In recent months, books with titles like Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion and The Sin of Empathy: Compassion and Its Counterfeits have appeared on bestseller lists, their arguments circulating through pulpits and podcasts. One warns that “we cannot let empathy make us stupid.” Another declares empathy “the greatest rhetorical tool of manipulation in the 21st century.” The thesis is consistent: empathy has become dangerous to the Christian faith.
At one level, the concerns of these authors deserve serious consideration. Christians should not be naïve. Discernment matters. Truth matters.
But something more troubling than theological disagreement is happening. A rising meanness has clothed itself in theological language. Callousness is reframed as conviction. Compassion for the vulnerable is a mark of weakness.
Let’s be clear about what this costs us.
The logical effect of this theology is monstrous. Care less. Feel less. Weep less for others. Scripture has a name for one whose heart hardens in the face of human suffering: Pharaoh. He heard the cries of the enslaved and felt nothing.
God heard their cries and moved toward them in compassion. This is the recurring pattern of biblical narrative. God prefers mercy over ritual. God is encountered not in triumph but in vulnerability. The arc of scripture bends consistently toward empathy. To attack empathy is to assault the imago Dei in one another. To turn from compassion doesn’t merely fail to grasp our human calling — it fundamentally misrepresents the character of God.
Where in the Gospels does Jesus caution his followers against caring too much? You can look. You won’t find it.
Instead, he instructs: love your neighbor as yourself. He commands: just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. He demonstrates the way: drawing near to suffering, washing the feet of his companions. At no point does he put a cap on human empathy.
The grammar of resurrection
Lazarus had been dead for four days, the tomb already bearing the stench of decomposition. There was no remedy within human reach.
Jesus arrives. Mary falls at his feet. “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
What follows is instructive. Not the miracle. Not yet.
First, Jesus wept.
He entered fully into grief for his friend. Theologian Hanna Reichel poses a question in For Such a Time as This: An Emergency Devotional that cuts to the heart of this moment. “If Jesus hadn’t wept for him, how could he have brought him back to life?”
There is no bypass around the descent, no shortcut that avoids the breaking. The way up is always down.
When I read Reichel’s rhetorical question, it struck me with the force of revelation. What if Jesus could not call Lazarus forth without first descending into his own grief? What if the tears were not mere emotional response but theological necessity? What if Jesus had to allow death to break his heart before he could break its power?
This pattern reveals the grammar of resurrection. Incarnation precedes glory. Descent precedes rising. Tears before new life.
Jesus in the tomb for three days. Jonah in the belly of the whale. Israel exiled in Babylon. The pattern is consistent — God doesn’t rescue us from suffering but through it. There is no bypass around the descent, no shortcut that avoids the breaking. The way up is always down.
This is the way of God in Scripture.
Jesus did not bypass the tomb — he entered it.
He did not avoid tears — he experienced them.
Only then, from within that posture of grief, does he speak life. Without the weeping, there can be no raising.
We cannot claim to follow a Christ who descended into death while maintaining a safe distance from suffering. We cannot claim allegiance to Christ while refusing to do what he did. We cannot worship a God who wept at the tomb while simultaneously dismissing weeping as weakness.
We can follow Jesus to the place where hearts break or follow a theology of ruthless power. But don’t call that the way of Christ.
The fear behind the resistance
I understand the fear driving this anti-empathy theology. Those who warn against empathy worry that undiscerning compassion becomes enabling. That empathy without wisdom collapses moral categories. That we’ll be manipulated by those who would exploit our good intentions.
Empathy is not the abandonment of discernment. It is the refusal to discern from a distance.
These are real concerns, but they fundamentally misunderstand what empathy is. Empathy is not the abandonment of discernment. It is the refusal to discern from a distance. It is the strength that maintains presence with another in crisis. It is the willingness to let another’s suffering break your heart before you speak into their life.
The critics are afraid empathy will compromise truth. But what compromises truth is the refusal to let truth be embodied, to let it take on flesh and dwell among us, to let it cost us something.
When hearts remember
For decades, a small group of men in my previous congregation gathered on Thursday mornings to cook breakfast and pray together. Ted, an elder, attended faithfully for as long as his health permitted. When driving became impossible, he walked from his nearby home.
Ted lived with advancing dementia that gradually eroded his memory. Shortly after his diagnosis, he arrived one Thursday and prayed aloud, “Dear God, my memory is failing, and I’m afraid. I’m afraid that I won’t recognize my friends or remember their names.”
Silence.
Ed sat across the table, next in line to pray. He could have offered reassurance that minimized the reality. He could have redirected the conversation. He did neither. Ed sat present to his friend’s fear. When he began to pray, his voice broke. “Father God, please help Ted to know that even if he forgets who we are, we will remember who he is. And so will you.”
Empathy is not weakness. It is the strength that maintains presence with a friend in crisis. It is the witness of unguarded tears. It is the heart of our covenantal relationship with one another.
The cry of the stranger
At Second Presbyterian Church in Indianapolis, our food pantry serves more than 900 families monthly. As I write, staff are preparing for more demand than they have encountered in years. More acute need. More food insecurity. More neighbors uncertain about their next meal. Systems designed to protect the most vulnerable face significant disruption. Programs are being dismantled. Essential workers go unpaid.
So, what do we do? We expand capacity. We prepare for increased demand. We meet each person with dignity and, yes, empathy.
The cry of the stranger is not an inconvenience but a summons.
Meanwhile, prominent Christian voices – in published works and from pulpits – characterize empathy as dangerous. Even toxic. They argue it compromises doctrinal conviction, rewards those deemed undeserving, and renders its practitioners gullible.
That is the bitter fruit of a false gospel. The church must reject the assertion that our neighbor’s need falls outside our moral responsibility. The cry of the stranger is not an inconvenience but a summons. Scripture is very clear on this point. Theirs is the voice of God.
By God’s grace, we possess capacity to respond. By God’s word, we are compelled to respond. This is where Jesus positions himself—at the tomb, weeping, before calling us to life.
We are witnessing what might be called an eclipse of empathy. Hearts harden and call it strength. Compassion is mocked. Cruelty is cast as entertainment. The refusal to feel or care is valorized.
The church must reject the assertion that our neighbor’s need falls outside our moral responsibility. The cry of the stranger is not an inconvenience but a summons.
But eclipses are optical illusions. The light still shines. The church’s calling is to shine, too, not to grow comfortable in the shadow.
You can be certain of your theology and still have a heart of stone. You can quote chapter and verse while feeling nothing for the people God loves. You can do it. But you’ll miss Jesus, standing outside the tomb, weeping for his friend.
Lazarus heard his name and walked into the light. But first, Jesus wept.
Without weeping, there is no raising.
This essay is adapted from “The Eclipse of Empathy,” a sermon preached on All Saints’ Sunday 2025.
