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If the consequence of all this is that you do not know who to root for because I have not shared enough information to activate your tribal loyalties, then the only thing I have established here is that you should be disqualified from jury duty for life. You might have attached some tribal loyalties to the story on your own authority by filling in some of the things I left blank, but I guarantee that I could come back and tell the full story in a way as to flip it around for you.

And this is why a bunch of people I could mention should spend a lot less time in comment threads and a lot more time reading edifying material.

It is astonishing how many people think they can ascertain the truth about an enormously complicated snarl from three thousand miles away, and all they needed to do was watch three minutes of a video clip. But it is not that easy—that is just how they make it look easy. Why does it look so easy? You see, it is possible to identify your tribe from three thousand miles away, and you can do that in three seconds or so.

Anthony Bradley, Conflicted Apologist for Bad JuJu by Pastor Douglas Wilson

Whether we’re talking about child abuse— previously known as spanking— or complex family disagreements over the meaning and purpose of life, your ability to ascertain the truth from three thousand miles away based on a video clip or a few tweets is nil, non-existant. Sorry to tell you this. Yeah, the individual may belong to your tribe or a tribe that you are an ally of, but this is not grounds to rally the troops for a good, ol’ fashion lynching.

Just a word of advice.

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.”

For if this book is a joke it is a joke against me. I am the man who with the utmost daring discovered what had been discovered before. If there is an element of farce in what follows, the farce is at my own expense; for this book explains how I fancied I was the first to set foot in Brighton and then found I was the last. It recounts my elephantine adventures in pursuit of the obvious. No one can think my case more ludicrous than I think it myself; no reader can accuse me here of trying to make a fool of him: I am the fool of this story, and no rebel shall hurl me from my throne.

G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

“I am the fool of this story, and no rebel shall hurl me from my throne.” I’m gonna sit on my fool’s throne for a time and ponder this, mostly laughing.

Nothing on this blog is novel, undiscovered truth that I, wiser than you, have discovered. As Chesterton goes on to note, “Like them I tried to be some ten minutes in advance of the truth. And I found that I was eighteen hundred years behind it.”

My faith-building has been largely discovering the work on 2000+ years of church history and I pray that I can set a foundation for my children and their children to build atop.

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

Let’s go!

I happen to believe that it is perverse that our federal government is more concerned about the integrity of Ukraine’s border than they are about the U.S. border. But how would that make the Russians the good guys? And an intelligent person could believe that more of our resources should be deployed to the Texas border than to the border between Gaza and Israel. But how would that make Hamas any less wicked? You can stop making excuses for Biden without starting to make excuses for Hamas.

And it doesn’t help if the “talking points” are evangelistic in nature. If we were all to be shocked by a macabre set of murders that happened in Connecticut, and somebody online started to say things like “well, the victims probably weren’t Christian,” and the judgments of God are inscrutable, the only conclusion I would draw is that we had found ourselves an evangelist with a tin ear, and a tongue like a brick.

A Moral Compass and the Ball Peen Hammer

It’s been hard to articulate my views on Israel over the last few days other than praying without ceasing. Lots of opinions going around in the Christian sphere. Those that want Gaza wiped out, those that want Israel wiped out, those that want America to pounce on Iran, those that want America to not be involved at all. Lots of opinions. And for me… I have had a hard time. Pastor Doug does a great job at articulating many of my concerns, many of my views.

Hamas is wicked, the attacks were pure savagery, and we need to be praying for the victims, the hostages, and all of Israel.

Another way of putting this is that Muslims are not justified in their behavior simply because they can point to a passage in the Quran. There are such passages, but pointing to them will avail nothing. The man who gave them the Quran will also be standing before the judge of the whole earth as well. Muslims will discover at that time that Allah is not the true God, and that their warrant for hatred that they thought they possessed from him was not a valid warrant at all. All of that was forbidden by the true God, the one who will do the actual judging.

Justice, true justice, is coming for all involved. Relativism be damned, no matter how justified Hamas thinks they are because their Quran gives them authority to capture, rape, and torture women and girls. A day is coming when every Muslim will take a knee before the Throne of God Almighty and be held accountable for their sins and they will realize that Allah was nothing but a false idol unworthy of their adoration. My prayer is they find Jesus before they meet Him involuntarily.

And that same prayer goes for the Jews. Jews must follow Christ as well. Without salvation from the Blood of Christ, no man or woman will enter the Kingdom of God. Period. Full stop. And that includes the Jews.

Christian, pray. It is what we do. Wars and rumors of wars abound in these days and what we do is pray. Pray for peace, pray for revival, pray for an end to all the horrors of our world. Pray.

Both the question of sexual identity and the politics that surround it are not primarily concerned with sexual behavior. They are actually about what it means to be a human being. For Christians, far more is therefore at stake in this debate than the question of which sexual acts are moral and which are immoral. Once sex becomes recreation and once it is detached from the body’s own sexual script, what it means to be human has fundamentally changed. Sexual complementarity, the telos of marriage, and the analogy between Christ and the church all lose their significance. In a society like ours, therefore, how we think about what it means to be human has undergone a significant change. The anthropology of modern Western society is fundamentally incompatible with a Christian doctrine of man. Failure to see this and then try to argue that codes of sexual morality are negotiable and can be subordinated to pastoral strategies of love and affirmation is to contradict central tenets of the Christian faith.

When Being Affirming Isn’t Loving by Carl R. Trueman

If you haven’t read The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self or Strange New World by Carl R. Trueman, you need to. Carl has done a great job at connecting the dots between philosophical movements over the centuries to today.

In addressing Andy Stanley here, he is spot on. There are reasons that certain biblical understandings are important. Sexuality and marriage are fundamental and foundational to our understanding of what it means to be human. The modern warped view on it separates us from God, confuses more than it clarifies, and sets us up for a life of misery.

While Isaiah and his colleagues saw their task as calling the people away from the anthropology of the wider world and back to that of the covenant God, today’s prophets seem to see their task as being religious mouthpieces for the priorities of the wider culture, calling the church away from a Christian anthropology and toward that of the world around.

Go read the whole article and his books as well. Christian, the world’s view has shifted far from that of Christianity. And you need to understand it because you’ll be facing it sooner or later.

This whole post is solid, but one thing— especially as a dad— that has been really grabbing me of late is looking forward, not back. Not just looking forward to Christ’s return— though we await that day— but looking forward to generations to come. Yes, Christ could return tomorrow. True. But He could also return 10,000 years from now. Cultivating in my children, knowing that the future is their home, is equaly important as preparing to enter the Kingdom tomorrow. And if there be 10,000 more years, bright shining as the Sun, we have battles to prepare them for, we have foundations to secure.

But our children, and our children’s children, they may be remembered as the generation that began to mount some of the first and most significant attacks against the dragons and giants that currency[sic] terrorize the King’s land.

My children may be the leaders in the next Reformation, the next revivals that turn nations to God Almighty. They may have a hand in pushing the dragons back into the dark. We cannot just retreat and hold out until Christ returns with His mighty armies, lest we are committed to being on the run for 10,000 years. We have to push back the dark and our kids, a quiver full of arrows, are the next major part of that.

Perhaps the story is not coming to a close, but barely beginning.

I try to reserve words until things are clear. Andy Stanley has said some questionable things over the years, but I chalked most of them up to out-of-context sound bites that oversimplified complex teachings… Well, Andy made things perfectly clear over the weekend it seems. He’s no longer a Christian and is openly teaching heresy from the pulpit.

[Gay Christians] choose a same sex marriage, not because they’re convinced it’s biblical. They read the same Bible we do. They chose to marry for the same reason many of us do, love, companionship and family.

And in the end, as was the case for all of us, and this is the important thing I want you to hear me say, it’s their decision. Our decision is to decide how we respond to their decision.

Andy Stanley’s Version of Christianity

What is the best thing a man can do under hard circumstances? The answer is the same in every generation, under every circumstance. He needs to be a hard man. Note that I do not mean hardhearted. I simply mean that in a world where there are dragons, there must be dragon-slayers. We cannot make the dragons evaporate simply by wishing. The mountain is filled with dragons, and there is no complaint department.

I am not telling you that you need to step it up because it is just that you do so. I know that it is unjust. None of this is fair. That’s why you need to step it up.

What a Father Could Have Taught by Douglas Wilson