Weaponizing Emotions & the Sin of Empathy
Emotional abuser. Controlling. Manipulative. When you hear the phrase “weaponize emotion” you instinctively have a pretty good idea of what this looks like - someone in need of therapy.
But… empathy? A sin? That’s a little different. You might not have a category for empathy being wrong. After all, isn’t it obvious that empathy is a good thing?
Let’s look at what the Bible has to say about these behaviors.
This is an excerpt adapted from the sermon, “The Modern Self: Cultural Fragility & Weaponization of Emotion.”
How Emotions Are Weaponized
There’s really 4 steps that lead to the weaponizing of emotions:
Obsessive love for self. “Understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self…” (2 Timothy 3:1-2) This causes a…
Rejection of objective truth. God and His Word is replaced with subjective personal or relative truth, which leads to a…
Culture of fragility. Why fragility? Because when you reject objective truth you remove your foundation. Now you only have subjective personal truth, which is too fragile and shaky to actually stand on or live your life by. You know, deep down, that your experiential truth can’t compete with time-tested objective transcendent truth. So what do you do? You…
Weaponize Emotion.
That fourth point is what we’re going to talk about today.
You need to understand this - it’s a truth that will set some of you free!
When you remove God and his objective truth, all you have left with is relative truth. This isn’t strong or sturdy, so people intuitively know, “I can’t win this political argument, I can’t win this religious argument, this argument in my marriage… So what can I use to win?”
The answer? Emotion.
Specifically, emotion as a weapon.
I don’t think it is ever intentional. It’s more like a knee jerk reaction which people don’t usually realize they're doing.
However, when you are not operating off objective Biblical truth, you must create your own fictitious version of truth which you define. This isn’t reality, because God defines reality, not us, so deep down you know “I’ve got nothing.”
That’s how, without knowing it, you can become conditioned to base your life on feelings, experiences, and emotions.
If your emotional response to your subjective experience becomes the foundation of your life, naturally you will learn to weaponize emotion. It’s very powerful, and - let’s be honest - it works.
Two Emotional Weapons
There are two emotions that often get used as weapons.
Anger
Hurt
Let’s first quality this. I’m not talking about real, justified “righteous anger” in response to true abuse or sin. And I’m not talking about genuine pain in response to being sinned against.
I’m saying that many people subconsciously think, “If I can’t beat you with logic or reason or truth or facts, I’ll just tell you how offensive what you’re saying is, or how much your words hurt me.” Then it’s game over.
It’s the Victim Card. You can pull this card and claim, “What you’re saying is hurtful, so you’ve wronged me.” If truth is subjective, then the first person to claim victimhood automatically wins.
When a culture has removed objective truth - as in, a truth greater than our personal feelings or experiences - then you have no choice but to surrender to their truth, their experience, their emotions, their feelings as THE truth. On what basis could you question them?
I once heard of a counselor who was put in a really awkward situation. They were mediating in a second counselor’s case where someone was being accused of mistreating another person. Many close family members were involved, saying that it wasn’t true, and showing mountains of evidence.
After the meeting one of the counselors pulled the other counselor aside and said, “The problem with all of this is that it’s not true.” And the other counselor said, “But it’s her truth, and she needs someone in her corner, because this is her truth.”
What had happened?
On the one hand, the first counselor had bought into relativism, thinking that it’s ok to allow someone to make their subjective experience ultimate. This counselor had stopped trying to find out if there was real sin, real mistreatment, they had already decided that the victim is always right.
On the other hand, the second counselor understood that people are most helped when they align themselves with God’s truth.
This perfectly illustrates the sin of empathy
The Sin of Empathy
You’re probably saying, “Wait - I thought empathy was a good thing?”
It’s not. At least, not how our culture defines it. And some within the culture are beginning to recognize it too.
Paul Bloom is a professor of Psychology at Yale University. He is not a Christian, but he recognizes the problem of empathy and so he wrote a book called “Against Empathy.”
Here’s what he says in the introduction:
“Empathy can lead to irrational and unfair political decisions, it can corrode certain important relationships, such as between a doctor and a patient. It can make us worse at being friends, parents, husbands and wives. I am against empathy. And one of the goals of this book is to persuade you to be against empathy too.”
The basic idea is this:
Empathy is not a biblical word.
It was introduced into English in early 20th century.
The term means “to suffer in.”
Sympathy (or “compassion”), on the other hand, is a biblical term and means “to suffer with.”
Many in our day assume that it is better to suffer in, rather than “only” suffer with. It sounds more loving, but actually it’s not. Here’s why.
Alastair Roberts says, “Empathy is often fundamentally or primarily oriented to the feelings of sufferers; sympathy (compassion) is fundamentally or primarily oriented to their good.” [emphasis added]
Think about it. As one pastor illustrated this concept, if a sufferer is sinking in quicksand:
An empathetic helper may attempt to jump in with both feet.
A sympathetic helper will step into the quicksand but with one foot firmly planted on the solid ground.
Sympathy lays hold of something sturdy outside of the pit in order to provide an anchor, so they can better help.
Empathy jumps in the quicksand with them to show solidarity. Sure, the person might feel loved for a minute, but the problem is now you’re both sinking. You’ve taken on their emotions, so that their issues become yours, now you have two people stuck in a hole. Not helpful.
Sympathy stays safely on dry land and says to the person sinking, “I’m going to keep one foot on the shore, and grab onto this big branch, then I’ll step one foot in there with you and try to pull you out. That’s sympathy, and that’s actually helpful
But to the person who’s in the quicksand, it can feel like you’re judging them.
Why? It creates a hierarchy. It implies one person is the hurting and one person is the helper.
Our culture wants to equalize everything. Empathy demands, “Get in here with me, otherwise you don’t love me.”
For more on this idea of empathy, watch this:
How to Avoid Weaponizing Emotions
“Fragility” is what defines our culture once the culture has abandoned objective truth. But that can’t be what the church is if we genuinely wish to help others.
For example, it is popular today to hear Christians say, “We’re all broken, we’re all fragile, we’re all ruined, believers and unbelievers alike.”
Now, there’s some truth in that, we’re all sinners. But we can’t all be equally broken and fragile.
Romans 15:1 says, “We who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak, and not to please ourselves.”
Someone has to have a foot on solid ground. Someone has to stand on the truth when others are sinking in their emotional suffering.
In my worst season of suffering, I didn’t merely need someone to say “I’m here and I care.” While that can be comforting at some level, at some point the comforter must actually be able to help me get out of the sinking sand that I’m in.
How can they do that unless they have some arm strength, and a foot on solid ground? How can they do that unless they have enough emotional stability to not panic or emotionally cave at the sound of my pain?
People do need a strong church. But even more they need a strong and sympathetic Christ.
Hebrews 4:15 tells us, “We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”
Jesus did enter into our condition, he became a real, full, 100% human. He experienced real temptations for sin, along with genuine suffering.
Yet Jesus wasn’t fragile. He didn’t join us in sin. He kept his feet rooted in truth, he didn’t abandon truth in the name of helping us as victims. He knew he could best help us by sympathizing with us, and being stronger than us.
That is how we escape the weaponizing of emotion. Turn to Jesus, who is strong, and sympathetic, and able to save.