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Speaker 1: The Michael Arry Show. I came across something I found

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Speaker 1: to be very interesting by a fellow I did not

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Speaker 1: know of before, by the name of doctor Joe Rigney.

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Speaker 1: And he's a fellow of theology at New Saint Andrew's

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Speaker 1: College and a pastor at Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho.

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Speaker 1: He's the author of eight books. But what caught my

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Speaker 1: attention is a book that he's published this year called

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Speaker 1: The Sin of Empathy. And I saw that and I

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Speaker 1: gave it a great deal of thought because it is

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Speaker 1: you've heard my theory on the naive neighbor that our

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Speaker 1: greatest challenge is not the people who want to destroy

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Speaker 1: our society. There have always been those people. Our challenge

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Speaker 1: is the naive neighbor who will allow the trojan horse

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Speaker 1: inside their home until it's too late to defend it.

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Speaker 1: He's also written Leadership and Emotional Sabotage and more, eight

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Speaker 1: books I believe in total, and it seemed like a

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Speaker 1: great person to have on our show. You know, I

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Speaker 1: don't do very many guests, but when someone offering proffering

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Speaker 1: a theory or a position or an experience that I

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Speaker 1: think is interesting to me, I share it with you.

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Speaker 1: So Joe Rigney, Welcome to the program.

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Speaker 2: Hey, thanks for having me.

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Speaker 1: So let's talk about the sin of empathy. You caught

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Speaker 1: my attention. I have a naive neighbor theory that I

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Speaker 1: pause it often, and I think they're probably at least

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Speaker 1: some overlap in that venn diagram.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's probably right. It is a provocative title.

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Speaker 2: So I'm glad it did catch your attention, and it's

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Speaker 2: getting it. The idea that virtues, when they become untethered

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Speaker 2: and on bored from truth and reality and what is good,

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Speaker 2: become highly destructive. And we see this in a whole

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Speaker 2: host of different ways. But I think that compassion, which

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Speaker 2: is a virtue, something that modeled for us by Christ,

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Speaker 2: it's core to the Christian faith, is a really glorious virtue.

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Speaker 2: But one of the things I learned from C. S.

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Speaker 2: Lewis many years.

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Speaker 3: Ago is that when love becomes a god, meaning when

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Speaker 3: a human love, a natural love, becomes a god, it

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Speaker 3: becomes a demon and it destroys everything.

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Speaker 2: In its path. And Lewis, of course illustrated this in

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Speaker 2: a number of ways with things like mother love. We

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Speaker 2: are all familiar with mother love is a good thing,

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Speaker 2: but mother love can become possessive, suffocating. It can coddle

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Speaker 2: rather than help people grow up. It can keep them

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Speaker 2: in an infantile state. And so mother love, when it's

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Speaker 2: not governed by what is true and good and right,

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Speaker 2: becomes destructive. Lewis illustrated this in a number of different ways.

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Speaker 2: What I began to see over the last fifteen years

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Speaker 2: or so, and I was helped in this by a

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Speaker 2: number of other authors, was that compassion was undergoing the

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Speaker 2: same kind of transformation. But the difference here was that

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Speaker 2: compassion people often presented a new word, a sort of

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Speaker 2: upgraded compassion, which they called empathy. Empathy was supposed to

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Speaker 2: be an improvement on the old Christian virtue of sympathy

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Speaker 2: or compassion, and in the process, the way that it

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Speaker 2: was described was a sort of total immersion in the

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Speaker 2: feelings and pain and suffering of others. And the danger

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Speaker 2: that I saw was if you do that, if you

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Speaker 2: totally immerse yourself in the feelings and pains and sufferings

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Speaker 2: of others, you can lose touch with reality. You can

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Speaker 2: get swept off your feet. So I often use the

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Speaker 2: illustration if you see someone drowning in quicksand apathy, which

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Speaker 2: is a bad response, would just turn around and walk

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Speaker 2: the other way, much like the guy in the Good

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Speaker 2: Smaritan parable who walks along on the other side of

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Speaker 2: the road. The proper response is to reach in with

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Speaker 2: one hand and hold on to them and then hold

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Speaker 2: on to the shore, beget a you know, grab a

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Speaker 2: branch on the other side in order to help them

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Speaker 2: get out of the pit. But what empathy demands is

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Speaker 2: you need to jump in here with me. And now

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Speaker 2: you have two people drowning.

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Speaker 1: Right, Joe Rigney, I am so glad you used that example,

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Speaker 1: because it is an example I don't claim, and it's

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Speaker 1: been around for a long time that I have used often,

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Speaker 1: and that I imagine of sometimes helping someone does not

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Speaker 1: include sharing their heroin addiction or sharing the little bit

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Speaker 1: of money you've saved with them so they can use

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Speaker 1: it on their heroin addiction. You're helping both of you drown.

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Speaker 1: I think that is such a perfect, perfect analogy, and

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Speaker 1: analogies can be so incredibly powerful. Let me take a

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Speaker 1: step back and ask you, as pastor at Christ Church

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Speaker 1: in Moscow, Idaho, and a fellow theology at the New

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Speaker 1: Saint Andrew's College, how did you get interested in this

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Speaker 1: particular issue, because so often members of the clergy preach

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Speaker 1: that love will handle all, love will conquer all. Just love, love, love,

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Speaker 1: And this is a very I'm glad that you quoted C. S. Lewis,

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Speaker 1: because I think that is a next level Christian author

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Speaker 1: and his theology which appeals a great deal to me.

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Speaker 1: It's very rational theology. And obviously he was such a

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Speaker 1: proficient and wonderful writer. But talk to me about how

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Speaker 1: you got into this.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I was teaching classes on leadership at a Christian

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Speaker 2: college and I read a book by a Jewish Rabbi

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Speaker 2: named Edwin Friedman, a book called A Failure of Nerve,

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Speaker 2: and he talked a lot of it's the basis it's

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Speaker 2: one of the key themes in my book, Leadership and

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Speaker 2: Emotional Sabotage. I essentially plunder Freedman among others, in order

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Speaker 2: to put them in a more Christian framework and describe

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Speaker 2: the challenges of leadership in our anxious, angsty, agitated world.

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Speaker 2: But one of the dangers that Friedman highlighted in particular

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Speaker 2: was the danger of empathy. And he noted this this way,

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Speaker 2: that empathy often was a disguise. It became a power

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Speaker 2: tool in the hands of the sensitive. That was his phrase,

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Speaker 2: a power tool in the hands of the sensitive, where

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Speaker 2: whole communities were expected to adapt to the most reactive, immature,

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Speaker 2: and destructive members of the community. And if anyone said,

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Speaker 2: you know, I don't think this is a good idea.

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Speaker 2: I don't think that we should be caddling this. I

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Speaker 2: think that that's an unacceptable way to behave. The person

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Speaker 2: who was having demanding responsibility was the person who would

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Speaker 2: get policed by, in your phrase, the naive neighbors. The

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Speaker 2: naive neighbors would actually exert the pressure on the people

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Speaker 2: attempting to draw lines and boundaries, rather than call the

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Speaker 2: person who's immature and reactive to take responsibility for themselves.

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Speaker 2: And he said that this was done under the banner

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Speaker 2: of empathy. And I read that found it helpful. And

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Speaker 2: then it seemed to me that over the last I

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Speaker 2: don't know, ten or fifteen years, American culture conspired to

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Speaker 2: prove Freedman's point.

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Speaker 1: Hold that, all right, let's get into examples. Coming up,

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Speaker 1: Doctor Joe Rigney, the sin of empathy subject quite person,

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Speaker 1: Doctor Joe Gigney, as our guests, he is the pastor

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Speaker 1: at Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho. Author of eight books.

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Speaker 1: The one that caught my attention is the sin of empathy.

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Speaker 1: And I think that we've seen that sin individually, and

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Speaker 1: I think we've seen it writ large, the idea I'm

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Speaker 1: going to say things that he might not agree with.

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Speaker 1: I'm going to offer my perspective. I'm not putting words

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Speaker 1: in his mouth. I think the sin of empathy dragged

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Speaker 1: us down the path of mass scale illegal immigration. I

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Speaker 1: think the sin of empathy dragged us into the sous

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Speaker 1: sorrows owned district attorneys who were putting murderers back out

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Speaker 1: on the street with a recognizance bond, and they're committing

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Speaker 1: more murders. We've just seen this in Houston multiple times

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Speaker 1: in the last month. They're committing more murders while they're

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Speaker 1: waiting for the trial of their own because we don't

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Speaker 1: want to believe that people are bad. The sin of

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Speaker 1: empathy a lack of consequences, a lack of accountability. We

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Speaker 1: see it in parenting, where you see parents that cannot

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Speaker 1: tell their child no, parents that cannot say you can't

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Speaker 1: do this, or there are going to be consequences when

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Speaker 1: you do this. We see the sin of empathy in

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Speaker 1: saying that nobody should be fired even if they show

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Speaker 1: up drunk or do whatever else. I think this sin

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Speaker 1: of empathy has overtaken our culture and made us a

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Speaker 1: weak people and made us a vulnerable people, and I

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Speaker 1: think that is very dangerous. Doctor Joe Rigney, I don't

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Speaker 1: know how much, if any of my examples you agree with,

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Speaker 1: but i'd be curious to though.

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Speaker 2: Yes, I think you gave a number of very excellent

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Speaker 2: examples in which maybe I would add a few. I

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Speaker 2: think that the entire what we now call wokeness, the

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Speaker 2: entire diversity, equity inclusion complex that sort of institutionalized in

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Speaker 2: an American society, basically gave us what I affectionately call

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Speaker 2: the victimhood Olympics, where people began to compete to see

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Speaker 2: who could be the greatest victim, because under an empathetic mindset,

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Speaker 2: when an untethered empathy mindset, the greatest victim sets the

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Speaker 2: agenda for the entire community, and everybody is expected to

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Speaker 2: reorganize all of society around them. Of course, other examples

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Speaker 2: would be things like Obergefel and the push for so

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Speaker 2: called gay marriage, and then now we've seen where that

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Speaker 2: has led even farther into the trans movement, which demands

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Speaker 2: that people's feelings kim trump biological reality, and that all

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Speaker 2: of society would They just passed a bill in Colorado

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Speaker 2: which you know, ascribes penalties for those who would mis

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Speaker 2: gender someone who would not use the preferred pronouns or

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Speaker 2: the name that deranged individuals want to use and that

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Speaker 2: they intend to use to catechize and groom vulnerable children

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Speaker 2: into castrating themselves. So those, all of this kind of

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Speaker 2: demented mentality was enabled and empowered by this untethered empathy,

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Speaker 2: and it did so I'll quote C. S. Lewis once again, Lewis,

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Speaker 2: and this applies on things to a number of the

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Speaker 2: examples you gave about progressive cities, in the way that

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Speaker 2: they empathy for criminals trump safety for citizens and the

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Speaker 2: legal immigration. Lewis once wrote that mercy this is a

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Speaker 2: similar principle. Mercy detached from justice grows unmerciful. It's a

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Speaker 2: paradox because he says, as there are certain plants which

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Speaker 2: flourish only in mountain soil. Mercy will flower only when

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Speaker 2: it grows in the crannies of the rock of justice.

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Speaker 2: When you transplant it to the marshlands of humanitarianism. It

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Speaker 2: becomes a man eating weed, and it's all the more

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Speaker 2: dangerous because it's still called by the name of the

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Speaker 2: mountain variety. So when mercy is detached from justice, everybody says,

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Speaker 2: isn't mercy a great thing? And you want to say,

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Speaker 2: of course it does. Of course it is. The Bible

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Speaker 2: teaches mercy everywhere. God is merciful and gracious to us.

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Speaker 2: But his mercy is tethered to his justice. His mercy

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Speaker 2: and justice meet together, in fact, in the cross of

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Speaker 2: Jesus Christ.

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Speaker 1: But from justice, I may interject. The great economist and philosopher,

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Speaker 1: the scotsmen who in seventeen seventy six wrote The Wealth

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Speaker 1: of Nations, famously said, mercy to the guilty is cruelty

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Speaker 1: to the innocent. So mercy without consequences is cruelty to

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Speaker 1: the innocent. And I've seen that happen so many times.

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Speaker 1: I love what you're talking about. This is fantastic. Keep going,

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Speaker 1: I interrupted.

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Speaker 2: You, No, that's fine. And so Lewis's notion, though, is

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Speaker 2: that mercy, when it's detached from justice, grows unmerciful because

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Speaker 2: it becomes this man eating and destructive weed, and people

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Speaker 2: don't recognize that. Your naive neighbor thinks, oh, this is

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Speaker 2: just mercy. I'm called to be merciful. The Bible tells

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Speaker 2: me to be merciful, and it does. But the biblical

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Speaker 2: mercy has hard edges. It's anchored in what is true

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Speaker 2: and what is good. It's anchored to God. This was

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Speaker 2: Lewis's entire point, saying, when our passions, when our emotions

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Speaker 2: are in submission to God, when they obey God, they're good.

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Speaker 2: They help human beings to flourish. But when we cut

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Speaker 2: them off off from God, when we cut them off

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Speaker 2: from reality, they become highly destructive. And we're swept away

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Speaker 2: by our passions. And one of the ironic things I

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Speaker 2: think that people don't appreciate. You'll hear people these days

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Speaker 2: say things like we live in such a cruel age.

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Speaker 2: There's cruelty everywhere, and they say we need more empathy.

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Speaker 2: And I actually want to argue, and I think there's

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Speaker 2: other social scientists that are actually bearing this out regularly,

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Speaker 2: that it's actually the most empathetic who are the most cruel.

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Speaker 2: And again Lewis was helpful for me to understand this.

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Speaker 2: He went to He again wrote that a good emotion

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Speaker 2: like pity, if not controlled by charity and the moral law,

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Speaker 2: by charity and justice, he says, leads through anger to cruelty.

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Speaker 2: And if you think about it, you can think about

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Speaker 2: the way that pity, say for the so called oppressed classes, leads,

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Speaker 2: by a very natural process, to a reign of terror.

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Speaker 2: You have pity for this group, and therefore you hate.

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Speaker 2: They're oppressors, and they're oppressors. May be real oppressors, or

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Speaker 2: they may be so called alleged oppressors. But it's amazing

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Speaker 2: how much cruelty you can do in the name of pity, empathy,

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Speaker 2: and compassion, because your emotions are in the driver's seat.

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Speaker 2: They are the thing that is leading the way rather

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Speaker 2: than what is true and what is good and what

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Speaker 2: is right.

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Speaker 1: I like it. I like it a great deal. How

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Speaker 1: do you think we got into this state? Do you

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Speaker 1: think people just really wanted to do the right thing

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Speaker 1: and they lost touch that the right thing is not

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Speaker 1: always the easy thing. Because I often say of parenting,

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Speaker 1: when we have to make a tough decision with our kids,

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Speaker 1: and it's silly little things, you know. We have to

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Speaker 1: give up your phone a certain hour every night. It's

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Speaker 1: a different hour for each of the kids, and sometimes

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Speaker 1: one or the other, you know, wouldn't like it, And

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Speaker 1: my wife would say, you know it, really, I think

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Speaker 1: he feels like we don't trust him, And I would say, love,

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Speaker 1: If being a good parent was easy, everybody would do it.

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Speaker 1: You're sticking to the rules. Now he's handing over the phone,

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Speaker 1: and I think that's part of it. To me, I

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Speaker 1: think that's a big part of it.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. Well for over one,

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Speaker 2: you know, pity party are as old as dirt. I

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Speaker 2: think that Adam and Eve coming out of that garden

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Speaker 2: immediately sought to manipulate each other by pity. And anybody

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Speaker 2: who's done on the receiving end of a guilt trip

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Speaker 2: knows the temptation of the sin of empathy, where you're

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Speaker 2: tempted because someone is putting on a sad face or

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Speaker 2: pretending to be a martyr, to indulge them and coddle

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Speaker 2: them and refuse to call them to take responsibility for themselves.

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Speaker 2: So this is a universal human phenomenon. What's different is

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Speaker 2: that in a Christian society, I think that people discovered

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Speaker 2: it was a very potent weapon to get their way,

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Speaker 2: became a very palpable tool of social manipulation, and then

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Speaker 2: it was institutionalized, I think particularly by the left, because compassion,

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Speaker 2: at least in our society is a what you might

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Speaker 2: call a left coded virtue. It's one that people associate

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Speaker 2: with us. So what they did was they were able

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Speaker 2: to define a good biblical virtue but use their own definitions.

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Speaker 2: To be empathetic or compassionate to someone means that you

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Speaker 2: must affirm everything that they think, you must agree with

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Speaker 2: everything that they say. You can't question or challenge them

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Speaker 2: based on any moral standards. So it was an emotion

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Speaker 2: that was detached from a moral framework in doing, and

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Speaker 2: then certain groups were elevated as worthy objects of them passion,

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Speaker 2: and other groups were ignored. That's one of the other

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Speaker 2: things about hold there.

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Speaker 1: We're gonna discuss it out with doctor Joe Rigney coming

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Speaker 1: up the sin of empathy. We'll get to his next

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Speaker 1: book after that, Leadership and Emotional Sabatine.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. So one of the things about untethered empathy, when

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Speaker 2: it's an excessive empathy, is it becomes highly myopic. Certain

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Speaker 2: groups are judged to be worthy of empathy. So you

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Speaker 2: can think about the way that over the last day,

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Speaker 2: ten or fifteen years so called oppressed groups, whether it's

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Speaker 2: minorities or the LGBTQ or illegal immigrants, the compassion for

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Speaker 2: them demands that we reorganize society around their felt needs

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Speaker 2: and desires and agendas, whereas others who may be equally

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Speaker 2: suffering can be safely ignored. Is because empathy acts like

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Speaker 2: a spotlight. It highlights certain people rather than others, and

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Speaker 2: I think a clear example of this often shows up

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Speaker 2: in our debates about abortion. So frequently the way that

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Speaker 2: abortion is justified is compassion or empathy for a woman

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Speaker 2: in desperate circumstances. Maybe she's poor, maybe she's single and

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Speaker 2: she's unmarried, or maybe in the worst case scenarios. You

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Speaker 2: see political advertisements to this effect. Say she was raped,

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Speaker 2: and therefore she's put forward as an object of compassion

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Speaker 2: and empathy. And if she was raped, she absolutely is.

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Speaker 2: But what gets lost is compassion for her means that

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Speaker 2: we are now free to terminate her unplanned pregnancy, or

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Speaker 2: to terminate a fetus, which is a dehumanizing way to

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Speaker 2: refer to her unborn child, and so compassion for her

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Speaker 2: means indifference and even cruelty to her unborn child. Because

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Speaker 2: our empathy becomes myopic, we focus only on one person

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Speaker 2: rather than the needs of all. In fact, we frequently

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Speaker 2: will focus on the immediate feeling of the person who's

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Speaker 2: hurting rather than their long term good. And again the

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Speaker 2: trans movement provides a perfect example. I have no doubt

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Speaker 2: that someone who feels that they are in the wrong

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Speaker 2: body undergoes a lot of psychological distress, emotional distress, and

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Speaker 2: I would like to help them, but it does not

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Speaker 2: help them. To castrate them, or to mutilate them, or

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Speaker 2: to put them on puberty blockers. That's not the way

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Speaker 2: to help. But it's an attempt to relieve what they

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Speaker 2: say is their immediate feelings rather than looking at their

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Speaker 2: long term good and the good of society. And so

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Speaker 2: I think these are different ways that empathy kind of

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Speaker 2: narrows our focus. It becomes myopic, and therefore enables us

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Speaker 2: to do things that are highly, highly destructive.

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Speaker 1: What's the answer to that? In short, what is the

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Speaker 1: answer writ large? You know, not just for I guess

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Speaker 1: it's where a collection of individuals. But how do we

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Speaker 1: change this?

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Speaker 2: Yeah? I think one of the ways is you must

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Speaker 2: all of your emotions must become obedient We know this

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Speaker 2: with every other emotion. Everybody knows that if you let

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Speaker 2: your anger guide you in every decision, that you're probably

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Speaker 2: going to be led into some pretty bad places. If

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Speaker 2: you let your desires, say, your sexual desires lead you,

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Speaker 2: and they lead the way, you're going to be led

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Speaker 2: to some pretty dark places. The same thing is true here.

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Speaker 2: Our emotions must be tethered to what is true. They

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Speaker 2: have to be on a leash, and they need to

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Speaker 2: be And I think, and I'm a Christian, I think

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Speaker 2: they need to be tethered to Christ. I think Christ

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Speaker 2: must be the anchor for all of our emotions, and

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Speaker 2: when he is, we're actually freed to use them in

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Speaker 2: the way that God intended us to use them. Our

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Speaker 2: compassion becomes in service of people's ultimate good, and therefore

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Speaker 2: we're able to act wisely and to actually help relieve

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Speaker 2: the problems, rather than simply make them worse by emoting

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Speaker 2: into them and so tethering our compassion, anchoring it to

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Speaker 2: what is true and what is good, having them be

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Speaker 2: governed by our reason and not let loose. That would

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Speaker 2: be the fundamental thing that all of us should do

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Speaker 2: as individuals and in our homes. As you're talking about

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Speaker 2: with parenting, but also that we should expect as we

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Speaker 2: form our nation's laws and seek to the good of society.

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Speaker 1: It's interesting because it's not all butterflies and rainbows. It's

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Speaker 1: tough decisions with consequences. Whether that's being a pastor of

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Speaker 1: a church or the head of household, or a parent

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Speaker 1: in the household, or a teacher or a coach. It's

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Speaker 1: not all just you know, complements and kindness. There there

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Speaker 1: has to be reasoned, difficult decisions and conversations. And we

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Speaker 1: want it to be so easy. We want it to

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Speaker 1: I see parents who I think are raising little terrors

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Speaker 1: because their child can never do anything wrong. Their child

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Speaker 1: is so wonderful. And then when the child does begin

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Speaker 1: acting out and finding there are guardrails in society the

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Speaker 1: child has, it's it's the officer's fault, it's the teacher's fault.

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Speaker 1: It's always someone else's fault because their child is such

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Speaker 1: an angel. And I think to myself, you are setting

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Speaker 1: your child up for incredible failure and suffering by doing this.

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Speaker 1: It's so easy to do. But we talked about the

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Speaker 1: sin of love, and you mentioned mother love at the

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Speaker 1: very beginning of the show. And I see it by

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Speaker 1: people with the best of intentions. I see it all

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Speaker 1: the time.

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Speaker 2: That's that's absolute right. And actually those examples you just gave,

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Speaker 2: do you know, come up quite nicely in Leadership and

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Speaker 2: Emotional Sabotage, the other book that you mentioned, Because.

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Speaker 1: Then why don't why don't you finish this answer and

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Speaker 1: we'll pivot to that.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, let's let's do that. So in that book, I'm

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Speaker 2: talking about the sort of agitation and angst that we

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Speaker 2: see around us, the sense that that our culture is

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Speaker 2: sitting on a powder keg, that there's this gas in

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Speaker 2: the air and somebody's gonna light a match and the

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Speaker 2: whole thing is going to blow up. And we know

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Speaker 2: that our social media amplifies this, but there seems like

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Speaker 2: there's something deeply volatile in our society. And what I

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Speaker 2: argue in the book is this is the result of

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Speaker 2: a failure of nerve, a an abdication among leaders. And

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Speaker 2: I actually draw this back. In fact, then the examples

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Speaker 2: you were using just then mirror very well the fundamental

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Speaker 2: story in the Bible in Genesis chapter three, when Adam

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Speaker 2: and Eve rebel against God because there's a sort of

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Speaker 2: three step process that they go through as they move

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Speaker 2: from a situation of paradise to being kicked out of

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Speaker 2: God's sanctuary, and it begins with abdication. Adam was charged

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Speaker 2: to guard this garden, that was the task that God

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Speaker 2: gave to him, and instead of guarding it from this

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Speaker 2: serpent who is blaspheming his God and questioning his wife,

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Speaker 2: Adam remains silent. He's passive. He abdicates, and he lets

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Speaker 2: the serpent lead the way. And then when he's faced

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Speaker 2: with the moment of choice, that abdication leads him to rebel.

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Speaker 2: He seizes the fruit that he was told not to

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Speaker 2: eat from. He listens to the voice of his wife,

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Speaker 2: who offers it to him. He chooses her over God.

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Speaker 2: This is the Bible's term for this is idolatry. So

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Speaker 2: his abdication and passivity leads idolatry. But then when he's

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Speaker 2: called to account, when God comes and says, what have

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Speaker 2: you done? Adam immediately points fingers at other people. He says,

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Speaker 2: the woman that you gave me. And I think this

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Speaker 2: is somewhat comical because there are three people in existence

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Speaker 2: at this point, There's God, Adam, and Eve. And Adam's

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Speaker 2: position is it's everybody's fault but mine.

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