Pastor claims empathy can be a sin
Idaho-based pastor Joe Rigney in his new book, The Sin of Empathy, claims empathy is “the greatest rhetorical tool of manipulation in the 21st century”.
There is such a thing as an excess of compassion. You say, “How could you be too compassionate?” Well, if you’re overwhelmed by your feelings and you lose touch with what is true and what is good, if you lose touch with Christ, you have an excess of that emotion that sweeps you off your feet and can be very destructive.
The example is the way the trans movement has weaponised society’s compassion. “Here’s people who feel themselves to be in the wrong body. They are very distressed by this mismatch between their biology and their felt sense of [identity], and we need to do whatever we can to enable them to align those, including surgeries.”
Think about the story of Job. All of his property is gone, and his kids have been killed. His wife comes to him and says, “Curse God and die!” This is a mother who has just lost 10 children. It’s the most horrific scenario you can possibly imagine, and she’s angry at God because of it.
In her distress, in her grief, she wants to curse God. Should Job out of empathy join her in her blasphemy? I think all of us recognise that no, that would be a very bad idea. But he could have very easily indulged her.
I sometimes say that the most empathetic leader in the Bible is Aaron at the golden calf. Aaron sees this distressed and agitated people and finds their agitation unbearable and therefore goes along with it [and the golden calf is made, which the Israelites worship].
https://www.premierchristianity.com/inte...96.article
So no empathy for trans people, oppressed people, and people of other religions.
Idaho-based pastor Joe Rigney in his new book, The Sin of Empathy, claims empathy is “the greatest rhetorical tool of manipulation in the 21st century”.
There is such a thing as an excess of compassion. You say, “How could you be too compassionate?” Well, if you’re overwhelmed by your feelings and you lose touch with what is true and what is good, if you lose touch with Christ, you have an excess of that emotion that sweeps you off your feet and can be very destructive.
The example is the way the trans movement has weaponised society’s compassion. “Here’s people who feel themselves to be in the wrong body. They are very distressed by this mismatch between their biology and their felt sense of [identity], and we need to do whatever we can to enable them to align those, including surgeries.”
Think about the story of Job. All of his property is gone, and his kids have been killed. His wife comes to him and says, “Curse God and die!” This is a mother who has just lost 10 children. It’s the most horrific scenario you can possibly imagine, and she’s angry at God because of it.
In her distress, in her grief, she wants to curse God. Should Job out of empathy join her in her blasphemy? I think all of us recognise that no, that would be a very bad idea. But he could have very easily indulged her.
I sometimes say that the most empathetic leader in the Bible is Aaron at the golden calf. Aaron sees this distressed and agitated people and finds their agitation unbearable and therefore goes along with it [and the golden calf is made, which the Israelites worship].
https://www.premierchristianity.com/inte...96.article
So no empathy for trans people, oppressed people, and people of other religions.
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
