Apparently Empathy is a Sin Now
How some conservatives and right-wing evangelicals are abandoning Christ in the glorification of Trump
I’m not going to lie…I’m writing this out of anger to a degree.
I was raised Christian and when I look at the landscape of evangelical and conservative Christianity… I don’t recognize it.
Honestly, I want to puke.
There appears to be a massive shift from any kind of actual believing and following the teachings of Jesus and the Gospels, or at least it’s more lip service than reality with a desire to remake Christianity into something Puritanical.
This strange Puritanical Christianity looks a lot like the Westboro Baptist Church in that most of the time they stick to quoting Old Testament of the Bible or the Book of Revelations…less Gospels.
To be a Christian is to be a follower of Jesus Christ, I don’t see that in most of these people anymore.
It has to do with the big problem that Jesus Christ would be labeled as woke these days, or at least by the formulation developed by the right wing aiming to demonize the word.
It has become particularly telling with the recent encounter and incident at Washington Cathedral and Bishop Marianne Edgar Budde.
Inciting Incident:
Here is what Budde said:
For this Christian act…for requesting mercy from President Donald Trump.
You can read it and more in this write up by The Guardian.
To this benign, simple, Christian request…Bishop Budde has been scorned by Trump and a great deal of conservative media.
Why? For daring to “criticize” their dear leader.
All she did was ask for mercy. Jesus preached mercy, see: 1 Peter 3:8, Romans 12:15, John 11:35, and Hebrews 4:15 if it helps.
Here is what Trump wrote in response, obviously not understanding the message:
She was not “nasty,” but that is how Trump feels about any minor inconvenience I guess.
Here is how the Bishop responded:
And good for her.
For her trouble I have heard one GOP politician call for her to be “deported,” which I guess is dumb dumb Twitterbashing version of I’m not smart to think of anything else. Others have literally called her a heretic.
Apparently, it boils down to her being guilty of sin, the sin of empathy.
Initial Fallout
I’ll be honest, I fail to see and barely comprehend how calling on on President Trump to show mercy, the CENTRAL TENET OF JESUS’S MISSION ON EARTH, to be guilty of the sin of empathy.
I’m sorry, when did empathy become a sin?
It is not. Also, calling for mercy is not “woke” either unless your formulation of woke and wokeness is that it is anti-Trump, anti-cruelty, etc.
But critics of the bishop like Ben Shapiro turn themselves into pretzels to argue that it is this bishop who is evil and “how dare she” as they clutch their pearls
I don’t know if Ben realizes it, but from the outside and not being one of his flock, this makes you look like an idiot. Of course, Ben Shapiro is the sophist (mainly the part of being a fallacious arguer) who doesn’t really believe in much of anything other than his own skewed ideology of the world.
So, naturally, he’ll attack anything that attacks Trump I have some sort of strange brand loyalty to his audience (Though it is hilarious when his own audience against him, though in the comments).
But the idea of the sin of empathy came from particular Twitter post, I refused to call it. X, we’re supposed Christian minister, accuse the bishop of being guilty of the sin of empathy.
I was like, very perplexed by where this came from.
I came to find out there is a fellow who apparently wrote a book about it named Dr. Joe Rigney.
The Deeper Rot.
So, who is Joe Rigney?
Well, for starters he is a professor, a fellow at a private college in Minnesota.
According to his faculty page:
“Joe is a teacher who can’t help but tell others about the things that fascinate him, and he is a generalist who is fascinated by a great many things. He loves to teach classes on biblical theology, C.S. Lewis, Shakespeare, English literature, and political philosophy.”
Sounds a bit pushy, but he is apparently a big fan of C.S. Lewis and recently published a book titled: The Sin of Empathy: Compassion and Its Counterfeits soon to be published by Cannon Press.
Here are the promotional blurbs on the ordering site:
So, apparently empathy = emotional manipulation of the media.
Why?
Probably to hide your cruelty. Jesus showed empathy.
Matthew 9:36, Luke 7:11-16 and more all show examples of Jesus having empathy and compassion for other people.
Empathy calls on one to do such “crazy” things as:
The central tenets of Jesus’s teachings: love thy neighbor, do unto others, be peacemakers, love your enemies, forgive, etc. all involve empathy and compassion towards others, particularly strangers.
But how does Dr. Joe Rigney engage with this: not in what I would call a Christian way.
Here is his testament via Twitter:
Love thy neighbor unless they don’t see Christianity the way you do. Hate trans people, throw out accusations and act like you spend too much time literally interpreting the Old Testament (which Judaism doesn’t even do generally and those are their books).
Definitely not practicing empathy or compassion I see, but Russell Moore, who he is pushing back on here did criticize a Tucker Carlson sycophantic interview with terrible human being Donald Trump.
Got to defend daddy I guess.
Then there is this gem:
Trying to overcompensate your masculinity I see.
Hate women? Maybe a little, unless you conform to his primitive way of viewing your role in the world.
Finally, the cruelty towards LGBTQ+ really squirms out:
So, he knows what is good and evil…I doubt it.
If this is “Christianity” then I don’t want anything to do with it.
The Real Reality
Joe Rigney does NOT represent real Christians. He might as well throw his lot in with Kenneth Copeland and Joel Osteen as faux Christians using Jesus to scam and lead astray people.
He may not be out for their money, but he is out to try and rewrite what Jesus Christ meant.
Could it be the “over their skies” reality of calling everything different or that they don’t like “woke”? Maybe.
Maybe it’s the cynicism and power-hungry perversion of a religion evolving in a new direction to cast off the Golden Rule and seek to serve/create a new vision of Christianity as more exclusionary. Because apparently, Jesus didn’t love everyone…just power hungry snakes who cower before false idols and golden calves.