Empathy for enemies is the heart of the gospel

Recently, in some evangelical circles, a contingent of folks has begun talking about the so-called “sin” of empathy. Joe Rigney brought this discussion into the limelight in 2019 with a series of blog posts at Desiring God written in the style of C.S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters. He warned against what he called the corruptibility of compassion into empathy, presenting empathy as a demonic counterfeit — something that looks holy but ultimately harms both the empathizer and the one empathized with.

Charlie Kirk, the right-wing activist and founder of Turning Point USA, echoed this sentiment in an October 2022 episode of The Charlie Kirk Show. “I can’t stand the word empathy,” he told his audience. “I think empathy is a made-up New Age term that does a lot of damage. … Sympathy I prefer more than empathy.”

Josh Olds

For Rigney and Kirk, that distinction between sympathy and empathy is crucial. Sympathy comes from the Greek syn (“with” or “together”) and pathos (“suffering” or “experience”). To sympathize means to stand in community of feeling with another person. Empathy goes further. Rather than simply being “with,” it calls us to be “within” — to inhabit another’s perspective and emotions. Rigney fears such closeness results in emotional fusion, where truth is sacrificed to feeling.

Rigney likens empathy to quicksand. If the compassionate person jumps fully into the pit to help, there are now two people trapped. Instead, he says, one must remain at a safe distance — on firm ground — to pull the sufferer out. As advice for escaping quicksand, it isn’t bad. As an analogy for human suffering, it falters. Rigney’s scenario assumes the person mired in quicksand is there because of their own sin, and he never clarifies what real-life situations he has in mind.

“These natural stirrings of the Holy Spirit are inconvenient to systems of power and empire.”

Allie Beth Stuckey makes it explicit in her 2024 book Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion. For her, empathy becomes political compromise, particularly on social issues where she sees “soft-hearted” Christians manipulated into endorsing what she perceives as unbiblical positions.

In other words, this backlash against empathy is a strategy to blunt our God-given response to those in need — especially those harmed by policies many conservative evangelicals have supported. We see children starving in Gaza and are compelled to act. We see children gunned down while praying in church and are moved to change. We see immigrants detained in brutal conditions and our hearts resist. These natural stirrings of the Holy Spirit are inconvenient to systems of power and empire, so their leaders and prophets teach us to call such feelings sinful.

“Have sympathy, instead,” they say. Sympathy is better because it keeps its distance. It allows compassion without risk.

But sympathy from a distance does not create connection. Brené Brown is right: “Empathy fuels connection. Sympathy drives disconnection.” Sympathy preserves control and superiority; empathy risks vulnerability and mutuality.

And this is the incarnation. The gospel message is founded on empathy. The divine does not save us by fiat from above.

Rather, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us,” according to John 1:14. The incarnation is God’s empathy made human. Jesus does not issue condolences from heaven. He enters our condition. He eats with the hungry, touches the untouchable, listens to the silenced, weeps with the grieving, dignifies the shamed and dies on a cross.

“The incarnation is God’s empathy made human.”

The crucifixion is not God’s sympathetic salvation from afar. It is God’s solidarity with us all the way down, so that resurrection hope can rise all the way up. To call empathy sinful is to misunderstand the Cross. Jesus does not merely feel for us, he represents us, identifies with us and reconciles us to himself — so we might share in eternal life.

This is why empathy is so destabilizing for systems of power. Empathy with the immigrant, the incarcerated, the poor and the vulnerable unmasks the stories that justify indifference. What looks like “quicksand” is often revealed to be chains of oppression. Empathy disrupts hierarchy. Empathy is bad for empire.

And yet, empathy only works if it’s extended beyond our own circle.

Charlie Kirk’s horrific murder has revealed the truth about the sin of empathy. Scanning the conservative social mediaverse, there is an overwhelming amount of empathy for Kirk and his surviving family. Chants of “We are Charlie Kirk” have been heard around the world — from California to Korea — as folks show support for Kirk’s message. On Kirk’s website, you can now order a T-shirt that says, “I am Charlie Kirk.” This is empathy. (Well, the latter is mostly grifting on empathy.)

The truth is those who say empathy is a sin, in reality just don’t want to extend empathy to their enemies.

But it is precisely empathy for the enemy that stands at the center of Jesus’ teaching. To walk in the way of Christ is to risk connection, even where it feels dangerous, costly or unearned. The gospel is not afraid of empathy. The gospel is empathy, embodied in Jesus and extended through us. I’ve no plan on pre-ordering that T-shirt, but I am Charlie Kirk, killed by gun violence. And I am Kilmar Abrego Garcia, caught up in an immoral and racist immigration system. I am David Joseph Pittman, sentenced to death at the hands of the empire. I am the hundreds of thousands of dead and starving, victims of genocide in Gaza. I am the unhoused person whose existence is being swept away. I am the 1 billion children who have experienced sexual violence.

And I am all of them because they are made in God’s image and I am made in God’s image and we all are one in Christ Jesus.

Empathy is not the enemy of salvation — it is the heart of it. It draws us into, to quote Scot McKnight, “a community of differents” that is much bigger, much wider, much deeper, much more expansive than we in our finitude can even imagine. Those who criticize empathy do so to gatekeep the kin-dom of God; those who love empathy will offer it even to their enemies.

Josh Olds is a public theologian and pastor for those disillusioned with institutional church. He is the creator of the forthcoming small group video series “Year on the Mountaintop” and a featured contributor to the prayer book Fostering Hope: A Prayerbook for Fostering and Adoptive Parents. Follow his work on Facebook or at JoshOlds.com.