, he contends, keeps one foot on solid ground before stepping in to help the sufferer, while an empathetic person jumps in with both feet. In and of itself, empathy “entails a suspension of judgement and a more comprehensive sharing of emotion” (p.28) that leaves them dangerously untethered from reason, truth, justice or morality.
In summary, Rigney asserts that true compassion means suffering with someone, whereas empathy—joining the person in their suffering—is a destructive excess of compassion that “sweeps us off our feet […and] loses sight of the ultimate good, both for ourselves and for the hurting.” (p.33)
However, just pages after asserting that “joining with” versus “joining in” suffering distinguishes virtue and vice, goodness and sin, Rigney writes: “the virtue of compassion (or sympathy) is the habitual inclination to share the suffering and pain of the hurting […] it resolves to join them in their pain” (p. 32 emphasis added). This conflation of empathy and sympathy, which contradicts Rigney’s own definition, is not an isolated example. For instance:
Faithful compassion leans into the suffering of others, weeping with those who weep, genuinely joining the sorrowful in their grief (p. 51)
Tethered compassion is not tepid compassion. We must join them in their sorrow’ […we should communicate to them] “I’m with you in this” (p. 144)
Yes, the love of Jesus waits […] He still meets us in our sorrow (p. 159)
Now, I’m clear in the book that I’m not concerned primarily with precisely defining for all time the true and proper definition of empathy (Treweek quotes the three times where I emphatically make this claim). I recognize that the terms are contested, and I’ve sought to describe the destructive dynamics in a variety of ways as needed.
However, when it comes to the alleged inconsistency of my use of prepositions, Treweek has simply misunderstood the linguistic point. And while I don’t want to be pedantic, in this case, I feel driven to it. Treweek claims that I make “joining with” vs. “joining in” the difference between virtue and vice. The problem is that, contrary to Treweek’s use of quotation marks, I never contrast “joining with” and “joining in.” Instead, I distinguish “to suffer with” (sympathy) from “to suffer in” (empathy):
“What’s the difference between saying that we should suffer with others and saying that we should suffer in them?”
Both words concern our orientation to hurting and suffering people, but they represent this orientation differently. Sympathy willingly joins with sufferers in their pain. Empathy makes their suffering our own in a more universal and totalizing way. This, in fact, is why some commend empathy as a more loving response to the pain of others. To suffer or feel with someone maintains a certain kind of emotional separation or boundary between the comforter and the afflicted; we’re with them, but we’re not in them. We maintain our own personal integrity and boundaries—I remain I, and you remain you. (Rigney, The Sin of Empathy, 7–8)
Notice that “to suffer with” is expanded into “join someone in their pain.” The word “with” is connected to the idea of “join,” since “join” maintains the boundaries and self-differentiation that I’m concerned about. “Suffer in,” on the other hand, is expanded into “a more universal and totalizing” immersion, implying the loss of differentiation and boundaries. If “suffer with” = “join someone in their pain,” then “suffer in” = “lose yourself in someone’s pain.” As I put it on page 139, “Empathy demands, ‘Feel what I feel. In fact, lose yourself in my feelings.’” In other words, Treweek’s error is in thinking that my argument demands that all uses of the preposition “in” must point to empathy. But I never claim such a thing, and thus there is no inconsistency in my use of prepositions.
At the same time, Treweek is correct that, while I most often use empathy in a negative sense (as in “the sin of empathy” or “untethered empathy”), occasionally I allow for a neutral (or even a positive) use. So how do I explain that?
First, it’s important to note that I am explicit and clear about it.
In this book, I will use the term “empathy” in one of two ways. The first is simply as “emotion-sharing.” Emotion-sharing in itself is neither virtuous nor vicious. It’s simply a common feature of human relationships. In this sense, it is a natural emotion, and not necessarily a virtue.
The second and more negative use is the sin of (untethered) empathy, which is the excessive and overpowering form of this passion. (Rigney, The Sin of Empathy, 13)
Second, I clearly acknowledge that others may use the term differently: “I believe that there are perfectly good applications of the term “empathy,” such as when psychologists use the term in treating autism, or when it is popularly used as a rough synonym for compassion and sympathy” (p. xx-xxi). I include these caveats 1) because I recognize that the term is fluid and contested, and 2) because the same dynamics have flown under different banners at different times in history (as when Chesterton talks of “untruthful pity” or Lewis criticizes the same phenomena using “the passion of pity” and “mercy detached from justice”).
As soon as I entered into this larger discussion back in 2018–2019 and discovered some of the more technical uses (such as in treating autism) or the great diversity of popular uses, I decided that I was not going to wrangle about words. While I have my own semantic preferences (I think it best to use sympathy and compassion for the virtue and empathy for the corruption), I’ve attempted to create room for those different contexts (popular vs. medical vs. academic) and for those who wish to continue to use the term “empathy” to refer to “compassion that is tethered to truth.” (For a fruitful conversation with Hannah Anderson and Alastair Roberts on the different levels of discourse, see this podcast from 2019.) Treweek think this is inconsistent and confusing; I think it is an attempt at charity in a contested environment.
One final note on substance and semantics. Treweek faults me for not distinguishing between “healthy, biblically rooted empathy and its distorted, manipulative form” and for not making “any serious attempt to redeem empathy from its cultural corruption.” But if we are talking about substance, then I clearly distinguish a biblical approach to identifying with sufferers from its distortion; I simply choose to call it compassion or sympathy, because those are the biblical terms for it. Thus, in a substantive sense, the entire book is an attempt to “redeem” a biblical approach to sufferers from its cultural corruption (the final chapter is a celebration of compassion).
But at a semantic level, I’m not attempting to redeem the term “empathy.” But—and this is important—I’m also not at war with those who want to. In fact, Treweek cites the work of Jonathan Worthington, a friend and former colleague of mine who wrote an excellent article in which he engaged with the entire empathy debate in a careful and charitable way (I’ve commended Dr. Worthington’s article for years, and had a very fruitful conversation with him and Abigail Dodds on the subject). Unlike most of my critics (including Dr. Treweek), Worthington engaged in good faith and sought to represent my arguments accurately and affirm them when he could, while also expressing his desire to redeem the term empathy from its distortions.
Essentially, Worthington thinks that the SS Empathy is a good ship that has been hijacked by enmeshed and relativistic mutineers, and he would like to retake the ship from the pirates. I, on the other hand, think that the SS Empathy has long been a pirate ship, and I’m happy to simply send it to Davy Jones’ locker. I’d rather spend my efforts reclaiming the SS Sympathy from those who find it lacking. But–and this is crucial–I don’t want to fight with Worthington. Perhaps he can rescue the ship and redeem the term. I’d simply ask that in his efforts, he include a modifier like “tethered empathy” or “biblical empathy” in order to avoid going mutineer himself.
Because the reality is that what Christians like Worthington mean by empathy and what leftists mean by empathy is not the same. When trans-supporting communists celebrate empathy, it includes affirmation, validation, and celebration of wickedness. When open-border advocates spray paint “Empathy” on the border wall, it means no boundaries or borders or walls. Perhaps a comparison to other contested terms may help. When a Christian in 2025 uses terms like “diversity” and “inclusion,” he must take into account the way those terms have been used and abused by leftists for the last 50 years. And that includes a term like “equity,” which has a well-established meaning in the history of philosophy and politics, and which appears repeatedly in the King James Bible. If someone attacked the modern progressive understanding of equity, it would be ridiculous for me to object that that’s not what we mean by it when we sing about God’s equity in church.
Before moving to more substantive claims, there is one section of Dr. Treweek’s review that seemed to miss the mark entirely. In assessing my chapter on the progressive gaze, Treweek expresses sympathy with my arguments, but claims that I ultimately misdiagnose recent evangelical history. Her analysis is so hopelessly confused that I honestly don’t know how to respond. On the one hand, she says “The problem is not that (some) Christians have joined people too deeply in their suffering, but that we have been too willing to justify our own sin.” But one paragraph later she says, “Our desire for approval and credibility corrupts the genuine compassion we might offer, twisting it for our own ultimate benefit.” Precisely. That’s the argument of the chapter. Does she disagree with it or not?
Another paragraph later she says, “Yes, there are times when unchecked sentimentality can cloud judgment, when feeling the depth of someone’s pain can tempt us to excuse what should not be excused or to silence truth.” “Unchecked sentimentality” sounds exactly like a restatement of “untethered empathy.” So can it cloud judgment and excuse (justify?) sin? Or is that not “the problem”?
What’s more, the whole section is full of false dichotomies. “It is not the progressive gaze that “poses the greatest threat to Christian faithfulness,” (p. 100), but the sinful heart and mind.” But my argument is that, in the present moment, one central form that the sinful heart and mind takes is living beneath the progressive gaze, and thereby excusing and minimizing progressive sin.
Or again, “It’s not that empathy automatically entails unreasonableness, but that sin has despoiled our reason…and our loves.” Which definition of empathy are we using here? If mine (untethered empathy), then yes, it does entail unreasonableness, since we’re talking about empathy untethered from reason, truth, and reality. But if we’re using Treweek’s preferred positive definition (emotion-sharing that leads us to rightly enter into the suffering of others), then I never claimed it was “automatically” unreasonable. And even here, Treweek says that “sin has despoiled our loves.” Does that include our love for the weak, hurting, and vulnerable? Has sin despoiled even that?
And finally, in the climax of that section, Treweek sums up her criticism (using italics for emphasis), “To put it in theological terms, empathy does not sin. We sin.” But I never said that “empathy sins, not us.” So who is she responding to? It would be as though I condemned the sin of anger, and she responded, “Anger doesn’t sin. We sin.” One doesn’t even know what to say.
So much for rhetoric and semantics. I turn now to Dr. Treweek’s criticism of my choice of proof.
Criticism 3: Rigney fails to make biblical and theological arguments.
Dr. Tweweek takes issue with my use of Lewis’s The Great Divorce. Apparently it’s wrong to use examples that illustrate my point while leaving aside examples that don’t. Treweek does acknowledge that the characters I use (Pam and Frank) do have lessons to teach us, but then immediately says that these witnesses are “no more real than the Mad Hatter and March Hare.” Instead of drawing from Lewis, I should have examined all of the scriptural support for or against empathy. The problem is that the word “empathy” doesn’t appear in the Bible, and I do quote many of the passages that commend compassion and pity (as well as the ones that command us not to show pity; there are 17 Scripture references in the 9-page opening chapter). Frankly, I find Treweek’s criticisms at this point odd, as she seems to fault me for writing a book that I didn’t set out to write.
At the same time, she also claims that the chapter drawing from Lewis lacks any theological affirmation. But this is simply false. The chapter opens with a basic theological claim, one that anchors Lewis’s book The Four Loves: “Love begins to be a demon the moment he begins to be a god.” If that’s not a theological affirmation, I don’t know what is.
Similarly, my exposition of The Great Divorce concludes by quoting Lewis again, making the same basic theological point:
But you and I must be clear. There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to him and bad when it turns from him. And the higher and mightier it is in the natural order, the more demoniac it will be if it rebels. It’s not out of bad mice or bad fleas you make demons, but out of bad archangels.
That is the basic theological claim of that chapter (and indeed could be the basic theological claim of the book). The very next line connects Lewis’s theological claim to my own argument. “In other words, love—even love for the hurting and broken—becomes a demon the moment that it becomes a god.”
Now Treweek may disagree with Lewis’s claim about natural loves or with my application of it to pity and compassion. But the notion that I don’t build my argument from theological affirmations is quite frankly one of the more bizarre claims in her review.
A final biblical note: some critics (though not Treweek and Roberts) have pointed to Christ himself as an example of “untethered empathy” since he so entered into our suffering and pain that he was willing to die for the sins of the world. In response, it’s important to note that, by “untethered empathy” I mean care for the hurting and broken that is unmoored and detached from what is true and good. In that sense, Christ’s “empathy” was never untethered; his compassion was always governed by his love for and submission to God. As Hebrews says, Christ is a merciful and sympathetic high priest, who was tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin. Though our preferred terminology might differ, I agree with the substance of Dr. Treweek’s conclusion when she writes, “Jesus Christ shows us that empathetically entering into the suffering of others does not automatically untether us from justice, truth, and love.”
Criticism 4: Rigney fails to guard against the dangers of callousness.
Roberts claims that I fail to “adequately register or address the dangers of callousness.” Nor do I give emotional connection its due. As evidence, he points to these two tweets:
Frankly, I’m at a loss to understand Roberts’s objection to these. One shows a picture of a gay-affirming lady bishop and describes her as a deceiver, a snake, and an enemy of God’s people. Does Roberts disagree? Aren’t lady bishops who celebrate sodomy leading people to hell? Are they not empathetic sexual Pharisees who hinder people from hearing and responding to the gospel of Christ with repentance and faith? And if they are, then should our emotions not accord with that reality? What does Roberts propose to do with passages like these?
“Let those who love the Lord hate evil!” (Psalm 97:10)
“Do I not hate those who hate you, O LORD?
And do I not loathe those who rise up against you?
I hate them with complete hatred;
I count them my enemies.” (Psalm 139:21–22)
Isn’t there a place for “proper hatred” in the Christian life?
As for the second, the author constrains the application of “thine eye shall not pity” to matters of public justice, and he notes that we must “harden our hearts in a righteous way.” Is that not what the relevant passages in Deuteronomy commend to us?
Indeed, when it comes to leadership, one biblical commentator has noted that it is the least naturally empathetic persons whom God chooses to be the leaders of his people.
It isn’t much reflected upon, precisely because it is so scandalous to contemporary sensibilities, but among the chief common traits of the great leaders of the people of God in Scripture is their peculiar willingness to employ lethal force for the sake of what was right: Moses, Joshua, the judges, Samuel, David, Elijah and Elisha, Jesus’s closest disciples: James, John, and Peter, Paul, etc. The Levites and people like Phinehas were even especially set apart for divine service through radical acts of violent ‘zeal’. Far from being the most empathetic persons that were looked to for moral guidance and leadership, it was the least naturally empathetic who were established by God at the head of his people. Kevin Dutton has commented on the way that the traits that are most associated with ‘psychopaths’ are perhaps especially pronounced among many leading saints: ruthlessness, charm, focus, mental toughness, fearlessness, mindfulness, and action.
It is the nerve to resist the powerful pull of feelings upon our moral judgment and will that best equips us to be self-disciplined and to lead others.
That commentator? Alastair Roberts. (I’ll admit that even I did not have the nerve to link psychopathic traits to the leading saints of the Bible.)
But set aside his particular evidence. The question is whether I “adequately” register the danger of callousness. The word “adequately” is doing all the work in that sentence. Because the reality is that, before I ever criticize empathy, I register the danger of apathy:
Instead of sympathy, we could have apathy, a callous refusal to identify with and share the pain and suffering of others. No weeping with those who weep. No “compassionate hearts” or “bowels of mercy” (Col. 3:12). Instead of opening our hearts to those in distress, we might close them, and thus demonstrate that the love of God is not in us (1 John 3:17–18). The apathetic are numb to the pain of others, standing aloof, detached, and unmoved by their suffering. (Rigney, The Sin of Empathy, 8)
And then after I spend most of my energy criticizing the corruption of untethered empathy (which is the subject of the book), I devote an entire chapter to commending genuine compassion. That chapter opens in this way:
This book has focused on the corruptions and abuses of compassion and its degeneration into untethered empathy. That’s why it’s important, in this final chapter, to write in praise of compassion. When a good thing has been weaponized for so long, it’s tempting to reject the good thing itself (as opposed to its corruption). In the face of untethered empathy, it’s tempting to succumb to apathy and indifference, to stand aloof, detached, and unmoved by suffering. It’s tempting to close our hearts to those in need.
But the Scriptures are clear: if we see a brother in need and close our hearts to him, offering platitudes about being “warm and filled” instead of compassionate action, then God’s love does not abide in us. Love is more than mouthing words; it involves deeds and truth (1 John 3:16–18). Compassion is still a virtue, despite its abuse.
What’s more, compassion is too important, too valuable, and too powerful to leave in the hands of the empathetic. We must not be like Luther’s drunken peasants, falling off on the apathetic and aloof side of the horse because others have fallen off on the side of untruthful pity and untethered empathy.
There are horrific evils in the world—physical and sexual violence and abuse, molestation and predation, psychological and emotional manipulation, slander and malicious gossip and a thousand other ways that human beings are cruel and wicked to one another. Those who have endured great evil at the hands of the wicked ought to receive our sincere and heartfelt compassion, and such compassion ought to move us to seek their healing and restoration and to pursue justice on their behalf. (Rigney, The Sin of Empathy, 101–2)
The chapter then goes on to describe what faithful compassion looks like and illustrates it with two stories, a scene from The Brothers Karamazov and the example of Christ weeping at Lazarus’s tomb. I’ll simply commend those facts and ask the sober-minded reader to determine whether such passages register and address the danger of callousness.
Criticism 5: Rigney selectively uses sources, especially by distorting the work of Edwin Friedman.
Treweek claims that I selectively use the work of Edwin Friedman, citing Roberts as her source. She also claims that I selectively cite Roberts himself, implying that I thereby misuse both Roberts and Friedman in my argument. Of course, all citations of other people’s work is selective; no one ever quotes all that someone else has said in making an argument (I’m sure that Treweek would agree). Selectivity is a problem when we omit relevant information from someone’s work that would give our readers a false impression of the author we’re citing. Let me give an example.
In the opening of her review, when she is introducing my claims, Treweek quotes me as follows: “Empathy, the author warns us, is ’a man-eating weed devouring families, relationships, even churches and ministries’ (p. 71).”
The first difficulty is that the quotation is actually from page 45, not page 71, but I believe that is simply a minor citation error. The larger problem is that the quotation is partial, or, as Treweek would say, selective. But does the omission matter? Does the full sentence or paragraph give a different impression than her quotation?
Pity, when untethered from charity, justice, and the moral law, leads through anger to cruelty. One only has to look at various conflicts around the world to see the ease with which pity for one’s tribe leads to malice and hatred for another. Elsewhere, Lewis describes the same phenomenon in relation to mercy, accenting the need for mercy to be tethered to justice.
Mercy, detached from Justice, grows unmerciful. That is the important paradox. As there are plants which will flourish only in mountain soil, so it appears that Mercy will flower only when it grows in the crannies of the rock of Justice: transplanted to the marshlands of mere Humanitarianism, it becomes a man-eating weed, all the more dangerous because it is still called by the same name as the mountain variety. [Lewis, God in the Dock, 326–27.]
As with mercy, so with empathy. Untethered from justice and the moral law and planted in the sentimental marshlands of humanitarianism (or critical theory), empathy becomes a man-eating weed, devouring families, relationships, even churches and ministries. (Rigney, The Sin of Empathy, 44–45, italics added)
Notice that the entire section is about the way that that pity or mercy or empathy—when untethered and detached from justice and the moral law—becomes destructive (a man-eating weed). The words “untethered” and “tethered” appear three times in five sentences in order to make clear what I am targeting. But Treweek selectively quotes the sentence, omitting key context, and then accuses me of being unclear.
With that example of selectivity that distorts in mind, let’s examine my use of Friedman (and Roberts). Treweek argues that I distort Friedman by universalizing his concerns about empathy. Roberts claims that I “frame Friedman’s work around empathy” (rather than his more positive presentations of well-differentiated leadership). Moreover, both claim that I offer a political, partisan, and gendered account of empathy (I address this final criticism below).
As to the universalizing claim, Friedman himself says the following (emphasis mine):
It is a highly reactive atmosphere pervading all institutions of our society–a regressive mood that contaminates the decision-making processes of government and corporations at the highest level, and, on the local level, seeps down into the deliberations of neighborhood church, synagogue, hospital, library, and school boards. It is ‘something in the air’ that affects the most ordinary family no matter what its ethnic background. And its frustrating effect on leaders is the same no matter what their gender, race, or age. (Friedman, Failure of Nerve, 2)
He goes on to claim that the immediate threat to the regeneration (and even survival) of American civilization is “our tendency to adapt to its immaturity.”
As lofty and noble as the concept of empathy may sound, and as well-intentioned as those may be who make it the linchpin idea of their theories of healing, education, or management, societal regression has too often perverted the use of empathy into a disguise for anxiety, a rationalization for the failure to define a position, and a power tool in the hands of the “sensitive.” It has generally been my experience that in any community or family discussion, those who are the first to introduce concern for empathy feel powerless, and are trying to use the togetherness force of a regressed society to get those whom they perceive to have power to adapt to them. I have consistently found the introduction of the subject of “empathy” into family, institutional, and community meetings to be reflective of, as well as an effort to induce, a failure of nerve among its leadership. (Friedman, Failure of Nerve, 142)
But the more deleterious effect of empathy’s subversion on leaders is more fundamental. It has to do with the way we conceptualize the forces of light and darkness. The focus on empathy rather than responsibility has contributed to a major misorientation in our society about the nature of what is toxic to life itself and, therefore, the factors that go into survival. Thus, on the most fundamental level, this chapter [on the fallacy of empathy] is about the struggle between good and evil, between life and death, between what is destructive and what is creative, between dependency and responsibility, and consequently, in the deepest realms of personal existence, between what is evolutionary and what is regressive. (Friedman, Failure of Nerve, 143)
I don’t know how someone reads those paragraphs and comes away thinking that Friedman does not “universalize” his account of empathy.
Now according to Roberts, by framing my appropriation of Friedman around empathy, I lose his positive vision of leadership. In response, I’ll simply note that The Sin of Empathy is my second book that appropriates Friedman. The first—Leadership and Emotional Sabotage—contains the positive vision of sober-minded leadership that Roberts says is lacking, and while I suppose I could have written the same book twice, it seemed better to me to deepen and expand and apply that particular element in its own book, especially given the strong reactions and rejections of the concept that I’ve encountered over the years.
Additionally, in assessing whether I’ve selectively appropriated Friedman (and indeed my argument as a whole), I’d like to invite readers to compare my work to Roberts’s own appropriation and application of Friedman. Roberts and I were reading Friedman at the same time (from 2010 to 2017). Indeed, I benefited greatly from Roberts’s use and application of Friedman. So here is a large selection of quotations to consider.
Compare this quotation to chapter 4 of The Sin of Empathy (from Roberts’s book-length summary and application of Friedman):
Secondly, if evangelical approaches to evangelism and relationships with the world tend to risk being reactive and invasive, liberal and post-evangelical approaches in this area are frequently characterized by a dangerous sensitivity. This sensitivity produces a loss of theological nerve and a compromising of orthodoxy to make it more palatable to people who would never ‘adapt’ to it. The false assumption is that people will come around to the gospel the more that it adapts to them. Of course, if people ever do ‘come around’ under such circumstances, it tends to be to a gospel that hardly means anything any longer. Rather than being a non-anxious presence in society, facing the world with the challenge of the call of Christ, the Church adapts to its context, and nothing changes. A primary focus upon reasoning or empathizing with the world will always tend towards a compromising the integrity of the Church and its message. On account of its low threshold for the pain and offense of others, liberal Christianity has always struggled to maintain integrity in its faith, and has always been vulnerable to the false guilt-manipulation and rights driven discourse that encourages the spread of unself-regulated parties. (44-45)
The following is a lengthy section from an excellent article by Roberts (which I cite in my book):
Among the threats to Christian ethics in the contemporary world, empathy stands out as one of the greatest. Empathy is characterized by a very low pain tolerance for suffering and discomfort, both of ourselves and of others (I have commented on some of this here). The resulting concern to avoid and alleviate suffering or discomfort can be very dangerous. Furthermore, as empathy involves a profound openness and vulnerability to the feelings and impressions of ourselves and others, it also involves a higher vulnerability and openness to the rationalizing and self-justifying narratives that are often spawned under the influence of such feelings. This vulnerability is especially pronounced when we are close to persons as family or friends. It is also widely exploited by the media to disorient our moral sense by getting us to identify emotionally with criminals, adulterers, fornicators, and other such characters.
One of the marks of a strong moral sense is the capacity to resist the pull of empathy, to hold one’s nerve and moral bearings in the face of extreme discomfort and under immense pressure. As we look through Scripture and Church history we can see that many of the greatest moral leaders of the people of God were characterized by this ability to resist empathy, to be morally unbending – even ruthless – in situations where common human feeling would pull all others towards compromise. Perhaps one of the greatest charges laid at the door of many of the most famous leaders in Scripture is their capitulation to peer pressure, pity, or indulgence. Empathy – a natural identification with and vicarious experience of the feelings of others – lies at the root of many of these failures. This trait, far from being the great prerequisite for moral leadership and insight that many deem it to be, is one of its greatest liabilities.
Empathy vs. Compassion
While the ability to regulate one’s emotions and resist the pitfalls of empathy is a benefit, the danger is that persons that find this easy are prone to be callous and cruel, something that is definitely not to be celebrated. The true alternative to empathy – the close emotive identification with the feeling of others – is not callousness but compassion.
Empathy and compassion are commonly equated with each other. However, I believe that a very important distinction can be drawn between the two. Empathy is an emotive bond with the feelings of others, which takes those feelings as its object, seeking to relieve discomfort, pain, and suffering. While this can often be a good thing, it manifests a number of dangers, not least the inability to gain a broader moral sense of a situation or effectively to cast judgment upon sympathetic wrongdoers.
Rather than being an immediate and emotive connection to other people’s suffering, compassion is a moral relation to other people’s suffering, one mediated by a moral framework. Given the immediacy of empathy’s relation to the other party’s feelings, it tends to be reactive in its attempts to address pain, fastening on the most immediate or visible cause, which is often merely a symptom, rather than the root problem. In contrast, compassion is responsive rather than reactive to the pain of others and involves an impulse to carefully considered action to address others’ pain.
Compassion takes for its object the good of persons, not their feelings. Pursuing the good of ourselves and others will often involve more acute discomfort, or continuing suffering, when that suffering could easily be avoided by taking another route. The empathetic individual, bound up with the feelings of the other person, can be deeply reluctant to cause them further or exacerbated pain, even though that pain may be in their good. By contrast, compassion has sufficient nerve to wound the other person for the sake of their good, like the surgeon prepared to cut into the patient in order to save their life.
When we are suffering, we all too typically want empathy, a non-judgmental validation and sharing of our feelings, stories, and situation. We are less keen about compassion, because compassion, while still involving concern for us, can often invalidate our preferred subjective impression and interpretation of our situation, place it within a broader moral framework, and orient it towards ends that may not be comfortable for us.
An Ethic of Nerve and Compassion
In place of the ethics of empathy, I am arguing for an ethics of nerve and compassion. On the one hand, a robust ethical sense requires an immune system, which can regulate our attachment to the feelings and impressions of others. Such an immune system enables us to resist empathy and pity in certain instances, while leaving us able to identify with others’ feelings in appropriate situations and to an appropriate degree. Empathy binds us to other people’s emotional states. True compassion is only possible for those who are capable of cutting themselves loose, regulating their feelings, and then relating to the other by means of a moral commitment, rather than a purely reactive and affective bond.
The ethic of empathy, bound up with other people’s feelings, struggles with the notion of chastity and the condemnation of fornication. It blanches at the discomfort, shame, and guilt that this causes people and seeks to palliate these, while downplaying the notions that create them. By contrast, the ethic of compassion recognizes that the solution is not to dull the pain of these negative feelings, but that it is appropriate that we should feel shame when we do something shameful. The solution is not to remove our feeling of the nail, or just to sympathize with the sufferer’s experience of their plight, but to remove the nail itself. Christ can address all of our sexual shame at its very root, rather than just numbing our awareness of it. Our shame is a healthy thing, inasmuch as it alerts us to the fact that something is wrong.
This ethic of nerve and compassion does not take its key bearings from feelings, but holds all of our feelings and stories subject to higher principles. It devotes itself to the service of those principles and publicly binds itself by them. It places commitment prior to experience and judgment over feeling. It desires to be held accountable by others and is suspicious of raw feeling and empathy, always testing them against its principles.
As an ethic of compassion, it is radically and uncompromisingly committed to people’s good, even when that good is a painful one. It has a deep concern for others’ pain and suffering, but knows better than to try to remove this altogether. Where it is impossible or inappropriate to remove people’s suffering completely, it will seek to minimize their pain, be present to them in it, and bear it with them.
In the arena of Christian sexual ethics, an ethic of nerve and compassion will be aware that God will often call us to a painful path and that we cannot truly attain to our good without being prepared to deny ourselves, take up our crosses, and follow Christ. By holding our nerve and judgment, we help others to hold theirs, maintaining our commitment, but being present to them in a shared struggle. In such a manner we will become better masters of ourselves and leaders of others, venturing into the future on the basis of a committed response to God’s truth and call, rather than a fickle and reactive relation to experience, feeling, and circumstance.
Amen to all of that. In truth, the only reason I am reluctant to post these quotations is that I am afraid that some will accuse me of plagiarism (but not to worry, I cited this article particularly in the book). But it does leave me somewhat baffled that Roberts would criticize my work in the way that he has. At least in this case, Roberts’s besetting sin is a seeming unwillingness to let me agree with him. It’s as though Roberts (with help from Friedman and the Bible) fashioned a sharp blade and then objected when I tried to wield it against people who were doing the thing he so ably described.
Criticism 6: Rigney offers a distorted, political, partisan, and misogynist account of empathy by making empathy “left-coded” and “female-coded.”
Both Roberts and Treweek object that I take Friedman’s universal principles and direct them at the Left and at feminism. According to Roberts, my argument, especially in chapters 4 and 5, is political, partisan, and gendered, treating empathy as left-coded and feminine. Treweek goes farther by claiming that I am a misogynist.
In my defense, I’d point to two articles by Louise Perry. She wrote an excellent article a year ago on cancel culture (which I quote approvingly in my chapter on feminism). In that article, she argues that cancel culture is mean girl culture: “the use of a feminine style of aggression to enforce political conformity in the workplace and other areas of public life.” In February 2025, she wrote a follow-up to that article, and I only wish she had written it earlier so that I could have quoted it in the book. She asks, “Are women innately left-wing?” And she answers, “Women are not more Leftist, per se. Rather, the specific variety of Leftism that is currently riding high is extremely well suited to feminine preferences.” And what are those preferences?
These are the features of a political cause that make it attractive to someone with a typically feminine personality:
- A cause that appeals to compassion for the vulnerable (the care/harm foundation, to use Jonathan Haidt’s expression), tapping into women’s greater average agreeableness.
- A cause that emphasises fearful threats, tapping into women’s greater average neuroticism and risk aversion.
- A cause that offers collective emotional experiences, given that women are more vulnerable to social contagion, and particularly to outbreaks of mass hysteria. [see the original article for hyper-links to proof of these traits]
Here we see a coming together of various definitions of empathy. If empathy is care for the vulnerable and hurting, women are more empathetic than men (here described using the term “agreeableness”). If empathy is defined more broadly as emotion-sharing, then again, note that women are more vulnerable to social contagions and mass hysteria. Even the fear described in the second point is easily shared among women, given their greater emotional connectedness.
All of this fits well with the argument of my book, and is why I would have loved to quote this paragraph in the chapter “Feminism: Queen of the Woke”:
But here’s one instructive difference: wokeism doesn’t work in a masculine register. To borrow more terminology from Jonathan Haidt, most men don’t have the psychological tastebuds necessary to savour a political movement that appeals most to a feminine palate. After all, this is an ideology that has specifically chosen masculinity as its symbolic opponent, and attempts to convert people to its cause using feminine social weapons that don’t work as well on men. To put it crudely, men like political movements that permit them to feel good about themselves and to beat people up. They were never likely to get onboard with this one.
But here’s the truth: I did not learn these truths from Louise Perry. I learned them from Alastair Roberts.
In this article, which I quote extensively in the book, Roberts argues that the elephant in the room of our social discourse is this: “Men and women are different and their differences have an immense impact upon the climate of our social and political discourse.” He singles out “progressive discourse” especially for failure to acknowledge the elephant. In the article I quoted earlier, he writes, “progressive evangelical discussions on purity and sexual ethics are governed by what one could term an ‘ethic of empathy’.” In other words, one of the reasons I connected the dots between feminine modes of sociality, empathy, and progressivism is, not simply because it’s true, but also because Alastair Roberts showed me. That is why his criticism of my work on this point is baffling. Does he no longer agree with what he wrote in 2016? Or has something changed in our cultural moment that has led him to want to differentiate from others (like me) who agree with his earlier work? Is he succumbing to the very dynamics that he so ably described a decade ago?
Rather than belabor that point, I turn to Dr. Treweek’s claim that I regard the real sin of empathy as the sin of being a woman. Both her original review and her follow-up insist that I believe that “women are not naturally enabled to or capable of operating rationally, reasonably or reliably [in guarding doctrine and setting the perimeter]” and that “when faced with a complex emotional, rational, psychological or spiritual situation that involves the suffering of others, she is inherently incapable of exercising reason, discerning truth, and pursuing justice.”
After carefully considering her evidence on these grounds, my basic conclusion is that Dr. Treweek does not know how generalizations work. In the quotations she uses, I do make generalizations about gendered traits, tendencies, and temptations, and connect them to the biblical restrictions on the pastoral office. She then repeats these as ironclad, universal statements, adding words like “inevitable,” “determinedly,” and “inherently incapable.” But those are her hyperbolic additions, not mine.
Here is how I actually view the relationship between natural gendered traits and tendencies and biblical commands.
By “facts of nature,” I have in mind those recurring aspects of humanity that are evident by means of general or natural revelation. We often refer to this simply as “nature,” or natural law, or divine design. Facts of creation are things that we learn from the Bible about God’s original creation of the world. Facts of nature are things that we learn from the world around us; nature refers to God’s design and purpose embedded in his creatures and evident to all people. Nature includes two elements: 1) the fundamental facts about what we are, as well as 2) the built-in tendencies and traits that emerge from and serve those fundamental facts.
Both of these are important. The latter refer to the various physical, psychological, and social traits and tendencies of men and women. Things like, “Men, in general, are taller and stronger than women;” or “Women, in general, are more people-oriented, whereas men, in general, are more thing- or task-oriented;” or “Men are typically more aggressive and competitive than women;” or “Women typically tend to excel in verbal and linguistic skills, whereas men typically tend to excel in mathematical and spatial skills,” all of which are relative to each other.
Now these sexually differentiated traits and tendencies are important and are part of what I mean by “nature.” But when it comes to rooting complementarianism in these traits and tendencies, we run into what I call “the bell curve problem.” Put simply, while these tendencies are real as traits and tendencies, they are not universally true for all men and women. Some women are taller than most men. Some men are as people- and relationally-oriented as any woman. There are excellent male poets and excellent female mathematicians. In other words, while natural, gendered traits and tendencies are real, especially if we look at men and women as groups, they are not universally true of every individual man or woman.
Thus, while these tendencies are useful as a guide and do help us understand the rationale beneath some biblical commands, when we use the word “nature,” we need to refer to something more basic and objective than merely these traits and tendencies. That’s what I mean by the fundamental facts about what we are as human beings. Here are some of the fundamental facts I have in mind:
- Each human being is either male or female, a man or woman made in God’s image and for his purposes.
- Concurrent with this fundamental identity as one of God’s creatures, each of us is the son or daughter of human parents (with the exception of Adam and Eve).
- To be a son is to be a potential father. To be a daughter is to be a potential mother. This potency is present and real, regardless of biological irregularities and regardless of whether we actually beget or bear biological children. As a man, I am designed, directed, and ordered to the end or telos of fatherhood. That’s what it means to be a man.
These fundamental, perennial facts about human beings are the foundation of the natural family. We carry our identity as sexually differentiated men and women into every relationship within the natural family (and beyond).
So when I say that female empathy is a “liability” when it comes to guarding the doctrine and worship of the church, I mean that it is a drawback, a weakness, a susceptibility to particular temptations and sins, not that every woman is inherently incapable of acting rationally or holding the line on doctrine. In fact, I’m happy to note that a number of very rational female acquaintances of mine have recognized the danger posed by the kind of thin complementarianism and soft feminism represented by Dr. Treweek. One of them even helpfully pointed out that the inability to tolerate generalizations is a common feminine vice. This is because feminine empathy is often attuned to the outlier, the exception, and thus attempts to make the exception into the new rule, lest the outlier feel excluded. And while Dr. Treweek insists that I focused exclusively on this female weakness, it’s worth noting that I spend multiple pages highlighting the way that “male empathy for an unhappy woman is frequently a disguise for his own anxiety and angst.” In other words, just as the good feminine impulse to care for the hurting can become distorted and corrupted, so can the good masculine impulse to protect and care for women.
And this is the primary place where I believe there is real, substantive disagreement. After reading Treweek’s review and her follow-up, in which she makes my treatment of women and empathy central to her critique, I believe that Treweek is a clear example of the ideological complementarianism that I describe in the book. To refresh, natural complementarians (such as me) believe that God’s commands in Scripture fit our nature as men and women. There are reasons beneath the rules. And part of growing in wisdom is learning to discern those reasons, so that we can wholeheartedly embrace God’s design for men and women.
Ideological (or thin) complementarians treat God’s commands as basically arbitrary. Biblical restrictions on women are not fitting commands derived from male and female nature and reinforced in Scripture, but ideology imposed upon an essentially egalitarian humanity. In this sense, ideological complementarians are soft feminists. And based on her response, Treweek fits the bill. For example, while she believes that “complementarian role distinctions in the church are based on God’s created order between men and women,” it’s unclear what “God’s created order” actually entails for her. It clearly doesn’t entail the use of generalizations about male and female nature, or sex-specific traits and tendencies; the use of such traits as a guide to help us understand the reasons beneath God’s rules is her primary objection to me.
But in addition, Treweek makes three stereotypical feminist moves. First, she identifies Medusa with women. In my chapter, I use Medusa three times as an icon of feminism. Dr. Treweek says,
Because beneath the surface, Rigney’s all-consuming sin of empathy is, in reality, the sin of being a woman.
After all “Medusa let him in,” (p. 128).
For the life of me, I cannot understand why Christian women insist on identifying with a female monster from Greek mythology. Medusa is not a woman. She is a monster in female form, like Harpies, Lilith, and Succubi. As such, she is an apt icon for feminism, which is a monstrous distortion of femininity. I’ve addressed this phenomenon before, so I’ll simply highlight the next (related) feminist move.
Second, Treweek describes my attack on feminism as an attack on women. Feminism, which I identify particularly as the lie of interchangeability, is not the same as women. While acknowledging that I explicitly attack feminism (and not women), Treweek says,
Yet an attentive reader will quickly recognize that when Rigney rails against “feminism” as the force behind empathy’s corrosive influence, he is really objecting to women having any meaningful voice, contribution, or active presence in the church. This is because women are the empathetic sex:
In general, women are more empathetic than men. And, in itself, this is a God-given blessing. Empathy—that is, vicariously experiencing the emotions of another—can be a wonderful thing in its place (p. 112).
Given that the preceding hundred-plus pages have repeatedly presented empathy as inherently destructive—unhinged, even—it is difficult to read this comment as made in good faith. How could Rigney possibly view women’s greater instinct and capacity for empathy as a “God-given blessing” when, by his own argument, “empathy entails a suspension of judgement” (p. 28), “becomes a man-eating weed, devouring families, relationships, even churches and ministries” (p.
71,45) and “loses sight of the ultimate good, both for ourselves and for the hurting” (p. 33)?
Thus, according to Treweek, when I say that female empathy is a God-given blessing, I don’t (and can’t) really mean it. Now in my opening chapter, I explicitly say that I will use empathy in one of two ways: either in a somewhat neutral sense as “emotion-sharing” or in the negative sense of untethered empathy. So let’s examine the three quotations that Treweek uses in the paragraph:
The first is in responding to Brene Brown’s argument that empathy “stays out of judgment.” In response, I say, “Since empathy entails a suspension of judgment and a more comprehensive sharing of emotion, then the danger of empathy is drowning in the pain and suffering of another.” Clearly, I’m using the term in the negative sense.
I dealt with the second quotation above. Empathy “becomes a man-eating weed” when it is untethered from justice and the moral law and planted in the sentimental marshlands of humanitarianism (or critical theory).
And finally, here is the full paragraph for the final quotation:
So also compassion goes wrong through deficiency or excess. A deficiency of compassion is apathy, that callous refusal to identify with and share the pain and suffering of others. On the other hand, empathy is an excess of compassion, when our identification with and sharing of the emotions of others overwhelms our minds and sweeps us off our feet. Empathy loses sight of the ultimate good, both for ourselves and for the hurting. (Rigney, The Sin of Empathy,14)
So all three examples she cites are clearly negative descriptions of untethered empathy. But what about the section where I describe it as a God-given blessing? Given the overwhelmingly negative uses throughout the book, isn’t Treweek justified in questioning the sincerity of my commendation of female empathy here? Perhaps, if it wasn’t for the very next sentence:
Women are more empathetic than men. And, in itself, this is a God-given blessing. Empathy—that is, vicariously experiencing the emotions of another—can be a wonderful thing in its place. It fosters connection and bonding. It’s why women frequently act as the glue that holds communities together. (Rigney, The Sin of Empathy, 79-80)
In other words, I claim that I will use the term in one of two ways, and then, when I use it in the less frequent sense, I make sure that my reader knows this. So no, my attack on feminism is not an attack on women, and I really do believe that feminine emotion-sharing (and intuition and attunement) is a God-given blessing in its place.
The final feminist move occurs when Treweek claims that I object to women having any “meaningful voice, contribution, or active presence in the church” (italics mine). She repeats this claim two other times:
For Rigney, the problem isn’t just women leading or preaching—it’s women speaking, being visible, or contributing meaningfully in God’s household.
Such men are not called to simply reject female ordination but to exclude women from having any meaningful public influence in the church body—or, for that matter, society itself (p. 132-133).
The word “meaningful” is significant here. Because what I argue in the chapter is that female empathy, while a blessing in its place, is a liability “when it comes to guarding the doctrine and worship of the church.” And again, “the empathetic sex is ill-suited to the ministerial office,” and identify women’s ordination as a watershed issue. (And at the risk of agreeing yet again with Dr. Roberts, I’ll simply highlight another fine article on “Why a Masculine Priesthood Is Essential”).
Ah, but Treweek says, I also mention resistance to pressure to “get more women ‘up front’” (reading Scripture and making announcements), or making sure that women are “in the room where it happens.” Now I’ll admit that the Hamilton reference is obscure and that I perhaps could have been clearer on the precise target. I’m speaking of efforts to have women serve on elder councils in formal advisory capacities or as a kind of secondary elder’s council (as described in this article by Doug Ponder). Essentially, I’m identifying a certain cultural pressure, derived from feminism and common among thin complementarians, that feels the need to get more women “up front” in public worship and in elder councils in order that they might make “meaningful” contributions.
But the problem is the assumption that anything short of “women up front” is not meaningful. I am very clear that women should be faithful at their posts: “raising their children, managing their homes, and serving God and his people in all the ways that are fitting and proper” (p. 92). But according to Treweek, raising children, managing households, and serving God’s people in a variety of other ways (welcome and hospitality, caring and comforting those in pain, instructing younger women in godly femininity, being the glue that binds communities together) are not “meaningful” contributions to God’s household. And I submit that that is a feminist move. More than that, it is a subtler form of the misogyny at the heart of feminism.
Yes, feminism is misogynistic. It hates womanhood as womanhood, and it constantly seeks to turn women into men. That’s the lie of interchangeability. Feminism treats the womb as a problem, a barrier to a woman’s flourishing. It takes the amazing and remarkable and unique thing that a woman can do—carry a baby in her body and bear eternal souls—and treats it as lesser, as insignificant, as “not meaningful.” Her contributions are meaningful only if they are “up front” in the gathered worship service or guarding the church’s doctrine. Feminism convinces women to forsake or postpone marriage and child-bearing in favor of climbing the corporate ladder and breaking glass ceilings.
Now, of course, while marriage and motherhood is normative for women, not all women are married, nor do they all bear children. Nevertheless all women are designed by God to be maternal. Even in the absence of a husband and children, women can and should exercise their nurturing nature in faithfully and fruitfully serving God and his people through spiritual motherhood. But this will require them to recognize that female tendencies, like male tendencies, have particular dangers, temptations, and weaknesses, and to take deliberate, Spirit-wrought action to resist the impulse to become a devouring HR department that wants to run the world.
Conclusion
Debates about empathy are not going away. Just the other day, the New York Times published an op-ed entitled “Making Empathy a Weapon,” which included this paragraph:
Empathy that connects, that builds, that heals requires a code of ethics. It requires restraint. It requires trust. It asks the empathizer not just to understand others but also to honor what that understanding unlocks. When empathy becomes unmoored from ethics, it becomes coercion with a smile.
But it’s not enough to tether our empathy to some generic “code of ethics.” We must tether it to God, to Christ, and to the world that he has made and is redeeming. Whatever words we use, that is the task before us.
