Of all the controversies I’ve experienced in my life, I never expected empathy to be one of them.
Lately, the religious right and some Christian nationalists talk as if empathy is suspect. It’s too “woke,” too feelings-based, too sinful, while people on the left treat it as essential. But empathy, at its simplest, just means this: to understand and share the feelings of another person. It’s walking in someone else’s shoes long enough to see where they’re coming from. It does not mean you have to believe like them, act like them, or even agree with them. It just means you’re willing to understand.
A lot of what we’re fighting about is semantics used to make a point. The Christian nationalist argument goes something like: empathy puts feelings ahead of truth. Feelings are dangerous; they can lead you astray. We should believe the Bible no matter what we feel, because sin can feel good. Therefore, we must focus on “facts” and not be distracted by emotions.
But that ideology ends up refusing to see the world any other way than its own. It acts as if feelings aren’t part of being human, as if really listening to another person might somehow “taint” us. That’s not Godlike love; that’s self-righteousness dressed up as holiness.
You can hear it in how some conservative clergy talk about transgender people: “You may feel like a woman, but the fact is you are a man and always will be.” That doesn’t sound like someone interested in understanding the needs, feelings, and worth of a trans person. It sounds like someone who would rather dismiss a human being than do the slower, holier work of listening. And when we do that, we end up missing what God called good in another person simply because they don’t line up with what we think they should be.
And it’s always easier to dismiss people we refuse to empathize with. It’s easier to look down on the poor, the marginalized, or the person with addiction when we never try to experience the world through their eyes. It’s easier to say “no” to SNAP or health care when we’ve never had to need those things.
So let me ask:
When was the last time you truly didn’t know where your next meal was coming from?
When did you go to make dinner and the cupboards were empty?
When did you pretend you weren’t hungry so your kids could eat?
When did you skip medical treatment because you couldn’t afford insurance?
If you’ve never been there, it’s very easy to scold people on assistance. I just saw a Facebook comment from someone in the cycling community criticizing Democrats for not having “a plan to get people off government assistance.” It didn’t sound like he cared about suffering. It sounded like someone who has never been in that position and doesn’t want to take the time to understand the need or help someone else. Without empathy, it’s easier to fight for your own comfort and your own money than for someone else’s survival.
What’s interesting is that sometimes we actually have more empathy for the wealthy. We want to be in their shoes—free from financial stress, not tied to a job we hate—so we instinctively side with them. Our empathy travels upward more easily than it travels downward. Maybe that’s why so many folks are ok with billionaire tax cuts but not SNAP and Medicaid.
I was raised conservative evangelical. I was taught that humans are worthless, dirty, filthy, and destined for hell unless Jesus steps in. But that’s broken theology. In Genesis, God created the heavens and the earth, the plants, the animals, the light and the dark – and then called it good. Then God made people in God’s own image and called them very good. That means people, poor, addicted, broken, marginalized, immigrant, you, and me all carry the imago dei.
So when we refuse to have empathy for someone because of their poverty, their addiction, their immigration status, their gender identity, we’re not protecting truth. We’re denying their image-of-godness.
And empathy is not the same as affirmation. You can have empathy for a person struggling with addiction and still believe drugs are destructive. You can understand someone’s pain without copying their choices. Empathy is the posture that lets us hold truth without throwing people away.
If I could encourage you to do anything today, it would be this: sit with the tension between facts and feelings. Ask yourself, Where does my disdain for the disadvantaged come from? Why am I so against feeling empathy for people who are struggling and suffering? Because very often, the problem isn’t that empathy is “too woke.” It’s that empathy forces us to admit other people’s lives are as real, as complicated, and as beloved by God as our own.