A few weeks ago, I found myself in a full-blown mission impossible trying to secure Ella’s birthday gift. It was one of those high-stakes missions that, while ridiculous in scale, somehow takes on mythic importance when your daughter’s big day is involved. UPS attempted delivery while I was out—missed them by nine minutes. Not a huge deal, except the package required a signature. They’d try again, the Post-it note said. We had time for a second attempt but not a third. So, I cleared the schedule, only for the driver to arrive two hours early. I missed it again. Cue the frantic scramble.
Maybe you’ve done this before: you see a brown truck driving your neighborhood and you make an awkward beeline. I approached the driver gently—didn’t want to startle him—explained my plight with sheepish hope: “Is my daughter’s birthday present on your truck?” It wasn’t. Wrong truck.
But the driver gave me a secret weapon: a phone number to the local UPS dispatch. “They’re not really supposed to do that,” the kind woman on the other end told me, with a tone that said this wasn’t the first time a driver had passed along the “secret number.” I explained I wasn’t angry. I just needed a partner to help me deliver a little birthday magic. I heard her smile through the phone. “I’ll do what I can,” she said. “It may not matter to you if it’s a day late—but it will to your daughter.”
She pulled up GPS, messaged the driver, called me back within 10 minutes, and just as I set down my phone, the doorbell rang. The package had arrived. Ella’s gift was a hit. But what made it happen wasn’t tech or tracking numbers—it was empathy. One person listening to another. One person stepping into someone else’s shoes and saying, “I can help.” Empathy isn’t just a soft skill. It’s a sacred one.
And yet—believe it or not—empathy has recently become the subject of heated debate in some Christian circles. A Vox article, titled “Christian nationalists decided empathy is a sin. Now it’s gone mainstream,“ outlines how voices on the far-right have declared empathy not just excessive, but evil (I can’t believe I typed that)[1]. One theologian cited in the article went so far as to say, “Satan manipulates people through the intense cultural pressure to feel others’ pain and suffering.”
I had to reread it. Really? That’s the conclusion?!?
Because when I open the Gospels, I don’t see Jesus avoiding others’ pain. I see Jesus stepping right into it. I see a Savior who weeps at a tomb, who feels the hunger of a crowd, who touches those deemed untouchable. I see a Lord who willingly suffers with and for us. That’s not manipulation. That’s redemption.
And yet, some leaders have embraced a strange logic—like the Vice President who recently described love in a strict hierarchy: “You love your family, and then your neighbor, and then your community, and your fellow citizens in your own country… and then after that, you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world.” It sounds tidy. Reasonable even. Prioritize what’s close, then expand outward. But Jesus didn’t talk like that.
When someone asked him, “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus didn’t draw a circle around kin and country. He told the story of the Good Samaritan—a foreigner, a religious outsider, someone considered suspect. And then he said, Go and do likewise. Jesus doesn’t ration love. He multiplies it. He doesn’t teach us to prioritize the familiar. He calls us to stretch across lines of difference. He doesn’t give us a hierarchy of affection. He gives us a cross and a towel, a few loaves and fish, and says, Feed them.
So, when I hear people dismiss empathy as weakness, or even label it sin, I have to ask: What Gospel are they reading? Because the Gospel I read tells us that Jesus forgave executioners, embraced outsiders, and welcomed the forgotten to his table.
Some critics try to reframe empathy as “untethered”—as if it leads to chaos or moral compromise. They worry it places feelings above truth. But in Jesus, we find no such conflict. Truth and empathy aren’t enemies. They are companions. Truth without empathy becomes a weapon. Empathy without truth becomes sentimentality. But together? They reflect the very heart of God.
What I found most illuminating in the Vox article wasn’t just the theology—it was the power dynamics underneath it all. As Christian ethicist Karen Swallow Prior puts it, “The entire discourse around empathy is backlash against those who are questioning the authority of those in power.” When leaders grow uneasy about empathy, it’s often because someone without power is finally being heard. Empathy doesn’t destabilize the world. It destabilizes unjust systems. And that makes some people very uncomfortable.
I’m not naïve, empathy is risky. It requires vulnerability. It asks us to slow down. It sometimes invites us to see the world from a perspective that challenges our own. But it is also the soil in which healing grows, where reconciliation begins, and where the Spirit of Christ is most alive.
I am afraid we’re moving into a cultural moment where cruelty is cool, vengeance is justified, and kindness is sometimes mocked as weakness. But Jesus calls us to another way. I guess that means we must be countercultural.
So, let’s sin boldly—by following Jesus into radical kindness, inclusive compassion, restorative justice, and relentless empathy.
Let’s be the ones who refuse to write off people based on where they’re from, who they love, how they vote, or what they’ve been through.
Let’s be the ones who believe empathy isn’t a liability—it’s the very heart of love.
Let’s follow the words in Gospel. Let’s love without condition, listen without judgment, and act with compassion. Because if empathy is a sin, then friends… let’s be the chief of sinners.
Let’s be the ones who still knock on the door of the brown truck, sheepishly and hopefully, asking if someone might help deliver something good. Because when we do, we just might find that the Kingdom of God shows up on our doorstep—right on time.
[1] https://www.vox.com/culture/413530/what-does-empathy-is-a-sin-mean-christian-extremism