The Sin of Empathy?
In a dream, St Jerome found himself standing before the Judgement Seat, his ears ringing with the accusation, “You’re a Ciceronian, not a Christian!” Stricken by “fire of conscience”, Jerome fell silent. It was a fitting vision for his time, when the Church vigorously debated whether Christians should read pagan literature at all. In 398, the Council of Carthage banned bishops from studying such works, fearing they might lead the faithful astray. Even Augustine hesitated to praise Cicero, from whom he had learned so much.
Yet Augustine, like Jerome, could not abandon Cicero for long. In On Christian Teaching, he defended the use of secular wisdom, arguing that rhetoric was essential for conveying truth persuasively. Just as the Israelites took Egypt’s gold for a higher purpose, Christians could reclaim human knowledge to serve faith. Augustine recognized that truth, if poorly expressed, would go unheard, while well-crafted falsehoods could lead many astray. Being right was not enough; one must also speak rightly and persuasively.
Kindness, Rhetoric, and the Weaponization of Virtue
As usual for me, Augustine came to mind while reading a blog post criticizing the Bishop of Washington’s sermon as an example of “weaponized kindness.” The phrase struck me, not just because the pejorative “weaponized” (like “toxic”) is often wielded indiscriminately, but because kindness itself has been much on my mind. My forthcoming novel, set in the last days of Roman Britain, explores how simple acts of kindness sustain people when the world collapses.
Following the thread of “weaponized kindness,” I came across broader arguments that empathy itself is dangerous. Joe Rigney’s The Sin of Empathy and Allie Beth Stuckey’s Toxic Empathy (among others) warn that misplaced sympathy can lead to moral compromise on issues like abortion, trans rights, and immigration. They argue that empathy, untethered from reason, can steer us toward falsehood before we even realize it.
There is some truth here, and their warnings about empathy as opposed to love and compassion aren’t without merit (with the caveat that many a heretic was burned at the stake out of misguided compassion). We’ve all experienced emotional appeals—television ads showing suffering children or abused animals—meant to move us without asking us to think. Even within the Church, well-meaning calls to action sometimes often lean on sentiment rather than reasoned discussion. But to conclude from this that empathy is suspect is to misunderstand its nature entirely.
Like any human faculty, empathy can be misused. According to Plato, Socrates warned that skilled rhetoricians could sway crowds with emotion rather than truth. This became particular bugbear of ancient philosophers, who complained about Sophists drawing away crowds through flattery and emotional appeal. Although Augustine knew that eloquence could serve evil and falsehood, he didn’t reject rhetoric—he urged Christians to wield it more effectively to teach wisdom. The issue for him wasn’t that empathy or antipathy are too powerful but that we often fail to direct such emotions wisely. Empathy must be grounded in discernment, informed by wisdom. Without a foundation in truth, it can mislead, but when properly ordered, it remains an essential virtue.
Making Wisdom Eloquent Again
In antiquity, rhetoric was viewed almost as magic. A skilled orator could captivate, persuade, and deceive. The Greeks distinguished between philosophy (wisdom) and rhetoric (eloquence), prizing the former over the latter, while the Romans sought to unify as civic oratory. Classical rhetoric relied on ethos (credibility), pathos (emotional appeal), and logos (logical argument) in order to sway people towards some action or viewpoint. People like Cicero believed that such oratory was not only good but necessary for the well-being and proper functioning of the republic.
Echoing the Greek philosophers, Rigney and Stuckey essentially argue that modern discourse overemphasizes pathos, allowing emotion to override reason. They fear that unchecked empathy leads people to accept ideas simply because they feel right. Their obvious target is the “bleeding-heart liberal” whom the Right has long derided. Yet their critique is too narrow. If empathy can persuade toward good or ill, so can fear, anger, and outrage. If empathy is suspect, so too is antipathy. The truth is, both sides of the culture wars exploit pathos—social media thrives on it. Outrage and indignation can be just as manipulative as appeals to pity. To condemn the misuse of emotion, one must be consistent and condemn all its abuses, not just those that arise from empathy.
Rather than fearing pathos, Christians must try to wield it wisely. Augustine saw that persuasion requires engaging both heart and mind. He commended Cicero’s threefold duty of an orator—to instruct, delight, and move. A purely logical argument, however well-reasoned, will not sway people unless it also speaks to their emotions. As Augustine wrote:
Your hearer is moved if he values what you promise, fears what you threaten, hates what you condemn, embraces what you commend, and rues what you insist he must regret.
Thus, the answer isn’t to reject rhetoric but to direct it toward “whatever is true, honourable, just, pure, pleasing, and commendable” (Phil. 4:8). That requires wisdom. An ethical use of rhetoric doesn’t mean avoiding emotion but ensuring that emotion serves truth rather than obscuring it.
What We Leave Behind
But I want to take this a step further, G.K. Chesterton once remarked that only a Calvinist could believe that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Whatever hell is paved with, it isn’t kindness. If anything, hell is what remains when kindness is stripped away.
In my novel’s world of late 4th-century Britain, structures of power, wealth, and good order are crumbling. Names are forgotten, histories erased. But kindness endures. A single act of kindness, given freely and without expectation, shape lives long after the giver is gone. I believe that’s a crucial lesson for our own world.
Books warning against empathy and “weaponized” kindness may intend to promote discernment and resistance to deception. But I worry they cultivate hardness and suspicion of a necessary virtue itself, especially when there is no equal concern about anger, fear, despair, and enmity. If empathy can be distorted, then these other forces can be stoked, and often with far worse consequences.
But, being on our guard against emotional manipulation is no way to live. A better way is to build what I call “communities of delight,” where prayer, worship, Scripture, and mutual love shape our hearts and minds to receive wisdom. For Christians, the highest wisdom is always that which increasing our love for God and our neighbours. True kindness, which gives without calculation or hesitation because it’s in its nature to give, is one of the essential preconditions for such wisdom. Thus, we can be reckless with our loving-kindness, reassured that love does, indeed, cover a multitude of sins.
But, if we fear being misled, we may hold back from the very things that make life worth living. In the end, we’ll be remembered not for caution or our victories in debates, but for our kindness. That is our true legacy in this bitter, spiteful world. What we leave behind are the moments of mercy and grace we extend to others. Perhaps that’s the only thing that truly endures.
