Is Empathy a Sin?

A Review of The Sin of Empathy

As a minister, I often share in the lives of people during both occasions of excitement and significant challenges. Such sharing is a sacred duty that I never take for granted. I have married couples, offered prayers of blessing over newborn children, baptized new believers, and enjoyed dinners as a guest at many tables. Besides hospital visits and funerals, I have walked with victims of abuse, taken people to rehab centers, helped the homeless find shelter, and listened as people shared stories of suffering that go beyond what words can describe. I have also lived with the grief and pain of losing a son twenty-three years ago.

One thing I have learned over time is the importance of empathy. The ability to emotionally connect with people to understand and feel what they are living with is as essential as sympathy or compassion. Am I wrong? Some may think so. Does Joe Rigney?

Published in 2024 by Canon Press in Moscow, Idaho, is The Sin of Empathy: Compassion and Its Counterfeits, by Joe Rigney. The book is short, consisting of only 141 pages. Besides the forward and introduction, the book has six chapters and two appendices. Though Rigney uses footnotes for citations, this is not an academic work intended only for scholars and professionals in the Christian ministry field. The author states in the introduction that he has written this book as a pastor rather than a scholar. Therefore, the book should be easy for nearly anyone to read.

I appreciate that this book, written by a pastor, is accessible to a broad audience. At a time of increasing confusion about what it means to live as a Christian, we need books accessible to all Christians. Such accessibility matters when it comes to considering a subject like empathy, since every Christian is responsible for bearing the burdens of others (cf. Gal 6:2). Yet the author clearly takes issue with empathy as a Christian practice, or at least a particular understanding of empathy that he views as wrong.

The issue in this book is what the author describes as “untethered empathy,” or the sin of empathy. Emathy is understood by the author as a sin when it “dives in to connect with the sufferer, but loses touch with the shore” (p. 15). It is an empathy that involves the suspension of judgment, which means a complete and uncritical agreement with the sufferer at the expense of the Christian Faith. That is, to empathize, the author believes that Christians are expected to sacrifice virtue by failing to steward biblical convictions faithfully. But is this really the case?

In the first chapter, Rigney cites a video clip of Brené Brown with over 22 million views as an example of untethered empathy. In the video, Brown references a nursing scholar named Teresa Wiseman, who understands empathy as involving four qualities. As Brown shares, here is what she says:

Perspective taking: the ability to take the perspective of another person, or recognize their perspective as their truth. Staying out of judgment: not easy when you enjoy it as much as most of us do. Recognizing emotion in other people, and then communicating that. Empathy is feeling with people. …I always think of empathy as this kind of sacred space. …And we look and we say, “Hey!” And climb down, and we say, “I know what it’s like down here and you’re not alone.”¹

Now I share that quote because Rigney portrays Brown’s description of empathy as an illustration of why empathy, as he understands, is wrong. However, I have listened to this clip from Brown several times (I have also watched her TED Talk “The Power of Vulnerability” and read a couple of her books), and Brown never suggests that empathy requires a suspension of convictions, embracing a posture of relativism that allows us to agree with everything another person says. Yet this seems to be how Rigney understands Brown’s description of empathy, and to draw that conclusion appears to assume a lot that isn’t said.

The problem with this book's argument is that Rigney never offers any concrete examples to substantiate his claim. What he cites to support his argument fails to convince that empathy is a problem. For example, the argument against empathy in Edwin H. Friedman's A Failure of Nerve is brought into the conversation with the assumption that Friedman was right. However, Friedman’s argument against empathy presented a false dichotomy between empathy and leadership: a person cannot lead and simultaneously have empathy for others. In another example, the author brings up the matter of abortion to show how advocates of abortion weaponize empathy by appealing to emotion as they point to vulnerable and endangered women as their case for allowing abortion. What Rigney doesn’t mention is that opponents of abortion make this same emotional appeal by depicting pictures of a fully formed unborn child in the womb as their case for ending the practice of abortion. Are such emotional appeals wrong? No, unless we’re to determine our ethics simply on emotion.

Furthermore, the mention of abortion is such a loaded issue that it almost ensures those who are opposed to abortion will automatically side with the author (which ironically becomes a weaponized emotional appeal itself). In the fourth chapter, the author brings up the issue of racism (another emotionally charged issue) but offers “hypothetical discussion about racial reconciliation” to support his argument regarding untethered empathy. The problem is that hypothetical situations are fictitious scenarios created by the author. Though a hypothetical situation may be based on reality, it is also based on perception to make the very emotional appeal that the author sees as the problem with empathy.

Rigney is not suggesting that Christians should be apathetic toward the suffering of others. He knows very well how scripture speaks of God as compassionate and the compassion Jesus repeatedly showed toward others. What the author argues for is “the need for tethered compassion,” which remains “anchored to what is true and good” (p. 102). I am just not convinced that empathy requires Christians to unteather themselves from their convictions about what is true and good.

Reading Rigney’s book, I sense that ideology, rather than genuine pastoral and theological concerns, drives the conversation against empathy. It is true that empathy, like any other virtuous quality, can be used in unhelpful and even harmful ways. But let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water. Let’s not characterize empathy as a sin. Instead, let’s think more deeply about how we empathize with others. If we can empathize with others, which does not require us to abandon our convictions but does require listening and understanding, then we can lead others. Empathy is not a sin. Rather, empathy is our ability to understand and share in the feelings of others, and that is a good quality to have as we bear witness to the good news of Jesus Christ and the Kingdom of God.

1. “Brené Brown on Empathy,” Royal Society for the Encouragement of the Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce, December 10, 2013, YouTube video, 2:53 (last accessed Friday, May 2, 2025).