Defusing the Sin of Empathy

In my last post, I evidenced how Joe Rigney’s argument in The Sin of Empathy is tangled up with misogynistic attitudes towards women. His claims about the constitution, character and (in)capacities of women are as insidious as they are infantilising. But they are also inaccurate, incoherent and inconsistent.

Incoherent

In that last post we saw how, in a recent podcast episode, Rigney correlates empathy (i.e., what he defines as emotional enmeshment, being swept away by one’s feelings/passions without the tether of reason or truth) as uniquely and destructively feminine in orientation.

But here is something else he said in that same podcast episode:

“The additional [argument] is that good men, particularly good men… [who] want to be sensitive and kind and caring for women as the Bible tells them to… good men then find it really difficult to deal with female distress, female agitation. And therefore it agitates their own agitation which gets covered over by their empathy. They start to share that agitation and they want to do anything they can to make it go away. This is why churches that are trying to appease or accommodate sensitive women, agitated women, eventually go woke or go liberal as well. Even the men go along with it because it is hard to resist that kind of emotional agitation.” Time Stamp

Well, this is a little awkward.

It turns out that wrestling with empathetic feelings towards another person isn’t primarily female-coded after all. According to Rigney, not only do men feel empathy but their innate male reasonableness can be overwhelmed by their innate male empathy. They too struggle with the hurt, agitation, anxiety, distress of others and “want to do anything they can to make it go away”.

Errr. This feels a little contradictory.

But then… note that what is an inherently harmful liability in women is seen by Rigney to be characteristic of “good men, particularly good men”. In other words, what makes a woman bad and destructive is what identifies a man as good and caring. Her depth of empathy is a curse while his is evidence of his “goodness”. So it is that the sensitive but misguided empathetic “good” man is left vulnerable to being exploited and manipulated by Medusa. He says more about this in Chapter 5 of The Sin of Empathy:

In fact, we might state the challenge in this way. Faithful men know how to resist unfaithful men. Good shepherds are willing to fight wolves. But even faithful men struggle to resist unfaithful women. She-wolves, especially ones who present themselves as victims, give faithful men fits because of the unavoidable asymmetries in play. What’s more, ungodly women are often willing to exploit these asymmetries in order to steer entire communities. And it’s not just the she-wolves who cause trouble—its also the compromised (female) sheep, the ones who Paul calls “weak women,” captured by false teachers due to their emotional instability, immaturity and sin (2 Tim. 3:6-7)

The Sin of Empathy, Kindle Edition pg.115

Those poor faithful men. There they are ready and eager to fight the ferocious wolves prowling around God’s people. But add a she-wolf into the mix—or even a compromised female sheep—and their goodness makes them powerless to resist her manipulation or instability.

According to Joe Rigney, women get swept away by their empathy because they lack the ability to tether themselves to reason and truth. But when men get swept away by their empathy, the blame does not lie with the same in themselves. No. The blame lays with manipulative, exploitative, unfaithful, troublesome women.

This line of argumentation is not only deeply offensive to women (and men), but it undermines his broader argument that the real issue with empathy as it is deployed today is that it is primarily female-coded and reason-resistant.

Rigney’s argument is internally incoherent.
But it is also theologically incoherent.

We’ve seen (here and here) that he contends feelings and passions sweep women away from reason, rationality and discernment. This is why they need male reason and rationality to protect them and to guard society from their empathetic folly. In other words, Rigney argues that female feelings are compromised and corrupted while male rationality is reliable and privileged.

Such a conclusion utterly fails to account for the noetic effects of sin. The Bible teaches us that sin has corrupted the mind and its reason just as equally as it has corrupted the heart and its feelings. Indeed, according to Romans 1:21 and 28, the futility of our thinking and the foolishness of our hearts are irretrievably connected.

For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened… And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. - Romans 1:21, 28

All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. And what is sin if it is not suppression of the truth? The fact of the matter is that the reasoning of our minds is no more inherently trustworthy than the feelings of our hearts. Put another way, we are no more inclined to think rightly than we are to feel rightly.

And so, even if we were to agree with Rigney’s dichotomy of male-coded reason and female-coded emotions (and we shouldn’t… keep reading), God’s word rejects the premise that men are more inherently reliable in the exercise of their reason than women are in the exercise of their feelings.

Tragically, sin has corrupted the hearts and minds of men and women alike.

Wonderfully, the Spirit renews the hearts and minds of men and women alike. Which brings me to my next point…

Inaccurate

According to Rigney, reason and rationality are in some way more indigenous to men than women, while feelings and emotions are in some way more indigenous to women than men. So pervasive is this dichotomy that Rigney uses it to make broad assertions about (what he sees to be) glaring differences between male and female constitution and character.

Yet, as with all patriarchal ideologues, he is so reliant on emphasising the distinctions between men and women that you’d be forgiven for thinking that he’s talking about two different species of creatures altogether. Put another way, Rigney is so eager to refute any suggestion that men and women are interchangeable (by the way, they are not), that he is myopically fixated on how men and women are different to one another. In so doing he not only fails to appreciate, celebrate and signify the aspects of humanity which are foundationally the same for men and women alike, but he also feels free to make stuff up about how men and women are “naturally” different in order to bolster his agenda. Namely, women are the kind of humans who get carried away by their emotions while men are the kind of humans who are able to be reasonable and rational in the face of emotions.

But here’s what the Bible says.

Both men and women have been created with the gift and capacity to think. To reason. To rationalise. To know. Indeed, Eve ate the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil partly because “she saw it was… desirable for gaining wisdom” (Genesis 3:6).

Likewise, both men and women have been created with the capacity to feel. To emote. To yearn. To hurt. We only need to read the Psalms of David to know that men are capable of feeling just as deeply as women.

Before God made Eve in any way distinct from Adam, he made her from the very same stuff as him. Put another way, men and women are both human. And to be human is (amongst many other things) to be creatures who both think rationally and feel deeply. This is part and parcel of what it means to have been made in the image of God.

Yes, there are good and essential differences between men and women. And yes, some of those differences involve general distinctions in how we engage our thinking and express our feelings. But a man is not “the thinking kind of human”. A woman is not “the feeling kind of human”.

No. Women were created to exercise reason just as much as men were. Men were created to feel things just as deeply as women were. Tragically, sin has corrupted women’s minds just as much as it has corrupted the male heart. And vice versa.

But gloriously, God’s Spirit has come to dwell within both his sons and daughters:

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.
Ezekiel 23:26-27

Contrary to Rigney’s argument, female disciples of Christ are equally capable in following God’s decrees and keeping his laws. They too are able to exercise their rational knowledge of who he is and how he would have them live according to his truth.

Why? Because female members of the family of God have been given the same new heart and the same new spirit as their male counterparts. Men and women are both co-heirs with Christ. The same indwelling Spirit has come as the helper to both of them. They are equally members of the body of Christ. Equally called to one-another ministry in the church. Equally called to build up the household of God.

Ultimately, Rigney’s contention that male Christians have been enabled to exercise reason and hold to truth more innately, more capably or more readily than women is inaccurate.

By which I mean it is unbiblical.
By which I mean, it is unChristian.

But we’ve got one more “in” to go…

Inconsistent

Joe Rigney claims to be a complementarian by theological conviction and association. He serves as a council member for the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. According to CBMW’s website, its council members:

“…agree with the mission and vision of CBMW, including the Danvers Statement and the Nashville Statement, as well as contribute to the ministry by speaking, writing, and/or giving leadership support to the organization.”

And yet, Joe Rigney’s claims, contentions and conclusions about men and women in The Sin of Empathy (and other related resources) do 👏 not 👏 represent 👏 the 👏 complementarian 👏 theology 👏 of 👏 the 👏 Danvers 👏 Statement. 👏

As a Danvers Complementarian, this is deeply concerning to me. Let me explain.

To be frank, it is unclear to me whether Rigney thinks women are inherently untethered from reason, swept away by empathy, and willing to compromise any truth or cross any boundaries so long as they get to “kiss the boo-boo” better is because:

1. He thinks this is part and parcel of how God designed women in the garden…
   
   or because
   

2. He thinks this is a unique consequence of sin upon women’s character, constitution and conduct.

I suspect the reason I’m unclear about Rigney’s thinking on this is because Rigney is unclear about his thinking on it. Or at the very least, he has been unclear in the communication of his thinking on it.

His language of how women are “wired”, what God has “built into” them and what is “natural” would seem to lean towards option 1. But on what possible biblical or theological basis would he maintain that God’s good and perfect design for women included inbuilt flaws such that, even though Eve was made quite literally from the same stuff as Adam, she was designed to be incapable of holding onto reason and truth like Adam and was bound to become an inherent liability when her compassion ran up against God-ordained boundaries? Option 1 is theological nonsense.

But Option 2 is also theological nonsense. Yes, the curse of the Fall plays out in some distinct ways for men and women. But those distinct ways are spelt out in Genesis 3. They have nothing to do with women being enslaved to their empathy and incapable of exercising reason. Nor do they have anything to do with the male sex (as a whole) being inert victims of the manipulation and instability of the female sex (as a whole). We’ve also already seen that sin has corrupted both the minds and hearts of both men and women alike. The fallen male sex is no less fallible when it comes to reasoning and commitment to truth than the fallen female sex is. The fallen female sex is no more enslaved to their emotions and feelings than the fallen male sex is.

Whatever his reasoning is, Rigney’s conclusions are utterly inconsistent with his claimed complementarian convictions. The theological affirmations of the Danvers Statement are clear that any distinctions in sexed personhood, and so also relational roles between men and women, arose from God’s good ordained order (in which Adam was the firstborn and Eve his fitting helper) and not as a postlapsarian reality. Put another way, loving male headship in the home and church and, what Danvers calls, women’s “intelligent” submission in those contexts (Sidenote: it’s hard to be intelligent if you can’t hold onto reason, huh?) is based on God’s perfect created order between men and women… not on some inherent flaw he built into women but not men, nor on some selective distortion of women’s ability to hold to reason as a result of sin

Joe Rigney’s argument is inconsistent with the complementarian theological position he claims as his own and officially represents.

I’ve previously expressed concern about how Rigney’s insistent conflation of complementarianism with patriarchy is at odds with the theological affirmations of the Danvers’ Statement. I’ve asked CBMW’s leadership for clarification on that count, but unfortunately to no avail. Ultimately, I was left with little choice but to conclude that:

CBMW’s affiliation with certain people and promotion of certain resources that go well beyond Danvers, means it is no longer clear to me that Danvers remains the org’s position in actuality…

That was bad enough.

However, the latent public support by some complementarian commentators for the misogynistically-reliant and theologically-compromised argument laid out in The Sin on Empathy alongside (what from my perspective has been) silence from CMBW leaders and governors after one of their own Council members has publicly contradicted the very theological tenets their organisation not only holds but gate-keeps… well, suffice to say I find it absolutely extraordinary. But sadly, no longer surprising.

I’ve been concerned about the slow but steady hijacking of authentic complementarianism by patriarchy (or what is now more palatably being referred to as “natural complementarianism”) within CBMW for some years now. Many in their circles have pegged (and dismissed) me as an embittered functional egalitarian. Many in my own circles have pegged (and ignored) me as paranoid and alarmist.

But so long as these false theological claims about women (and men), made by a member of their own Council goes uncontested by CBMW, well, I stand vindicated.

Trust me though. This kind of vindication is a bitter pill I’d rather not have to swallow.

Sadly I have no faith that my raising this (again) will gain much traction amongst the CBMW decision-makers. After all, I’m easily dismissed as a ‘thin complementar[ian] that softens evangelical institution for progressive steerage’. Perhaps those with some degree of personal relationship and trust with CBMW Board members (NB. a different group to their Council members) might have more success.

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To bring us back on track and round this discussion off, Joe Rigney’s argument in The Sin of Empathy is misogynistic, internally and theologically incoherent, deeply unChristian and not consistent with his self-asserted complementarian theological convictions.

What a missed opportunity that book is.

There are real problems with the adoption of secular commitments within the church. There are real issues with the forgoing of theological truth for progressive ideology. There are real concerns with how many Christians have come to venerate victimhood at the expense of calling people to know and follow the one who was crucified as a truly innocent victim for their sake.

But Rigney’s poor theology, obvious tribalism, stalwart commitment to his own agenda and misogynistic bias has resulted a deeply flawed book that fails to diagnose the real issue at stake—our universal sinfulness—and its real solution—the saviour God who empathetically entered into our suffering, empathetically took on our sin and empathetically bore our shame so that, underserving though we are, we might participate in his grace and glory.

Bring biblical and theological truth to blow gently on the fuse of Joe Rigney’s empathy bomb and 💨… out it goes. Just like that.