One of the ubiquitous problems facing leaders of families, businesses, mothers, students and their schools, and churches is the trouble arising from the twisting of the Christian virtue of compassion into the destructive monster of untethered empathy. This monster wreaks havoc on institutions and healthy families, leaving them unfruitful, ineffective and unhappy.
In a society where love has been reduced in many quarters to the promotion of good feelings, Christian men in any number of contexts can find themselves stuck between the command to love and the call to lead their families and organizations in faithfulness to what is truly good. We need women who love courageously and well rather than being steered by an empathy unmoored to what is objectively true and good. We need mothers who love their children by holding fast to what is true and sympathizing with their children's weaknesses. Students must learn to not cater to the woke mob, but to take up their vocation to humbly and joyfully pursue what is true regardless of what is deemed acceptable by the pervading cultural concerns. We need a generation of Christians who have not fallen for the temptation to appear loving, while sacrificing all that love entails - the sacrificial pursuit of what is truly good and beautiful.
Hosted by Trinity Church Denver • 3011 Vallejo Street, Denver, CO, 80211
[Admission is free.]
Dr. Joe Rigney has been working on this problem for the last several years. Building on the work of Murray Bowen and Edwin Freidman, but reframing and correcting their work within the Biblical framework, he has offered helpful guide to thinking clearly and Christianly about these things in his book Emotional Sabotage, his upcoming work The Sin of Empathy: Compassion and its Counterfeits. You can also find his work on these topics in a few articles: (“Empathy, Feminism and the Church”, “Of Empathy and Monsters”,, and The Sin of Empathy Video Interview). He has published a number of other works including The Things of Earth: Treasuring God by Enjoying His Gifts, Live Like a Narnian and Courage: How the Gospel Creates Christian Fortitude. He serves as the Fellows of Theology at New Saint Andrews College as well as Associate Pastor at Christ Church in Moscow, ID.