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I have written about echo chambers here quite a few times. Why? Because I have people in my life that have gotten sucked into tribalism, fueled by ceaseless echo chambers. I have seen the effects on them as their views are affirmed, never challenged, and they slide further and further in. One could, on a cursory glance think I am a victim of the same, and I get that. For me, I expose myself to a range of viewpoints within a space. For instance, Doug Wilson, Stephen Wolfe, and James White. If you think these men are united behind Christian Nationalism, you haven’t looked hard enough. I agree with White on many things and have followed him for the majority of my adult life. Much the same with Doug. White and Wilson get along much of the time, but White and Wolfe are at each other’s throats regularly.

Why do I bring up this example? Well, you are what you eat. You’ve heard that phrase, right? It’s a little weird. Well this week I am tacos. But applied to consumption of a different kind, it floats well. In the last few weeks I have been listening to audiobooks in all my available downtime. 600+ pages at this point. I am consuming a ton. When it comes to reading online, I prefer long-form articles over social media. If all I were consuming was snarky one-off posts, dank memes, and spit-fire takes against the latest thing, I would start to turn snarky, dank, and spit-fire. I know this about myself. I’ve seen it. I can feel that in my stomach, like the rising cynic that must always be denied in me. Hello darkness, never my friend.

We are told to watch what we eat, but then even Christians zone out in front of glowing screens consuming what could only be described as filth. Less degradingly, one could point that what we consume is often not edifying, does not build up others, does not encourage us, does not instruct us, etc. There is a place for entertainment, sure, but we as Christians must be mindful even there. If you watch a lot of violent content, it will start to darken your soul. If you read a lot of angry, sniping social media content, what do you think it will do to your heart? Have you thought about that?

If you only have an hour a day to consume, what should you intentionally consume? Facebook, Twitter, an audiobook about the crusades? Do you have a direction in your life? “I want to improve in this area.” Are you working in that direction? Think of it like losing weight. You choose to focus on specific things at the gym, change your diet, etc. to accomplish this goal. Maybe make goals when it comes to what you consume elsewhere and be just as intentional about your heart, soul, and mind as many are about their bodies.

I was talking about empathy with a coworker and she shared this video from a more secular perspective on the topic. Spoilers, he lands on much the same conclusions that I stated in Misrepresentations From Hecklers in the Peanut Gallery and Empathy vs. Sympathy, namely that compassion is often a better response and empathy has a lot of negative consequences. This of course is not because I am wise, but because I am the fool on “elephantine adventures in pursuit of the obvious.”

Regarding:

Misrepresenting what I say is easy when you don’t include a link to the original work. I am a writer and take care to write what I mean to write and not write what I do not mean to write. While Pastor Doug and Joe Rigney talk in absolute terms— understanding of course that most things that are spoken in absolute terms are not absolute but generalizations— in regards to the “sin of empathy,” I chose not to because I do not believe that empathy itself is sinful, but at times can make you sin in other clearly sinful ways. Permissible but not necessarily beneficial.

To directly quote my article from Saturday,

One could rightly argue that empathy is sinful as it can require you to lie or have untethered anger against someone in an ungodly way. Yet, in the modern age, we are told our only option is empathy[…]

Empathy vs. Sympathy

If one requires me to lie, otherwise I am abusing them, then they are requiring that I sin. This should be clear to any half-wit. If one requires that I feel untethered rage against someone— this being unrighteous anger—, then they are requiring that I sin. Not all empathy requires that I sin to be empathetic, so not all empathy is sin.

But just because something is not sin does not mean it is beneficial.

You can have sympathy for the person that is claiming abuse, you can reach a hand out and help them out of the water, talk with them and understand their perspective. Instead of fueling the rage, instead they need to get better. They are in fact getting bitter if they stay in the water, staying in the rage.

Empathy vs. Sympathy

I do not reject empathy as much as question it’s value compared to compassion and sympathy, two things that are never encouraging sinful actions. This is why my article was titled Empathy vs. Sympathy and addressed the differences and why we should, as Christians, err on the side of sympathy and compassion.

Further, the article was addressing Christians, as I recently wrote that I do a lot here. Why does this matter in this case? Because Christians are required— this being a commandment from Jesus Himself— to love our neighbors and to love our enemies. We are given clear documentation throughout the first letter to the Corinthians on what that looks like— through what it doesn’t look like— culminating in 1 Corinthians 13 showing us what it looks like.

This article being targeted at Christians can conclude that you need to think about the ramifications of empathy and err towards compassion and sympathy because it is grounded in a Christian ethic that we love everyone as God loved us. If this article was targeted at the heathens— those that do not know Christ— then it could not assume the same foundational ethic.

Of course, had my brother (Jason Finley, dba Mx. Sassafras, dba Sassafras Flick) linked my original article, the heckling from the peanut gallery would have had no weight to it. After all, it is easier to gaslight without providing evidence, like the 1300+ word piece you are referring to which clearly draws a different conclusion to anyone that cares to read it.

the difference between sympathy and empathy was the difference between objective truth and subjective felt “truth.”

Empathy as the Headwaters of Cruelty, Pastor Douglas Wilson

In an article this week addressing the pro-Hamas and pro-Gaza riots, Pastor Doug takes a moment for a sermon against untethered empathy. While I could high five his points on the riots and the conflict at hand, I find the human core more important.

Doug references a video that he did with Joe Rigney about empathy. I watched that video a couple months ago and it made a major impact on me and my understanding of current events. More coming on that some other time.

When you see someone drowning in the river, the virtue of sympathy requires that you help him. In the metaphor, you help by keeping one foot on the bank and you extend a hand, or throw a rope.

So what is the difference between empathy and sympathy. Sympathy is a Christian value. God shows us sympathy, standing on the rock and reaching a hand out to us to pull us from the muck and mire. In a class that I was in earlier this week, the instructor accidently said that God was empathetic. Obviously many believe these words to be synonyms. They are not. I kindly corrected the instructor and pointed out that for God to show empathy, God would have to negate His other divine attributes.

[T]he empathetic one needs to take a header into the river, identifying completely and entirely with the drowning person. The empathetic one offers no judgments, no assessments, no evaluations. The empathy is by definition untethered. Unless you sink to the bottom with him, it is obvious to everyone that you don’t really care.

Agree with me on everything, disagree on nothing. Do not tell me that I am wrong. Do not tell me that I have sinned. Do not tell me that I walked all the way out here and am now drowning despite Your pleas that I stop, Your clear warnings of what would happen if I didn’t, Your clear signs along the bank with graphic iconography. I am drowning because I was born this way. I am drowning because You made me this way.

Now join me in the water and agree with me. Anything less is abject hatred.

This sounds familiar to literally anyone paying attention to the world. It also should sound familiar to any parent, as this is how children act. And your job as a parent is to stand on the riverbank and pull them out, dry them off, and teach them a lesson. That is what God does for us.

Unfortunately, the modern world isn’t taking that lesson well and is throwing a tantrum to make their parents look bad.

It follows that if such a person is your client, then they are in the in group, and they are in that in group all the way. Anyone who is playing the role of their adversary—or perhaps we should say persecutor—has to be treated with relentless savagery. This is because that adversary is challenging the victim’s sacrosanct right to be affirmed in absolutely everything. To criticize the victim is to throw a dead cat at the high altar. To be the recipient of empathy in this system is to be utterly and completely beyond criticism. And because we live in a world where trade-offs necessarily happen, this means that anyone who gets in the way of what that recipient of empathy demands is dead meat.

One of many reasons why I don’t like therapy. Watch the video with Joe Rigney and you’ll understand a bit better, but the gist is that the relationship doesn’t encourage the therapist to criticize the client or in any way understand and take the side of their persecutor.

Suppose the empathy-claimant is a twelve-year-old girl who was raped by her stepfather. As long as she is affirmed absolutely by an empathetic counselor, she can do whatever she wants to anyone else, including the baby. […] And an empathetic judge can send the stepfather to the penitentiary for twenty-five years, which turns out to have been unfortunate, because he actually didn’t rape anybody. Empathy toward one is necessary cruelty toward another. But empathy, like Gallio, cares for none of these things (Acts 18:17).

Liars can use this system to get empathy for the supposed actions of others and therapists don’t ask enough clarifying questions to understand those that supposedly persecute their clients. Further, they show empathy by joining their lying clients in the muck and mire, they join the rage against their abusive persecutors.

They fuel it and reward it.

This is a system that has allowed narcissists to get fed energy from people by lying about others. This reward creates a cycle where the lies have to get worse and worse. They are a victim, they are being persecuted, they are being attacked, their family is abusive, etc. And you cannot get in the way of their lies, you cannot question their lies, because it is their “truth” and questioning it is victim blaming, or some other made up sin.

Further, all their actions against their persecutor is justified as they are a victim. Don’t ask them if what they are saying is true, don’t stay silent, you must affirm, cheer them on, and celebrate their actions.

This is the complete opposite of a Christian ethic. When my daughter claims that a boy hit her, my natural instinct is to destroy him. That is my natural instinct. But sanctification has brought me to the point that I have to ask her to explain. Turns out, it wasn’t a malicious hit, it was an accident and he felt super bad, apologized, and I don’t need to hang him by his boxers on the flag pole as an example of what not to do to my daughter. Vikings gotta viking, but righteous men of Christ have to live by mercy, grace, and love.

That stepfather in prison is there because empathy absolutely refused to let anyone raise the question of his possible innocence. There is no way to raise the question of his innocence without simultaneously raising the prospect that the stepdaughter was lying, and how would that make her feel? So even to raise the question of possible innocence was to be guilty of the crime yourself.

This is the conundrum that empathy has made for you. If you choose to show empathy for someone that claims abuse, you cannot raise the question that their abuser is potentially innocent. By raising that question, you are— by the nature of the question— raising the question of whether the accuser is lying. That will abuse the abused, thus making you an abuser too.

There is an alternative.

You can have sympathy for the person that is claiming abuse, you can reach a hand out and help them out of the water, talk with them and understand their perspective. Instead of fueling the rage, instead they need to get better. They are in fact getting bitter if they stay in the water, staying in the rage. Empathy will never make them better, only bitter. And for the narcissist, it encourages this behavior and they very well may be the abuser.

Empathy and sympathy are not the same thing. One could rightly argue that empathy is sinful as it can require you to lie or have untethered anger against someone in an ungodly way. Yet, in the modern age, we are told our only option is empathy and “this means that anyone who gets in the way of what that recipient of empathy demands is dead meat.”

So to finish with one last quote:

In short, we cannot say that we haven’t been warned.

Empathy as the Headwaters of Cruelty, Pastor Douglas Wilson

Regarding:

Quick note. I regularly write articles that address two audiences: me and fellow Christians. Usually you can tell that I am doing this by my specifically addressing Christians. Such as:

But justice! They must pay for their actions, pay for what they’ve done to me! God didn’t say the same for you, Christian. No, Christ said “I’ll pay the bill.” Christian, you don’t want justice done for all that you have done and you surely don’t want justice done to your foes.

When You Forgive Someone, (emphasis added)

This article would not make sense if it was addressing non-Christians, as we cannot hold those outside the Blood to the standards set for those under the Blood of Christ. This article, along with many others, addresses me and fellow Christians and commands that are made of us as brothers and sisters in Christ. Namely, you are to forgive without any reason other than Christ forgave you.

If you are not a Christian and read an article like this and conclude that it is crazy to hold you to that standard, you are correct and I am not holding you to that standard.

Shared this nearly nine years ago and again the subject is rearing it’s ugly head. This was one of the first things that woke me up to how lacking my public school education was. The Crusades were talked about but the jihads were not. The Crusades were a defensive series of battles against an onslaught of Islamic jihads that were raping, killing, and capturing the Middle East— a Christian region until then— and Europe. Watch the video below to see just how incomparable they are.

Evil preaches tolerance until it is dominant, then it tries to silence good.

We need to remember that tolerance is not a Christian virtue. Charity, justice, mercy, prudence, honesty — these are Christian virtues. And obviously, in a diverse community, tolerance is an important working principle. But it’s never an end itself. In fact, tolerating grave evil within a society is itself a form of serious evil. Likewise, democratic pluralism does not mean that Catholics should be quiet in public about serious moral issues because of some misguided sense of good manners. A healthy democracy requires vigorous moral debate to survive. Real pluralism demands that people of strong beliefs will advance their convictions in the public square — peacefully, legally and respectfully, but energetically and without embarrassment. Anything less is bad citizenship and a form of theft from the public conversation.

Archbishop Charles J. Chaput

I tried to watch John Oliver’s skit— “a short comedy sketch or piece of humorous writing, especially a parody”— on homeschooling and frankly couldn’t get through it. It was just too stupid and poorly argued. The Wade Show with Wade responded fantastically, pointing to a lot of the fallacies presenting the stats that knock out the stupid arguments being made. Thanks, Wade.

… by watching hours of snuff videos on X.

Now I’ll write you songs while I’m watching you cook
And later we’ll dance to them up in our room
Singing about all the babies we made
And all of the rooms that we filled with our love

As a Patreon supporter of Brian Sauvé, I got this song a couple weeks ago and tweeted about it. Brian’s response made my wife and I laugh heartily.

As a dad of three children, I have found myself balancing the introverted desire for peace & quiet and the joy of laughter and rough-housing, a herd of buffalo upstairs as I work, and the incessant need to ask questions. Let me say that I have been leaning much harder into the latter over the last few months and in it has come much peace. It doesn’t hurt that the introvert mind is— when trained— great at escaping internally in wild situations. To say that we love having filled our house with babies, laughter, love, and energy would be an understatement. I couldn’t imagine not having my band of children.

The new album from Brian is out everywhere you listen to music and I strongly encourage you to give this gift to your family.