The Sin of Empathy | Doug Wilson and Joe Rigney

hi i'm douglas wilson and this is an introduction to the sin of empathy which is episode one of season one of man rampant joe rigney and i discussed the distinction between sympathy and empathy a distinction that has recently caused some internet discussion like the internet needed some discussion this episode is presented to you free of charge and if you go to the canon app you can watch the entire first season of man rampant free of charge also stay tuned to the end of this video you will get some exciting information about season three of man rampant so please go check it out welcome to man rampant out there in the talking heads business opening monologues are given very important sounding names like the memo or talking points or shrieking feminist nonsense because we here at man rampant are very important talking head professionals this opening monologue will henceforth be known as the marshmallow stick it's going to be sharp but also flexible and bendy with flaming goop on the end nobody should be hurt too badly should be friendly so then welcome to the marshmallow schtick on guard i want to talk about tribal empathies we live in empathetic times and no this is not a good thing we also live in a time of increasing fragmentation and polarization resulting in virulent forms of tribalism back in the day when we were faced with old school tribalism the tribe was an objective reality outside yourself and it set one's baseline this was when tribes had names like apache or mcgregor as a result members of a tribe tended to grow up with a fixed loyalty to that tribe when considered against all others and empathy was out of the question for others it was doled out accordingly what was good for the tribe defined everything and you empathized with a fellow member of the tribe simply because lest to no empathy was accorded outsiders in other words tribal membership determined the empathies in our fragmented times we are seeing the opposite like a river reversing course instead of tribes created by geography ancestry and language establishing our empathies our empathies today are now establishing our tribes shared sentiments now harden groups into tribes complete with tribal loyalties i was once walking through a major city and passed the center for the empowerment of deaf alcoholics that's an example of hyper-specialized empathy which will result in the long run in a fairly small and exclusive tribe sort of like the white house press corps often drunk never listening but there are alternatives to tribalism whether we are talking about massive tribes of white liberals or microtribes of city league bowlers in topeka on the secular side of things those alternatives would include massive nationalist ideologies like nazism or internationalist ideologies communism which is the kind of thing that happens when tribalism tries to scale and mass ideologies like petty tribalism demand loyalty and empathy and to hell with outsiders the only real alternative to an insider outside tribal mentality is the christian faith because the claims of christ are ultimate and because he is the head of the church these claims originate from outside the cosmos which means that his claims trump every other claim i have a tighter bond to someone who is baptized in the triune name but who lives in tehran than i do with my next door neighbor who is not baptized the christian faith is genuinely international regardless of how much superficial commonality i might share the universal point of integration the archaic is christ seated at the right hand of the father he is the one who became incarnate he was born of a particular woman named mary he had a hometown nazareth he went to nazareth high he spoke a particular language he was of the tribe of judah the blood of tamar rahab ruth and bathsheba flowed in his veins he had ten toes and i've been baptized into him this means that i do not have to repudiate my particularities and you do not have to repudiate yours in order for loyalty to exist between us i can belong to my tribe and i can do so with gratitude and affection but i cannot bow down to my tribe in my case clan gun from scotland because christ was not from that tribe he was from his tribe i can be from mine and because he ascended into heaven and left all tribes behind i can keep an appropriate emotional distance from my tribe something more sports fans and identity politicians need to learn what does this do to my empathies that is what we are here to discuss [Music] [Applause] today [Applause] so i'd like to welcome joe rigney to man rampant joe is the professor of theology and literature at bethlehem and is pastor at city's church minneapolis and he's a friend of the minister here in moscow has been here a number of times and we thought we'd snag him for this uh inaugural episode of man rampant and i wa and i want to uh see if what i can do to get you in trouble that's why i can't okay so what what better way to get into trouble than to question the uh validity or value of empathy right right empathy is it appears in our day a universally good time good thing good time thing who could be against it right everybody empathizes with everybody right and who could possibly be against it except for perhaps joe rigby yeah well uh probably others but definitely definitely me uh i think probably you want to begin by distinguishing a couple of things so that people don't get confused um because that would be bad um so you're saying christians shouldn't be loving yeah that's something like that so we want to distinguish empathy from sympathy and the funny thing about the way those words get used nowadays is that i think people think um if you were to say which one's better to have like which one should christians have should you be empathetic or should you be sympathetic i think a lot of christians would say empathy is better it's the higher the more loving the more kind higher the deeper wider best that's right it's just better in every way it's like it's like but it's sympathy but it's even better it's like the improved version well the reality is is that the bible commands us to be uh uh sympathetic because the senate it's compassion right so sympathy and compassion are are the same um it's the same word so they they um one's latin one's greek and it means to suffer with and the empathy is this more modern term is like invented um in like the 20th century it's not like this ancient word or this older thing it's invented in the 20th century and it means to suffer in so that's kind of the key like linguistic deal and i think most people then would say well if you if you have the choice between just suffering with someone or suffering in them like really that there's a sense of we really get into somebody we really enter into their pain and they're drowning you go and head along into the river exactly you dive in there and you're all in and we think this is better this is a a better virtue this is more virtuous than mere sympathy because sympathy kind of feels like pity and and nobody likes to feel pitied we don't want people to feel bad sympathy feels like you've got your foot on the shore reaching a handout it's exactly right acting better than they are that's right and i think and that actually is the most relevant difference between them because um so empathy is the sort of thing that you've got someone drowning or they're in quicksand and they're sinking and what empathy wants to do is jump into the quicksand with them both feet and and it feels like that's going to be more loving because they're going to feel like i'm glad that you're here with me in the quicksand problem is you're both now sinking right right whereas if you do um i'm going to keep one foot on the shore and i'm actually going to grab onto this big branch and then i'll step one foot in there with you and try to pull you out that's sympathy and that's that's actually helpful but to the person who's in there it can feel like you're judging me so sympathy is clearly hierarchical right it implies and implies that one person is the hurting and one person is the helper right and and no and and that's part of the problem is no one wants to feel like they're the hurting we want to equalize everything and so and so empathy demands get in here with me otherwise you don't love me what but what do you lose when you get in there with them and you're all in they're drowning they're in the quicksand they're in the trouble and you identify with them completely right um what are you losing contact with what's the shore that you're losing your purchase on so you lose the ability to actually make an independent judgment about anything that they're saying you're doing in other words you lose contact with truth the ability the ability to actually assess so um so if you take a scenario where someone is actually hurting so let's they're they're actually in pain they're actually grieving um and and they've been wronged or something like that and then now there's this expectation either from them or from other people show some empathy here you know get get in there with them if you say well hold on a minute i just walked up here i want to actually think about this situation i want to maintain some emotional distance in order to be able to evaluate you know who did what and when is this true is this true um what's true here is the perception accurate that this person if you want to maintain that dif distance that's inevitably um alienating to them that feels they're feels like clearly hate victims right you hate victims you're not actually loving me because i only feel loved if you endorse everything i say or if you validate everything i say and if you question so so if someone comes in with a tragic story right and you're a pastor i'm a pastor right a terrible story comes into your study and someone pours out my brother started molesting me yeah ten years ago awful things and awful things and awful things that actually really do happen to people right so the first thing you know this this story absolutely could be true right straight down the line it could it could actually be as bad as all of this that's right it could also be false right right she could be trying to get even or trying to do something or it could there could be any number of that's right things that could motivate someone to lie about a story like that yeah how can you how can you listen sympathetically to someone like that while reserving to yourself the possibility of coming to a later conclusion that this was a story right so um there is an initial move where in a situation like that i think you want you want to lean in in such a way that there's a giving of the benefit of the doubt to the person who's sitting in front of you and has been um has been wronged or is claiming to have been wronged there's so you there's a judgment of charity that you're giving um but you're also reserving the right to ask some more questions to investigate a little further to to probe a little bit and it doesn't even have to be you know um in the in the modern world it doesn't even have to be as you know the grave evils it's simply it could be a small slight um so if you think about in this happens a lot say in marriage counseling right so you get husbands and wives who are missing each other um or or or a husband or a wife who's having problems with other people outside the marriage okay so a conflict with a friend and they start describing the situation this is what was happening this is what they did they gave me the stink eye they she did this she said that but she looked at me this way um and if you start to say but did she really like if you just asked the clarifying question are you sure or or was there maybe more to it than misunderstanding was it maybe a misunderstanding maybe it wasn't malicious empathy is going to say you can't do that because you just need to you need to hear them out you need to listen you need to identify you need to join them whereas sympathy says if they actually were being rotten to you if they were being cruel or whatever i want to i want to be with you in that i want to join you in that in that suffering but i want to make sure that it was actually suffering and not a misunderstanding so empathy if i could run ahead of you empathy is the means the conduit by which relativism is pouring into counseling that's right yeah that's that's a good way put it so it because um because the question of what really happened is um made secondary to the emotional state of the person in question right so that becomes the end-all be-all of everything and any any challenge to that is a threat um and and you can't you're not allowed to you're not allowed to do that which is why so one of the ways to say it is god commands us to be compassionate he commands us to show sympathy but people demand empathy and they and they regard it as a kind of betrayal if you refuse to join them in their pain in their grievance a very personal betrayal a very personal betrayal because you jus and you just don't get it or you're not showing love to me i'm the i'm the victim here why aren't you joining me in this and it's and it's a visceral thing it's not a um i don't think you need we need to think of people who are in that as um deliberately malicious it's often um instinctive reactive visceral and it's it's how their emotions have been trained right they've been yeah they've been trained they're they're running into ruts which is precisely why um what's needed is somebody to have their hand on the branch and only one foot in so that you can try to help pull them out so that their emotional responses um get channeled in better more healthy more healthy directions and not get stuck this this might be an oblique um or tangential uh support to this but tell me what you think of this a number of years ago i i started objecting to christian counseling biblical counseling being run on business line as a business okay where the client comes in makes an appointment with the trained professional who's also a christian and who incorporates christian uh principles but can bill your insurance company and and or take a check or whatever and the difficulty is that we are that i saw is that we already had a system like that in the law so in our legal system we've got it all worked out where both sides both disputants have an attorney whose job it is to represent your case the best they can to be your advocate to be your advocate and and it's ethical for an attorney to do that even if he thinks you're a skunk or you're you know even if he thinks that uh he can he can do that because the system ensures that the other guy has the same advantage yep right so right everybody's got one right and if you and if you can't afford one one will be appointed correct so the a person comes into the attorney's office and the attorney is paid to be on that person's side right right he's paid to be honest and he's a partisan he's a partisan so imagine our legal system where just the def defendants got an attorney right or just the prosecution got an attorney right okay um well we walked into that in the in the world of counseling because i go in i pay my money right to this trained counselor right and i think that he's supposed to be on my side he's surprised he he's supposed to believe me and the person i just accused of rape or the person i just accused of molestation there's nobody on his there's nobody on his side not in that room yeah not not in that setup right and of course if the story is true then we don't we're not going to shed any tears for the guy who's actually guilty of that but at a fundamental level we don't we do not yet know who is the victim right right yeah that's right and i think um so in principle it might be possible for a really sturdy counselor to operate in a system like that where someone's coming in and paying them for their for help but it would have to be the sort of thing where from the outset they're they're saying okay you're coming in here and asking for help which means in order to help you to actually help you i have to reserve a certain kind of emotional distance from you and i need to be able to to evaluate and assess the whole thing and so if you're looking just for someone to be on your team this isn't going to work and that would have to be kind of set up from the from the get-go so that when so you don't pull that out halfway in and they say hey wait you're changing the rules of the game right you you can't ever commit to being automatically on their side on on their side in in the dispute and in pastoral counseling i i try to say there are three sides involved here there's like in marriage counseling you were describing there's the husband's perspective and there's the wise wife's perspective and then there's christ's perspective yes and rarely do i see christ's perspective map on to right yeah the husbands or the wives in total right precisely straight straight across and a minister is supposed to be there as the representative of christ who's steeped in his word who's who understands biblical law biblical principles and who will bring them to bear on this situation but he's there not with the wife as a client or the husband is a client that's right christ as lord right and when and when you have um so in a healthy church setting i think if you have people who are in principle committed to that you can make a lot of progress because um even even if there's a subtle demand for empathy in a setting like that you can always draw them back to first principles where you're saying well now hold on i'm not here to pick sides i want to i want to help right and picking sides actually might be more harmful um but if that's if that's been undefined or if that's not clear at all then you get the the um there's escalation when the misunderstandings happen because all of a sudden i thought you were on my side and then all of a sudden you started asking me questions or probing in certain ways that i i wasn't comfortable with um and you and you reserve that emotional distance and the accusation is going to be something like you're not showing empathy you're not being empathetic or let's zoom in a little further let's say we're not it's not a terrible situation like a molestation or it's not even marriage marriage misunderstanding such that counsel is required suppose it's just a little tiff between husband and wife where uh the wife has had a skirmish with the next door neighbor lady over the dog or something right and and she's telling her husband uh the the story and thought bubble above his head is um i'm not sure right i'm not sure you handled that perfectly he's got some doubts she might have a grievance against him right because of course a husband should be sympathetic right because christ looked at the people used compassion and he had compassion on them right sympathy total sympathy but he can't just say automatically right everybody in my family is right right that yeah and and so there's a there is a genuine kind of uh allegiance there's a you know if in a situation like that the husband is should have an allegiance to his wife more than say the neighbor right so that's the that's the more fundamental bond but what that actually means in practice is he's responsible for her and how she processes and works through the situation she he's not responsible in the same way for what the neighbor does so say the neighbor was was a jerk um it's still the case that his main concern should be how to help his wife sort through her response to it and get and make make it through which may mean enduring whatever junk the the guy threw at throughout her but um if what she's wanting in the moment is simply um agree with my um total perspective total perspective right just be on my side it's going to cause problems down the road if he just acquiesces because you're setting up a pattern where um you know if if if if whatever she says goes and the demand is for empathy what you're asking for is a kind of fusion of of personalities where everything is uh everything is is becomes one in a tote in a total you lose yourself in the other person and there's no longer a you and a me there's only this blob all right so it it goes without saying and you touched on it before it goes without saying that a husband should have more allegiance to his wife than the neighbor lady yeah more allegiance to his wife's perspective than hers right but he also should have a deeper allegiance to the truth yeah than to any family member that's right okay yes now how can you say that a husband should care more about the truth than his wife without sounding like a mean person without without sounding like a logic machine or a theology chopper that's right well um you have to remember that truth is a person so jesus is the truth so the allegiance is not to some abstract principle as opposed to a real person it's it's that there's it's nested allegiances i'm i'm um fundamental allegiances to jesus above everything and then within that that entails a kind of subordinate allegiance to my wife and to my family um to my friends to my neighbors to my country all of the other allegiances are nested under that which is a deeply personal allegiance okay um and so i think and and that's where um and and you can actually make headway with that with with people if you say i'm not just i'm not just being a fusser right i actually want to love god in love and love you from that as opposed to being forced to turn you into god you can actually throw them a rope and actually get them out actually help them actually help them and then and there's another distinction i've made over the years between council and counseling okay you know some people don't want counsel right they don't want counsel at all right because council would give them what something to do from the bible and then they need to go do it yeah some people just simply want counseling they want a therapeutic affirmations uh session right they want a shoulder to cry on right and and there's a and there's a place for that at a kind of initial level i think i think that there's a way in which you enter in um and the first thing you need to do you know so jobs job's counselors um did pretty well for about seven days right right when their mouths were when their mouths were shut and they were just there what were they doing they were suffering with him right they were suffering with him um and then they opened their mouths and and got it all wrong but but there's a place for kind of allowing the grief to come and to just be present in the pain but that when that season eventually needs to come to an end what happens next and it can't simply be ratify all of the pain grief anger frustration and just say you're right in all of that all right so to to tie off tie off this um point sympathy is coming alongside sympathy is compassion sympathy is walking with someone in in their pain um it's identifying with them but it's not a total identification right you never forget your allegiance to christ right in the identification that you you're making with this person that's whatever it is empathy is headlong all in whoever the victim is or whoever the the person demanding the empathy is uh they um they're like god they will not share their glory with another that's right they demand everything from you so you um what we're called to do is we're called to grieve with others but we cannot lose our self in the grief of others that's the kind of fusion that's the um i've there is no me left so what you're doing in that situation with empathy is you're putting someone else in your emotional driver's seat you're that you're giving them the keys to your emotional car and saying you can take this wherever you want but they're the ones who are actually hurting so that's that's the problem and instead you have to maintain i'm in i i'm responsible for me and in order to help you i have to maintain responsibility for me before god and then i actually might be able to be some help all right so that um having to retain your own identity and your own allegiance to christ while you um exhibit the compassion that a neighbor should exhibit love you the second greatest commandment love your neighbor as yourself but the first commandment is love the lord your god above all things so uh sympathy remembers to love god while loving the neighbor yes empathy abandons god for the sake of the neighbor right turns to the neighborhood of god it turns the neighbor into god okay um you mentioned something about maintaining your own identity and that reminded me of um a writer that we both appreciate friedman yep well uh we both i'd like to talk a little bit about renee gerard and friedman here in this because um sympathy and empathy that sympathy empathy disgust distinction is very important and um and a lot of people miss it but at the end of the day it's pretty straightforward yeah right yeah love god and your neighbor not just your neighbor yeah okay um but since we're talking about relationships uh we have and and oftentimes husband wife oldest son daughter next door neighbor webs of relationships co-workers you know often times when you're talking about families extended families in-laws neighbors co-workers churches there's churches elder session elder boards um deacon boards committee pastoral search committees you name it you get these um you get a group of people in the room and you start to there a certain crackle starts to develop um competition emotional throwing of elbows people positioning themselves playing the game working the room yep et cetera and you could in many meetings you could just set your iphone on the table and it will charge by itself right by from all the crack from all the vehicle in the room okay so uh let's talk a little bit about friedman and and triangulation and uh memetic desire yeah so so friedman is uh edwin friedman was a um he's he's passed away now but he was a uh a counselor and a kind of um psychologist who um really focused on kind of this systems theory of approach to counseling where he recognized that you're never counseling just an individual there's always that web that they're bringing with them they tracked it in they tracked it in and that if you only try to treat the individual as an individual you might be able to help a little but it's the the whole system is the thing that's amping everything up and so you need to figure out how do i get at the system and what and what he argued was um you get at the system not by trying to um change the most immature um uh un unself-controlled person in the group instead you identify the people who have the most integrity the people who are most have it put together and you work with them and all you're trying to do is help them to maintain control of themselves take responsibility of themselves in the midst of all of the tangle and what you would find is what he would find is if you can do that if people can maintain their identity maintain their integrity in the midst of all of that junk differentiate them differentiate themselves not lose themselves in the big mess and not and not be reactive so the crackle in the room is often one person does something and then there's um the the counter move which then escalates and it's just banging around the room with nobody admitting nobody admitting what's going on because everybody knows what's going on um and everybody feels wronged by what's going on but no one can admit what's going on because then they'd have to admit that yes they did hit back yes yes that was manipulative and i manipulated right back um and so instead of trying to you know let's just remove the bad person well if you remove the bad person in the system like that they'll just re-emerge somebody else will fill that role that the that the person you can't just cut it out you have a job open there's a job now you actually have to learn to the system has to change in a fundamental way and you start that by focusing on the most the healthiest individuals in the group and and helping them to maintain their integrity and then to link up with others and creating a different kind of air different kind of nucleus which then challenges everybody else in the room either you're going to get on board with the healthy way of doing this or you're not and if you're not you're out and in some situations that could result in the healthiest people in that office or the healthiest people in that scenario refusing to empathize anymore that's right they're they're not gonna because because in it when when you move beyond just the so a second ago we were talking mainly about like in a marriage or in a small setting um when you begin to widen out and empathy is that what empathy is going to do is it's going to tap into our reactive heard instinct where there's this desire this togetherness idea that we everybody has to be on the same page which means we're all going to adapt to the least mature member right everybody's gonna we just whatever they say it's a race to the bottom it's a race to the bottom whoever throws the biggest temper tantrum whoever is the most uh unstable we're just gonna do everything we can to make sure they don't erupt and as long as you're doing that as long as you're adapting to the immaturity you're not actually growing and challenging people to become to take responsibility for themselves and to and to do what what what god wants them to do and what's good for the for the whole group and so what you but you can't um the difficulty is that when you come into a situation like that it's easy to kind of want to say this person over here is the problem when the fundamental thing you have to do is take responsibility for yourself it's always putting the onus back on what what am i as an individual actually responsible for right and the first thing is me right how i'm responding and so one of the things that you could talk about is the difference between reacting and responding so reacting would be unthinking visceral um you know instinctive it's like what happens when you know somebody when the doctor hits your knee and you just kick right if you're reacting that's what's happening as opposed to responding which allows again going back to the emotional distance allows you to kind of they did that now i'm going to think about what the best response is which might be you know um something that will cause them pain you don't want to cause them harm but that might be painful so you're going to say something it might be an awkward difficult conversation a difficult conversation but you're responding with deliberate intentionality you're you're leaning in um intentionally and not simply erupting right um and so that and so that was kind of friedman's um basic paradigm in coming into these big messes i'm going to find the people who are already the closest to health and i'm going to try to help get them healthier and either they're going to pull everybody else with them or the people who when when people begin to realize my manipulations don't work here anymore the pouty face that used to work isn't working here anymore it's either gonna they're being challenged to grow up and take responsibility for their own emotional responses or they're gonna take their ball and go home if if they insist on remaining a parasite right they're going to have to find a new host they're going to fight to find a nose that's right and that's and that's actually friedman's um uh preferred you know image of of leadership is basically an immune system you're trying to be the immune system which is not mainly about it it does fight bad things but it also regulates good things it's just it's health it's health in the body that then prevents contagions from settling in and taking over the good cells and and spreading and so focus on your own integrity your own differentiation your own distinctness your own identity as a person responsible to god for you and if you do that that's that's all you can do you can't you can't change them you don't have that ability you're not god so uh tying this back in with our first uh topics the sympathy empathy thing uh the person in the family who's sitting in the corner you know he's pouting um that is that person is proposing to destroy the family right right that's what that's what the proposal is and if we all think if all the strong christians think because they've been taught from the pulpit they've been taught in christian literature they've been told over and over again that you have to identify weep with those who are weeping don't ask questions right just lose yourself in there in their sorrow yeah and they think that's the high road it's difficult to do right yeah so must so it must be biblical right it's difficult so it must be the jesus way um we find ourselves setting up shop to destroy our church right to destroy the church plant to wreck the family because that seven-year-old with the sulks yeah is going to be a 17 year old with the sulks that's exactly right and and uh you know you so you mentioned the sulks it reminded me of of lewis um c.s lewis so we needed to get lewis into this we needed to get loose into this you always have to lose this so um lewis and the great divorce describes the kind of person who did that who goes upstairs and has the sulks because he knows that if i go upstairs when if i don't get my way and i just go get sulky i know that my sisters and my parents are eventually going to come in and they're going to apologize even though i was the one who was who was rotten and they'll because they just want to make peace they just want everybody to be happy again and so i've and you train yourself to get sulky to get your way um and and that's again that's that demand for empathy you you don't love me if you don't you see if you don't if you see this face and you don't lean in and say everything's gonna be okay and and we're sorry um you don't really love me well um in order to actually and what you're doing is you're establishing patterns in the family or in the group or whatever that will that will quite literally destroy the thing because because everybody's gonna learn and then and then you work out from there and this is where the cultural piece really comes in right because once everybody learns that's how the game's played then it's a fight to be the victim or where to be the defender of the victim right if i can if so the victim is wing man yeah exactly and so um uh this is the cultural challenge where we are today um in in friedman s kind of terms or or whatever where we weaponize our victims so um and and sometimes the victims aren't they're actually they're real victims they've really been harmed and and it's awful but then other people come along who who realize the way that i can actually make makes make something of myself the way that i can actually have some power here is by being the defender of the victim right which means the victim's always right and and so i'm going to always um there's going to be no questioning and if you try to actually say well hey let's can we just pause for a second make sure we've got the facts straight you're a hater you don't love them you're not loving them and now you're now you're attacked so if the person is a false victim if the victim is lying that's bad they're hurting themselves right if they're true victim then and the whole culture around them rallies around them in this way that we're talking about all we're doing is victimizing them again again right you're because you're using them you're not you're not you're using them in a power play you're not actually trying to help them become whole again so if we wanted to illustrate the how how far gone um pop evangelical culture well not just pop evangelical culture evangelical culture reformed evangelical culture is i think pretty far down the road to just to uh destruction on this this thing right imagine this scenario and maybe comment on it imagine a scenario where a young husband is going to get married later in the week and and it's a christian bachelor party it's not a pagan bachelor party right it's a christian bachelor party okay and and the guys all gather around to give little bits of wisdom and advice all of his married buddies are gonna all of his married buddies who've been married for three months yeah that's right you know everything now um so they're all giving him their exhortations and let's say an older christian who's been married a number of years stands up and says son i want you to promise me that you will never apologize to your wife unless you really did something wrong right okay yeah now uh the young man might go huh but everybody else is going to go yeah why are they going to do that right because uh that i mean that's right and um i it's funny to think about the scenario because you can just you can immediately feel the cringe of of oh no why and you and then and then you have to start diagnosing why is there the oh no why why would it be a bad thing to only apologize for things that you did wrong right well because there's some times where there's a certain kind of pressure to apologize just just to smooth things over right just just to like it's it's simpler um and and it's it's simpler to just say i'm sorry even though you in the back of your head you're going i don't actually think i did anything but but she's unhappy um and and it works that way man you know we we're talking mainly about um men to women because we're we're men um it could work the other way but it doesn't often because because women tend not to um get men tend to not do the mopey thing and get their wives to do it because most women despise that when a man tries to run the game run run this play it doesn't it doesn't work it just looks not nearly as well it's not nearly as well but a husband who sincerely wants to love his wife and wants to make peace will be willing sometimes right to uh just smooth things over because it's easier so um let's we've gotten uh friedman in here we've got lewis in here let's get gerard into this okay mix yeah uh one of the one of the central take away valuable things that i got from gerard is how he pointed out all through scripture the psalmist and job and different places the the the designated scapegoat in in an ancient society was expected to go along with the accusation right okay and uh job for example just flat refused right no i'm not doing that um look the friend said just apologize just say you're sorry you clearly did something wrong clearly clearly did something just take one for the team say you're sorry take responsibility everything will be okay and job said because his allegiance was the truth right right his allegiances were he was anchored outside the system he was he was anchored outside his friendships right now i i take uh this is i don't want to go astray on this but i believe that job was the second king of edom okay yep okay uh there was a the second king was named joe bad joe and maybe yeah but but whether he was his nickname yeah so um i believe that whether he was the king or not he was one of the most powerful figures in the country yeah one of the great men of the east and really rich and it means if job is wiped out the whole stock market i mean okay it's a it's a national calamity so it's not just a couple of friends coming and looking for an apology right it's his cabinet right yeah some of the some of the influential people said look in fact we really it's really time for us to move on and try to rebuild this economy and and we need you to say you were wrong right so god will so god will bless us yeah and it's sort of like in and in the pagan world uh oedipus does take one for the team right you know anybody who thinks that oedipus really did kill his father and really did marry his mother yeah i i've got some beachfront uh property in kansas i'd like to you know sell you um he he take he takes it and he goes into exile and he accepts it job doesn't take it right dave david doesn't take it the psalmist doesn't take it they they absolutely refuse to apologize unless of course they did something wrong yeah when the bathsheba happened yeah when nathan the prophet rebukes david he he he really repents against thee the only have i sinned right so it's not never apologize to your wife for yeah it's never apologize to your wife unless god thinks you yeah god thinks you wronged her yeah you should be the quickest you should be it should be immediate and it should be sincere from the heart in order to put things right but if you are apologizing to your wife simply as the way of kissing and making up right and what you're doing is you're saying i'm going to build my marriage on the firm foundation of lying of lying i'm going to i'm going to lie to my wife and it's cowardly right so i mean if that and that's the that's the trick like like uh psychologically or whatever is it in the moment it has the appearance of of love but the reality is it's just it's just another form of cowardice and a man who's cowardly in that situation that's that's the first place where he needs to show some courage and he needs to actually love his wife and which may mean let's have a conversation you know it looks like it it's the sort of situation that um this looks like work it looks like we're gonna have to go back and forth a couple of different times because i don't feel like i did anything wrong you clearly feel like i did something wrong and so we're going to have to keep doing this until we figure out what does god actually expect and biblically speaking a man who a man is not going to be able to stand up for his wife unless he's able to stand up to her right right and and and it's the sort of and and uh she will respect him more if he does like if he can actually show like there's a um courage in a man is is attractive and admirable to a godly woman she's going to look at that and say um there he has a backbone he's not a pushover um and so uh the if he acquiesces she actually loses respect for him right over time and it and it sends you it down and then it gets worse i've seen other situations in the church where people want you to apologize just as a way of negotiating and compromising right right yeah um it's like it's like that it's like the negotiation on the um you know the plea bargain yeah you know you know you 25 25 years to life you know it's like well we'll let you off with only five in probation and and so just take the deal right that's right but you have to say okay i'll lie in order to keep and whatever keeps the peace in the church in the uh in the service of the one who is the truth we are going to we're going to build on a lie right so the empathetic the empathetic culture the therapeutic culture years ago i was in a situation where i was meeting with another counselor and a woman that accused family member of abuse and the other siblings were saying what are you talking about you know what are you talking about and i i said something to the other counselor like the problem with this whole setup is that it's not true right it's not true and he said this i've heard it plenty time since but this is i think probably the first time i heard it was he said well if this is her truth right that this is true for her so in her cocoon in her vat of sentimentality and her uh cauldron of emotion she needs companions in there and since this is true for her she needs someone in there all the way saying it's true for me too that and that's where the believe the victim you know believes the victim always right and i'd say okay am i allowed to find out who it is first yeah right which which one is the real victory if the victim if the victim that i must believe is the first one through the door [Music] right it does it yeah you've got to be able to ask the questions and um in in a culture like ours that has so weaponized this where people people have have learned this is how you make your way like if you actually want to be somebody do something if you want to get into the point of of if you want to be untouchable this is how you get untouchable i think that they're as christians there ought to be like a genuine compassion for people who've been catechized in this way of operating so that we don't sit there and look at them and go um uh we don't want to despise them right we want to be able to to have compassion which means um resisting right and not going and not going along with it and being willing to be the job being willing to i'm not gonna i'm not gonna lie i'm gonna maintain my integrity um so yeah that's right so um let's um we've been talking about marriage and church you know yeah marriages families on the ground stuff where you can see their facial expression uh but this is clearly a culture-wide phenomenon this goes from the atlantic to the pacific and yeah and probably elsewhere but it's certainly triumphant here which means that it has to show up in newsrooms it has to show up and how stories are right told it it's got to drive this how how would you uh talk about or advise someone on watching the evening news what to watch out for right what are some of the tells that would indicate this kind of thing is happening so first thing would be don't watch the evening news no but um so par part of what you would want to do is so some something comes on on the screen and says this is the big bad thing that just happened if your first instinct is simply that's awful and i need to do i need to say or do something about it like i need to i need to get on twitter i need to get on twitter right now and i need to to let everybody know so i so there are uh um you know so being on twitter you can see people who that's how they operate is that they're looking for the latest outrage and they're ready it's a hair trigger just like that right hashtag i stand with how do you spell that yeah exactly that's exactly right and um and so if you find yourself with a kind of knee-jerk reaction inevitably what you're doing is you're you're falling into the tribalism thing right where um you know there are certain people who i've got in the other tribe and so of course you know it's the hatfields and mccoys of course the mccoys that's just how they are and so i there's an immediate instinct to just react to just react to whatever the news is and to then you know retweet it spread it around before anybody's had a chance to you know cross-examine the witnesses or whatever and so the way to know you're doing it wrong is if you find yourself always doing that and then as happens sometimes not always but sometimes it comes out that actually the story wasn't as it was first presented there was it was more complicated and messier and now you feel like now you're stuck because you were one of the ones cheerleading right and now you're stuck and at that point what you ought to do is issue an apology you ought to say i was responsible i was reckless and i'm going to do better next time if you never do that then you're the sort of you're part of the problem you're part of the reactive chain that that's feeding the whole thing and so for me when i when i when i'm watching my my litmus test for myself is something like there are a number of times where i think if that's true i would really like to say something about it but i i but before i do i want to give it time to know if it's really true you want the pieces to fall out of this piece and and then and then figuring out what actually is my obligation in this situation like if it's happening across the country what's my first obligation well my first obligation if it's that bad is to probably pray not mainly to try to organize some kind of media campaign because the irony is um this is this is related to whole a whole different cultural phenomenon but it's the virtue signaling thing it's how do i demonstrate that i'm a good person by retweeting the right things or liking the right things retweeting it first or being the first you know being on the cutting edge of of of doing that and i don't actually have to do anything uh meaningful because what i feel like is meaningful is the raising awareness or the the publicizing or the joining and uh and i sit there and i think when i'm looking at that and i'm going even if even if i agree with the cause right um what's what's what's my responsibility as a christian fundamentally it's not to sit there in social media blast is am i praying am i asking god to do something if it was really that bad god bring your judgment if show mercy to those who need mercy like go to him to deal with it not simply erupt on the internet as though that's going to solve it and the virtue signaling occurs in the inflamed relations between the sexes right the the the metoo world and it comes up in uh cop cop shootings or cops shooting blacks the black lives matter thing it's almost like an instant polarization right so if if i let's say some let's say some respected person not someone that rumors were floating around for years but some highly respected person was accused by someone of right molesting them or you know some sexual crime yeah and they go to a some feminist leader to interview what do you think about the charges that were dropped today and if suppose just imagine her saying something like well he denies the charges and uh the investigation has just begun i really think we need to wait and see what happens see what happened i would go yeah right you'd be shocked i'd be shocked and i would be so shocked that i would think to myself i thought she was a feminist right because that's the tribe yeah that immediately mans the barricades and there are men who man the barricades in the same way sort of the mgtow yeah men going their own way guys the guys are right the men are right the women are right the blacks are right the cops are right right um well no we lit we know we we have a doctrine of man's sinfulness and depravity we know that this story that i just read about a cop shooting an unarmed civilian is quite possibly true yeah right and this had wicked and high wickedness right right high wickedness that's possibly true it's also possibly true that he was legitimately fearing for his life and the the person who was shot deserved to be shot yeah that's this is a fallen world that's also possibly true right um the the predator who preys on you know staff and secretaries and stuff well that happens that's real that's real that really happens so this story that i'm hearing it might really be that um but also it's true that women are capable of misrepresenting what happened that happens yep also right so i wonder you know yeah so and and that's and and this is where as a pastor so i um i i watch i i keep abreast of that kind of stuff not because i mean i really want to i don't i'm not interested necessarily in whatever kinds of things are happening across the country that's not my responsibility but i know that my people are tracking with that kind of stuff and it's shaping them and it is forming them and hardening them into tribes and the irony of this is a very gerardian kind of kind of observation what happens is um there's a polarization where people think that the they're the white hats and the other guys are the or the black hats with good guys bad guys um sons of light sons of darkness at the precise moment when those two sides are becoming mirror images of each other right right that polarization is it's a mirror and so the and the more that one side reacts and feels like we are the good guys and they're the bad guys and then the more the other side does the exact same thing the whole thing is is obvious that both of you are are um whatever differences exist between you the similarities and how you're responding reacting escalating is so identical that the only way that this is going to end is with somebody getting stoned like at some point this all of this pent up back and forth is going to go somewhere and it's going to be very very ugly and so as a christian i want to be able to identify that but but i don't want to participate in it and i want to make sure that my people are able to to to properly distance themselves so that so that if it's going um if it's going to get ugly i don't want them in their throwing stones right there's a buffalo springfield back in this back in the 60s as uh for what it's worth singing songs and carrying signs mostly saying hooray for our side right and both sides have the same side yeah the same science hooray for our side uh gerard talks about basically i i forget this is his metaphor or not but the what i see happening in our culture of the antipathy that's i mean we hate each other like like i can never remember right okay and we hate each other we hate one another on many different fronts right right there's a uh it's a balkanization it's yeah but it's the fragmentation kind of thing it's fragmentation but there's a unity to the whole thing um that i don't know if this was his illustration but it's my illustration of his point and that is human cultures are built up into thunderheads right right towns churches denominations families any group any significant group of people builds up into a thunderhead right where there's an electrical charge in there yep that's got to hit some it's got to it's got to go something it's got to go somewhere and when i see that charge and i've i've seen it over the years that charge that crackle that uh problem beginning to develop in the church or in this set of relationships i see it uh since god's solution to that was the substitutionary death of christ on the cross right that's the lightning rod where yeah the wrath of all the world right yeah it goes there it goes there right um if i see wrath starting to accumulate yeah if i'm observing my people being shaped by what do i think about black lives matter and yeah bad things do happen to blacks you know yeah driving while black yeah yeah things like rash than a store yeah they're that happens and so i'm i want to empathize with them yep and i'm all in and then somebody else is empathizing with the sheriff's department right you don't know what it's like to go on you know yes somebody else is empathizing with our brave men in uniform somebody else is empathizing with right uh women you know um you have all these people empathizing which aggravates the charge right and it's building up and it's going to be catastrophic right unless god raises up preachers to preach the cross right that's that's right because the only thing um yeah the only thing that can take the charge and not obliterate the whole system is is the cross because that is it's the foundation of forgiveness there that like if you can't forgive as christ you so you have to be forgiven and then you can forgive as christ has forgiven you that's the only way out of that it's it's the renunciation of the blood guilt it's the renunciation of the grievance that's the only way and it satisfies right it's it's sound it's justice it's not just pass it over sweep it under the rug it didn't really happen but but it has to start with with a fundamental forgiveness it has to start with mercy and blood of jesus right otherwise it's not getting anywhere and so when i look at the present moment at the kind of crackling and and uh and escalation there's no telling like what who the scapegoat is eventually going to be there's no way to predict in advance because it's the sort of it's it's going to it's a hair trigger and you don't know what the what's that predicting where the what where the light is that's right um but the the main thing is can we as christians not get caught up in it so that we're just another one of the the crackling you know we're just another you know um uh you know if it's like a circuit if we're just another circuit that's channeling the energy and slinging it back into the system with greater force can we actually be a place where the charge stops like where it hits a wall called the gospel and and it and it dissipates and the gospel's embodiment in the church instead of the church being just another you know just another monkey in the cage so i don't know if i'm being a little dire on this i'd interested in your thought on it as i'm looking at the escalation the ramping up the increasing hatred and malice and rage that is just um gratuitously offered today it seems to me that we have got either two there are two things that are going to happen either there's going to be a great reformation and revival right or there's going to be civil war yeah so as it's an interesting question about whether or not there's a um you know can can it climb back down short of the reformation right right and uh and one of the you know one of the factors that that's that's um well there could be a famine i guess yeah so famine might fix it yeah um or you know oftentimes in situations like this you know what's what if you've got all of the internal crackling one of the um surest ways to like defuse it is to find an external enemy right so a war externally helps to shore up now we may be so far gone from that because the you know the escalation is so much that we can't even rally around the flag overseas or something like that and we're tired of all of that that used to i used to work that used to work and then the question is whether or not you know all of the all of the businesses who are highly incentivized to not allow a civil war because their profit margins depend on it can can do anything to kind of mitigate mitigate it but at this point it's it's it's uh i think it's so unpredictable so the only thing you can do um in my mind is you know there's a verse in isaiah where it says um talking about god he will be the stability of your times he will be the instability of your time or he will be the stability of your times so when you're living in unstable times where there's this high degree of unpredictability and everybody is on edge like you know leaning forward um and everybody's ready with you know the pitchforks um and and it's just crackling um the only hope there for the christian who feels that anxiety rising is to go and say god knows he's the stability of our times let's be faithful where we're planted not not be faithful everywhere we're not planted right let's be faithful where we're planted in our church in our community loving our real neighbors not not getting involved and getting lost in the in the interweb um let's love our real neighbors well and stop being empathetic with them and stop empathizing with them that's right love them well preach the gospel and pray for that that that rain pray for the gospel to fall it seems to me that men are if i would turn to address the men about all this that we've been talking about i would have to break it out into i've got good news and bad news okay okay um the good news is that you don't have to be empathetic because they didn't want to anyway right yeah but the reason that men don't want to be empathetic is they don't want to be sympathetic either right they don't have compassion right so um the bible tells husbands to love their wives it tells wives to respect their husbands and i've believed for a long time that this is this these uh differentiated commands are given to us for a reason wives need to be loved husbands need to be respected men and women run on different kinds of fuel that's right they run diesel and regular and so and so wives need to be loved husbands need to be respected but also god commands to our weaknesses husbands are told to love their wives because generally speaking husbands are not that good at good at it uh wives are told to respect their husbands because generally speaking wives are not that good by nature that's not but given sin given the brokenness the fall right that's not our natural bet that's right and and since we have to get c.s lewis in here again i can't talk to you without getting him that's what we do twice um lewis says that uh men tend to define love as not giving trouble to others and women define it as taking trouble for others right and the woman's definition of love is closer to the biblical model christ took trouble for us right right okay so um women are better at loving men are better at respecting and so god tells men to love which means that they have to be all in sympathizing right men have to be tender compassionate loving sympathetic and they should think of empathy they should hear that word like someone said bone cancer right right that's right so i would say empathy is the parasitic version of sympathy so it's a knockoff it's it's what sympathy looks like when it goes bad right and and so there ought to be for for men um whether it's in your home whether it's in your workplace whether it's out as you're engaging um on on social media or whatever whatever your context is you ought to be mindful of the subtle ways that you're being manipulated by demands for empathy right and you ought to every time it happens you ought to find some way to resist it right right it can't you don't let don't be steered by the demand for empathy instead actually show compassion right actually lean in with help don't don't get stuck um twisting in the wind as you try to conform to whatever the latest and grievances that last thing you said this thing you said there about actually showing compassion is what keeps you from veering into the other ditch because if people if you if you refuse to show empathy then it's going to be about five minutes before people are accusing you of being the king of the jerks right heartless your heart you're heartless you're right the king of the jerks and when people start pounding you for being a jerk you're a jerk you're a jerk you're a jerk at some point some men are going to think well if i'm going to be hanged for a thief i might as well steal something right right that's right and so they veer off and they say okay okay i'll be a jerk that's right right deal with it deal with it and that's um that res oftentimes when men go that way again the the mgtow movement the men going their own way yeah it's just bitterness and resentment see them boiling over right you're going to call me i've been i've been trying to be masculine i've been trying to provide i've been trying to lead i've been trying to do and i've been slapped down slapped down slapped and finally right never mind and and what's interesting about both of those responses is both of them are actually very unmanly right they're both driven by a kind of um refusal to take up the mantle of responsibility first for yourself so when i'm my my my basic exhortation to guys when they're in situations like this is always you're first responsible for you and not getting sucked in then the second thing is you're going to try to help your wife also not get sucked in and then from there you're going to try to help your family not get sucked in and from there you're going to try to help your church and and so forth so but but you can't you cannot export what you don't have you can't help them if you yourself are part of the problem well if a man doesn't manage his household well right how can he how can he lead in the church of john the man in church of god and so the fundamental call in in the present moment is not mainly for guys to figure out whether or not you know you know so we it's it's it's it's interesting to speculate about whether we're going to end in a kind of uh christ sacrificial crisis with civil war and blood but the fundamental thing for an individual man is are you taking responsibility for yourself and then having done so are you taking responsibility for those who are under your immediate care be a man there right and and then and then trust the rest of god so masculinity without permission is not chewing tobacco or getting a navy seals henna tattoo no no taking responsibility where you are where you are for what god has given to you well joe thank you very much yeah my pleasure [Music] you

Channel: Canon Press

Views: 54,060

Rating: 4.6434541 out of 5

Keywords: canon press, douglas wilson, doug wilson, bible, joe rigney, empathy, sympathy, empathetic, counseling, christian counseling, edwin friedman, rene girard, Biblical, Christian, interview, podcast, video podcast, moscow idaho, blog and mablog, christian, christ church, pastor, moscow, theology, christianity and politics, christian speakers, bible study, left wing, right wing, leftist, politics, liberal, conservative christian, christianity, interviews, black lives matter, joe rigney interview

Id: 6i9a3Rfd7yI

Length: 67min 46sec (4066 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 18 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/LittlehouseonTHELAND]

I mean, if there’s anything I know it’s that Jesus definitely hated empathy! He was always going out of his way to show he had zero empathy for the poor, and the sick, and the otherwise marginalized. If I remember my Bible correctly, sometimes he’d see a leper and just randomly yell “Nope, zero empathy! Not today loser!”, because you can’t have the lepers getting all uppity and wanting to be treated like actual people with rights and stuff.*

/s

*Sorry for the rant but stuff like this just makes me sick, do they even know what Jesus was actually like?? Have they ever even read the Bible?

[u/snorkel1446]

So they claim to follow Christ, but think one of Christ’s biggest personality traits is a sin. To borrow a phrase from Birthy:

“Like, why even call yourself a Christian?”

[u/bluefl0werz]

I don’t have the desire to watch this, (I’ll get too annoyed/angry), why do they claim that empathy is a sin? (If anyone else was brave enough to watch it, can you high level it?).

[u/huxley0721]

Douglas Wilson is a joke. He didn’t even go to seminary and has no theological training. He started a church that’s basically an independent Presbyterian church, that is centered around him.

[u/Anzu-taketwo]

"And some have compassion, making a difference" was a verse preached pretty often even at my IFB church

[u/glittergod1002]

Rigney (the bald one) wrote two C.S. Lewis fan-fiction articles on the sin of empathy. I refuse to take him seriously.

[u/bbino14]

How do they even form this opinion...........

[u/Pflaumenmus101]

Maybe it makes sense in a twisted way? They seem to not have empathy, became aware of it and now they declare it as something biblical.