JOE RIGNEY | The Sin of Empathy (Ep. 801)

0:00 [MUSIC PLAYING]

0:20 This is Undaunted Life of Man's Podcast.

0:24 I'm your host Kyle Thompson.

0:25 Let's get into it.

0:26 All right, guys, we've got a special guest on the podcast.

0:28 Today's name is Joe Rigny.

0:29 He is a fellow of theology at New St. Andrew's College

0:32 and an associate pastor at Christchurch.

0:34 And he's the author of a couple of books.

0:36 So one we didn't get to today, but that's

0:37 leadership and emotional sabotage.

0:39 But he says the prequel to this is a book called

0:42 The Sin of Empathy.

0:44 And so that's what we're going to be talking about today.

0:45 Perhaps you've heard him on some other programs.

0:47 He did some stuff with Albert Moller and some other places.

0:50 But basically, we're talking about, again,

0:51 provocative title, The Sin of Empathy.

0:53 But he describes in detail the difference

0:56 between empathy and sympathy, why we say sympathy

0:58 and not compassion, even though we probably

1:00 should say compassion.

1:01 And at what point we are sinning when

1:04 we are being empathetic and where all these worldviews come

1:06 from and kind of what they tethered to.

1:08 And so we do some work in terms of definitions

1:11 and trying to figure out exactly, hey, why is empathy

1:13 reactive and why is sympathy responsive?

1:15 And what's the difference?

1:16 And why is sympathy that is responsive better?

1:19 But also we talked about how people will weaponize pity

1:23 and how pity is being weaponized to kind of change

1:25 and move things.

1:26 And then we get into talking about how if you kind of

1:29 have this overemphasis on empathy,

1:31 it leads to cowardice and indifference and also cruelty.

1:34 But then we talked about the progressive gaze.

1:36 So G-A-Z-E, the progressive gaze and kind of what that does

1:40 when you have church leaders, right, and we name some,

1:43 that it's almost like they had, you know,

1:45 a progressive sitting on their shoulder,

1:47 trying to judge them like, hey, are you being a good Christian?

1:49 Or are you being as me, a non-theist, as an atheist,

1:53 as somebody that I think would be a good Christian,

1:55 even though I don't read the Bible

1:56 and I don't even know what any of this means.

1:58 And kind of how, you know, you have the useful idiots

2:00 and the conscious nefarious actors leading to a whole bunch

2:03 of bad outcomes for the church and how basically,

2:06 how did these woke ideologies get into these churches,

2:09 get into these entire denominations,

2:11 into these congregations, kind of what kind of issues

2:14 happened that preceded that rather.

2:17 And then also you have, you know, people talking

2:19 about church heard and how there's legitimately people

2:21 that have been hurt by the church.

2:22 But then there's people that just have been told,

2:24 hey, you can't do that.

2:25 And then all of a sudden it's their worldview

2:27 that, oh, the churches hurt them.

2:28 But then we end our discussion by talking about feminism

2:31 and how, you know, the different waves of feminism,

2:34 how they've kind of broken the church

2:36 in a lot of different ways.

2:37 And he says, hey, look, a lot of these woke ideologies,

2:39 they got into the church via the women's ministries, right?

2:43 So it's almost like you have a woman that's kind of ordained

2:45 to a degree, to be the pastor of the women.

2:48 And then you have the man who's actually the shepherd

2:50 of the entire church, but then the church ends up splitting

2:53 because the women don't decide to agree with the men

2:55 on something and then they can't come to any type

2:57 of an agreement, right?

2:58 But then we just kind of talk about why are men

3:01 put in their positions that they are when they're not

3:03 as naturally empathetic, because there's a real

3:06 and legitimate reason to that.

3:07 And then at the end, he gives some prescriptions

3:09 for men like us, but also pastors for how we can fight

3:12 against the sin of empathy.

3:13 So guys, really enjoy my conversation with Joe.

3:15 So without further ado, let's get into it.

3:17 Joe Rigny, welcome to Undaunted Life of Man's podcast.

3:21 - Hey, thanks for having me.

3:22 How good to be here.

3:22 - Now, are you as smart as all the books behind you

3:25 would suggest or is that just like,

3:27 'cause I did talk to a guy once that he had a bunch

3:29 of books behind him, but it was all vanity.

3:31 He hadn't read any of them.

3:32 So, but is that indicative of a big brain of yours?

3:35 - I would say it's effective at convincing people

3:39 that that's the case.

3:40 - Hey, well, we're gonna go through today

3:41 'cause you've actually authored a couple of books

3:43 or shorter ones, but hey, we're at least gonna get

3:46 the audience comfortable here at the beginning.

3:48 But I've heard a rumor that you are a bonafide

3:51 professional Christian, right?

3:52 You've got your own like, you've got cards,

3:54 you got like a plaque on the wall, all those things.

3:56 So let's start there.

3:57 How'd you become a professional Christian?

4:00 - Yeah, so I was raised in a Christian home in West Texas.

4:04 Kind of a nominal Christian home,

4:05 but then my family moved over to a new church

4:07 when I was probably like seven or eight.

4:09 And my parents became serious about their faith.

4:13 And then that led me to get serious about mine

4:15 when I was about 12.

4:16 My dad and I were actually baptized together

4:18 in the same ceremony when I was 12 years old,

4:21 which is kind of cool.

4:22 My dad passed away about 12 years ago.

4:25 Like it's more significant as time goes on, I guess.

4:28 But so I became made a profession of faith

4:30 when I was about 12.

4:31 And then all through high school was active in my church

4:36 and things like that.

4:37 And then in college felt called to the ministry.

4:40 And so decided that I wanted to go preach the word.

4:43 And then in seminary realized I'm actually pretty good

4:46 in the classroom.

4:47 And so I'm a professor by day and a pastor by night

4:51 is kind of the way that that works.

4:53 - Okay, well, I don't wanna take too much time away

4:54 'cause I do wanna get into the sin of empathy.

4:57 But I am kind of curious 'cause I have a five year old

4:59 and a three year old, both boys.

5:02 And so at our church here in Emma, Oklahoma,

5:04 it's Faith Bible Church.

5:06 So Mark Hitchcock, Dallas Theological Seminary,

5:09 the way they handle when young kids get baptized, right?

5:12 So if you're six years old and you're at a wanna

5:15 or kids camp or something like that

5:16 and you make a profession of faith,

5:18 they like to wait until you're eight years old, right?

5:21 So they will, that's just kind of like what they do.

5:23 They have a lot of conversations with the kid.

5:25 Make sure they understand what they're saying.

5:27 Make sure that they're not just saying something

5:28 'cause the kid next to them said it.

5:29 And I guess you could call it an evaluation of fruit.

5:32 And then some people like if you're from the church

5:34 Christ tradition or some of these other traditions,

5:36 they're like, oh my gosh, if that kid doesn't get baptized

5:38 right now, and they die, they're not gonna go to heaven

5:40 because they didn't get to the water in time.

5:42 And I know there's a lot of traditions that are like that.

5:44 But from where you come from, again, a profession of faith

5:47 at 12, you know, I profess faith at 15,

5:50 but the difference from 12 and 15 is chasmic.

5:53 And so like, well, how should parents,

5:55 'cause I know that a lot of guys in this audience

5:57 that are like kind of stressed out about that,

5:59 like, well, you know, I wanna get my kids saved

6:00 before rapture, all the things, right?

6:02 So what would you say to them about, okay,

6:04 evaluating the fruit of a child that doesn't have

6:08 this long track record of, you know,

6:09 being a cocaine addict or being, you know,

6:11 a horrible derelict of some kind, you know what I mean?

6:14 - Yeah, so well, you know, since I went into ministry,

6:17 I've actually pivoted and I'm actually in kind of

6:18 the infant Baptist camp now.

6:20 So I actually baptized the kids when they're babies.

6:23 And that, but I think that this applies to both.

6:25 I think parents should raise their kids in the Lord.

6:28 So you should, God made promises to you, you know,

6:31 from Abraham on, the promises for you and for your children.

6:35 That's true in the old.

6:36 I think that's true in the new.

6:37 And so parents should parent out of the promises of God.

6:39 God, you said that you, you're gonna be good to me.

6:42 You're gonna be good to my kids.

6:44 You place them in my home for that reason

6:46 so that they could be raised in the discipline

6:48 and nurture of the Lord.

6:49 So they're in the Lord in that sense.

6:51 You could think of them as like external Christians, right?

6:54 So we're teaching them how to pray.

6:55 We're teaching them the Bible.

6:57 We're doing all those sort of things, taking them to church

7:00 so that they grow up and they own it for themselves.

7:02 And I would, I just would say to parents,

7:05 don't freak out about, can I pinpoint the precise moment?

7:09 I remember as a kid going to youth camps

7:11 where that was a big deal and preachers

7:13 would put a big emphasis on if you can't take me

7:15 to the place and the time where you made this decision,

7:18 then do you really know?

7:20 And I just think that's a bad way to approach it.

7:22 The question is, are you now trusting in Jesus?

7:24 And so if you've got a four-year-old who's like,

7:26 "Yeah, you told me to, Dad, I trust you."

7:29 You said that Jesus rose from the dead and died for my sins.

7:32 And I believe you, then you should just say praise God

7:35 and continue to raise.

7:37 And if you're in a church where they say,

7:39 "Hey, we're gonna wait a little bit.

7:40 Talk to your kids through that and say,

7:42 it's not because we don't think you're a Christian.

7:43 It's not because we don't think that.

7:45 Tell, you know, affirm their faith, right?

7:47 We wanna teach them to believe, not teach them to doubt,

7:49 which I think some churches can fall into that trap

7:51 of teaching kids to doubt

7:52 'cause they haven't jumped through enough hoops to prove it.

7:55 And I think, you know, Jesus said, "Childlike faith."

7:57 That's what, he's after childlike faith.

7:59 And so we don't wanna look at the kids and say,

8:00 "Your faith's not good enough."

8:02 - Yeah, it's funny whenever he said like,

8:04 where they have a doubt issue, it's like, no, no, no,

8:07 churches that are doing this effectively need to tell you,

8:10 doubt is okay and train kids how to deal with doubt,

8:13 not to manifest doubt.

8:14 Because that's part of the problem is they,

8:16 it's like they're putting it on them.

8:17 Kind of like when parents, you know,

8:19 this kind of the soft parenting thing.

8:20 And so these parents will ask their kids like,

8:22 "Hey, did anybody hurt your feelings today

8:24 "or did anything make you mad or any of that kind of stuff?"

8:26 It's like, that's not inherently bad as a question.

8:29 But if you ask that of your kid every single day,

8:32 well, they're gonna be tired of answering, well, no.

8:34 And then they're just gonna start navel gazing

8:36 and looking internally.

8:38 But anyway, I don't wanna get too far off

8:39 of the main subject for today.

8:40 Because I do wanna talk about this book.

8:42 This is a book they released at the end of last year,

8:44 The Sin of Empathy Compassion and Its Counterfeits.

8:47 So this is what I think December of 2024.

8:49 And this is like, I think you said it was like

8:52 the precursor to leadership and sabotage

8:54 or, you know, you should read Sin of Empathy first,

8:56 which is like how should people read it?

8:58 - Yeah, yeah.

8:59 So basically it's a prequel in the sense that I,

9:01 all the work was done before I wrote sabotage,

9:03 but sabotage came out first.

9:06 And you could think of it as like,

9:07 there's a little section in leadership and emotional sabotage

9:10 where I say, "Dangers of Empathy."

9:11 But I felt like that needed its own book.

9:14 And so it's kind of like, you know,

9:16 the "Star Wars" movies, you watch four, five, six,

9:18 and then if you wanna go watch one, two, three,

9:20 you can go do it.

9:21 But it's that kind of deal.

9:22 So it's a little bit deeper dive on the problem

9:25 that afflicts us in our culture,

9:27 whereas leadership and emotional sabotage

9:29 is more solution oriented.

9:31 - Well, let's go ahead and we're gonna spend

9:32 most of our time today focusing on the Sin of Empathy

9:34 'cause I remember reading and leadership

9:35 and emotional sabotage, there was a very, very short section

9:38 about the Sin of Empathy.

9:39 And so this is kind of like the double click version of it.

9:41 So let's just start at 30,000 feet

9:43 because then we're gonna get into all the details.

9:45 But why this book?

9:47 Why did you release it when you did?

9:49 Why you?

9:50 - Yeah, so I've been working on this subject for now,

9:52 probably 12 years or so, about 12, 15 years ago,

9:56 I read a book by a guy named Edwin Friedman,

9:58 this Jewish rabbi called "A Failure of Nerve,

10:01 Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix."

10:03 It's not a Christian book.

10:04 Obviously, he's a Jewish guy.

10:05 He died like in the 2000s.

10:07 And I just remember feeling like,

10:09 man, this is really insightful just on the way people work,

10:11 on the way organizations work, lots of really good stuff.

10:14 And one of the things he talked about was the fallacy

10:16 of empathy, that leaders are often told,

10:19 the main thing you need to do is be empathetic.

10:21 And he says, that actually gets things backward.

10:22 You actually need to be a certain kind of leader first,

10:25 and then you can afford to be compassionate and kind.

10:27 But if you're not decisive and clear in your leadership,

10:30 empathy will become a tool of manipulation

10:32 that will hijack your institution.

10:34 Because you'll be always chasing around.

10:35 You'll basically adapt.

10:37 His argument was, empathy in the modern world,

10:39 basically, we adapt to the weakest, most immature,

10:43 most reactive, most unstable members of our community.

10:46 Under the guys of like, I'm trying to be kind

10:49 and compassionate and empathetic.

10:51 And he said, what leaders really need is,

10:52 what's my institution for?

10:54 I'm gonna be clear about that and go for it.

10:56 And then out of that, I'm free to be able to call people,

10:59 minister to people, help to people, things like that.

11:01 So I read that back 15 years ago, thought it was insightful.

11:04 And then it just felt like the world

11:06 conspired to prove his point.

11:08 And so over the last 10 years or so,

11:10 we've seen like from basically the woke stuff.

11:13 And I saw it in the church.

11:14 I saw it in the culture.

11:16 And so I said, I really wanna dig into this little more,

11:18 frame it in more of a Christian frame.

11:21 And so back in like 2015 or so I started teaching classes

11:24 on it, the college I was teaching at, leadership classes,

11:26 and then started writing and speaking on it.

11:29 And I remember, I saw, Doug Wilson and I did a little video

11:32 on it called The Set of Empathy back in like 2019.

11:35 And when that came out, I thought the title

11:39 would be a little bit provocative.

11:40 A lot of people would go, oh, but like,

11:42 there's a bunch of people who just let their hair fire.

11:45 And it was like, oh, I think I'm onto something.

11:47 And I just kept writing about it.

11:49 And every now and then, it would just blow up.

11:51 And I would just kind of say,

11:52 I'm gonna double click on it again.

11:53 And I'm gonna come at it from a different angle.

11:55 And I'm gonna try to clarify for people

11:57 what I mean, what I don't mean.

11:58 And I just think over the, and then all of a sudden,

12:00 it's like more and more people are like realizing like,

12:03 oh, yeah, that, like it gives language to people

12:06 to try to figure out like what happened to us as a society

12:09 over the last 10 or 15 years.

12:11 Like how did we get here?

12:13 And I think running under the currents

12:15 of a lot of our political, a lot of the divisions

12:18 in the church is this phenomenon of untethered empathy.

12:21 - Well, we're gonna do some definitional work

12:24 because one of the things that has been such a blessing

12:26 for the ministry that we do is we give men language

12:29 around things that they've already felt.

12:31 Like I remember when I did an entire episode

12:32 on how modern contemporary worship music

12:35 is basically for women and effeminate men.

12:37 And there were these men that had been sitting

12:39 in these congregations for years thinking,

12:41 I'm broken, I'm the problem, I'm not saved

12:42 because I don't like these, you know,

12:44 Hillsong songs or these Bethel songs or whatever.

12:46 And it's like, hey man,

12:47 that's not necessarily a U-problem.

12:50 And you know, it could be a U-problem,

12:51 but I'm just, you kind of give them language

12:53 and scaffolding around it.

12:55 But it's hard to get at scaffolding

12:56 when we don't know exactly what we're talking about.

12:58 So we need to do some definitional work.

13:00 We need to define empathy.

13:01 We need to define sympathy, right?

13:03 You do that in the book.

13:04 But then also there's a delineating line

13:07 that you make in the book between,

13:09 well with passion and sympathy, right?

13:11 Because you actually like the word compassion over sympathy,

13:14 but then like people don't always get the same idea.

13:17 And I guess let me throw another one

13:19 in their untethered empathy.

13:20 So we're looking at empathy, sympathy, compassion

13:22 and what is untethered empathy?

13:24 - Yeah, good.

13:25 - So I think people, I try to use the word empathy

13:27 in one of two ways.

13:28 One is like a real basic kind of neutral way

13:30 that just means like emotion sharing.

13:32 So you're happy, I'm happy, you're sad, I'm sad.

13:35 And it's not really a moral thing at that point

13:38 'cause it's just like a human thing.

13:39 People do it.

13:40 We're just, you got built us to kind of share emotions

13:43 in that regard.

13:44 And so that's kind of the neutral sense.

13:46 I'm fine with that.

13:47 I don't use that a ton 'cause I'm focused

13:48 on a different phenomenon.

13:50 It's how that thing gets, jumps the rails.

13:53 And so think of it this way, I use this illustration,

13:56 I think it helps people get the idea.

13:58 If someone is drowning in quicksand,

14:02 which if you grew up in the 90s like I did,

14:04 you thought that was gonna be a big problem.

14:05 All the movies had somebody drowning in quicksand

14:07 and you're like, it's not everywhere, it's everywhere.

14:10 But if someone's drowning in quicksand,

14:12 there's kind of three attitudes you could have to them.

14:14 The first we would call apathy,

14:16 where you just turn your back and you walk the other way.

14:18 You don't even care, you're not gonna help them.

14:19 That's apathy, everybody knows that's bad.

14:23 The good impulse or the right impulse,

14:25 what I would come in and I would call this sympathy

14:27 or compassion and I just use those interchangeably.

14:30 Like sympathy and compassion, I just use as synonyms.

14:33 Sympathy and compassion would say,

14:34 I wanna help this person, they're hurt,

14:36 they're in the pit, they're drowning.

14:38 So I'm gonna reach in there and I'm gonna grab them.

14:39 So I'm getting in there with them,

14:41 but I'm also gonna remain tethered to the shore.

14:43 I'm gonna grab a big branch so that I can brace

14:46 so that I'm tethered to the shore, I'm tethered to them

14:49 and that's gonna give me leverage

14:50 so that I can get them out of the pit.

14:52 That's I think the biblical response,

14:54 that's a virtuous response.

14:55 What the modern notion of empathy demands is not that,

14:59 instead it says you have to jump in with both feet.

15:01 You have to jump in and now you've got two people

15:04 who are drowning in this quicksand and what's the shore?

15:08 What do I mean by the shore?

15:09 Well, that's what's true, that's what's good,

15:11 that's what's wise, for Christians, that's Christ,

15:13 that's God, like you're tethered to something

15:16 beyond their feelings and their suffering

15:18 so that you're actually in a position to help them.

15:20 Whereas I think in the modern world,

15:22 the hijacking or the corruption of this good virtue

15:25 called compassion or sympathy is this demand

15:29 that you just go wherever their feelings wanna take you.

15:31 Whatever their feelings say, that's true.

15:33 And that's their truth and you are not in a position

15:35 to correct it, challenge it, rebuke it,

15:37 you must validate it, affirm it and celebrate it,

15:39 whatever they feel you have to agree with.

15:43 And so there's a kind of relativistic element

15:46 to that empathy and so that's why I call it untethered empathy

15:49 because we've become untethered, unhitched, detached

15:52 from what's true, from what's good, from God.

15:55 - When I feel like untethered empathy should apply

15:59 if you're three months old, right?

16:01 Because it doesn't matter what's going on

16:03 with a three month old or an 18 month old

16:05 or something like that.

16:06 Yes, whatever your concern is, cold, hot, uncomfortable,

16:11 bloated, hungry, we have to validate that.

16:14 But after about the age of two or three,

16:16 it's like, okay, we're not just gonna go full bore

16:18 in whatever it is you think,

16:19 but you do say in the book that you say,

16:21 empathy is reactive whereas sympathy is responsive.

16:26 But a lot of people, that's way too hard

16:30 to delineate between the two.

16:31 So what do you mean by that?

16:32 - Yeah, so reactive is that, so think about the Bible word

16:36 for this is like passions, so this Bible word passions,

16:39 what do we mean by that?

16:40 And it's basically those knee jerks, snap judgments,

16:43 snap reactions that we have to reality.

16:45 You see something good, you're like, you want it.

16:46 You see something bad, you like recoil from it.

16:48 You see something that you want

16:50 and then somebody gets in the way

16:51 and it's like snap anger, right?

16:53 That's a passion.

16:54 And those things are good, God made them,

16:56 but they're meant to be governed.

16:57 They're meant to be like, on a leash.

16:59 And so God designed us, so it's like God is over our mind

17:02 and our mind is over our passions.

17:04 That's how it's supposed to work.

17:06 But because we're sinful, we get turned upside down,

17:08 we ditch God, we come on, we unhitch from him.

17:10 And now we put passions in the driver's seat

17:13 and they decide where we go.

17:15 And so when I say empathy is reactive,

17:17 that's what I mean, is that basically we drown

17:21 in those emotions, they overwhelm us.

17:23 You think about the way, and we talk this way

17:24 about other passions, like I was blinded by anger.

17:26 That's why I did that thing.

17:28 Or I was overwhelmed by grief or I was paralyzed by fear.

17:33 That way of talking that the passions are so,

17:36 they get us by the throat and we just do things

17:37 that we know aren't good or wise, but we do them anyway.

17:41 And my argument is empathy, when it's unhitched,

17:43 acts like that.

17:45 Like we see somebody hurting

17:46 and that becomes like whatever we have to do

17:48 to make their immediate suffering go away,

17:51 we'll do it even if, this is the key thing,

17:54 even if in the long run, that's harmful to them

17:56 or to us or to other people.

17:58 Like we will do things, we will go along with things

18:01 just to make in the short run, make the pain go away

18:03 or alleviate it because we'll do things

18:07 that are harmful in the long run to alleviate short term pain.

18:10 So it's like they're immediate, what are you focused on?

18:13 They're immediate feelings or they're long term good.

18:15 And I think compassion says we need to focus

18:18 on their long term good and from that deal with the feelings.

18:22 Empathy says, no, no short term feelings, all that matters.

18:25 Let's relieve that pain in any way we can.

18:27 And you end up doing more harm than good

18:29 because out of a misguided sense of compassion.

18:33 - Well, Joe, I think up to this point,

18:34 most people with a functioning brain

18:37 and logic and reasoning intact would agree

18:40 with most of everything that you just said.

18:42 But obviously you've already alluded to the fact

18:43 that the title of the book is gonna be provocative

18:45 to some people, it's kinda hard to provoke me at this point.

18:48 But yeah, the sin of empathy, right?

18:50 The sin where there's some sting to that

18:52 probably for some particular reason.

18:54 And so I guess, well, the way I've explained it

18:57 because I've had people ask me about alcohol, for instance,

18:59 they're like, hey, is alcohol a sin?

19:02 And my response to them is it depends.

19:04 And they're like, wait, what do you mean?

19:05 I'm like, drunkenness is always a sin, right?

19:08 But I do think for some people, like for me,

19:10 I've never had a problem with drinking, right?

19:12 So I can have a whiskey or two

19:14 and it doesn't turn into 17.

19:16 It's just never been a problem for me.

19:17 However, I do have friends that one whiskey

19:19 does turn into 17.

19:21 And so if they have a sip at a bar,

19:23 that may be sin for them, but me having a sip again,

19:25 it's kinda hard to be black and white about it.

19:28 But like for me having a sip at a bar,

19:29 it's not sinful at all.

19:30 Again, we see Jesus' first miracle

19:32 is turning water into wine.

19:33 We see from the scriptures that Jesus,

19:35 yes, himself did partake in alcoholic beverages.

19:37 Don't tell your Baptist friends.

19:38 But like at the same time, like, why is sin in it?

19:41 Or I guess perhaps a better way of saying is,

19:44 what kind of empathy or at what point is empathy

19:48 being shown in a particular situation considered sinful?

19:52 - Yeah, I think so.

19:53 Again, do the same thing that you do with other passions.

19:55 So everybody would say if you said the same thing about anger,

19:59 is anger a sin and people are gonna go, what depends?

20:02 What are you angry about and is your anger under control?

20:05 So the ungoverned anger, we have a category

20:08 for ungoverned anger, unrighteous anger,

20:10 losing your cool, that's a sin.

20:11 And then you have a category for righteous anger.

20:13 Jesus throws those tables over.

20:15 He's angry at death, things like that.

20:18 And so we distinguish there's good anger, bad anger.

20:22 There's good grief, there's ungodly grief,

20:25 a worldly grief that leads to death.

20:28 There's holy fear, there's unholy fear.

20:29 So all of these other passions we know

20:32 can have good and bad versions.

20:34 What people have a hard time with is they think,

20:36 well, empathy is too good to ever have a bad version.

20:39 And I go, okay, if you think that,

20:41 if you think that empathy, pity, compassion,

20:43 whatever word you wanna use,

20:44 this disposition to help people who are hurting,

20:47 if you think that that is so perfect

20:49 that can never go wrong, I'm just gonna tell you,

20:51 if I'm the devil, that's exactly where I'm gonna hide stuff.

20:54 Because people will never look for it there.

20:56 They'll never, they don't have a category for,

20:58 oh, there's a bad kind of empathy.

20:59 But the Bible tells us actually a number of places

21:01 that in the Old Testament law, it says like,

21:06 if your brother or your sister or your son or your daughter

21:10 or your friend who you love,

21:13 if they try to entice you to idolatry,

21:16 it says your eyes shall not pity them, don't pity them.

21:19 And so there's times where the Bible's like,

21:21 that's an inappropriate time for pity.

21:23 That's not what pity is for.

21:24 That's where you have to draw some clear lines,

21:26 you have to do some hard things,

21:27 you have to break relationships.

21:28 In the Old Testament, it was like,

21:29 you gotta execute people, right?

21:30 Like this is a sin against the community, against God.

21:33 This is over.

21:34 And so there's times where empathy, pity is inappropriate.

21:38 And we can make those distinctions

21:40 with these other passions, these other feelings.

21:43 And I'm just saying we need to do the same

21:44 with the sin of empathy.

21:45 So if I'd written a book called The Sin of Anger,

21:47 I think everybody would have been like,

21:48 yeah, I get it.

21:49 But sin of empathy, don't have that bucket.

21:51 And I'm going, I'm trying to create that bucket

21:53 because what's happened to us as a church

21:56 and as a society over the last 10 or 15 years

21:59 is this good impulse to show compassion to hurting people,

22:02 got hijacked and manipulated by activists

22:06 to steer us into doing things,

22:08 agreeing with things, allowing things

22:10 that are really destructive and evil.

22:12 And they did it in the name of empathy.

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23:49 - Well, even in the book, I'll read a quick quote.

23:52 You talk about the weaponization of pity.

23:54 And here's a quote from the book.

23:55 The passion of pity is what happens when love for hurting

23:59 or love for the hurting, the broken in the weak,

24:01 what we typically call compassion becomes a God

24:04 and in doing so becomes a demon, right?

24:07 And so that's where it's like you take the impulse

24:10 and you think it's pointed in the right direction.

24:12 And also, and don't worry, we're gonna get to this.

24:15 Part of the reason why if you did a book

24:16 called The Sin of Anger, it wouldn't have had

24:18 cause any kerfuffle is because when you say

24:20 the sin of empathy, you're sticking your thumb

24:23 into something that has a capital F feminine element to it.

24:26 And we live in a culture in a church

24:28 that is kind of downstream from third and fourth way feminism.

24:30 But don't worry, we'll get there.

24:32 I know you're chomping at the bit,

24:33 but I do want to talk about another quote from the book

24:35 where you kind of get into three traits of how,

24:37 and this is where it's like, okay,

24:39 we've been in the world of philosophical, great.

24:41 Now we're gonna start getting into the world of like,

24:43 what does this actually look like?

24:44 So here's a quote from the book.

24:45 Despite the appearance of love and mercy

24:47 that empathy puts on, I want to argue that a community

24:50 in the grip of empathy winds up being characterized

24:53 by three traits, cowardice, indifference, and cruelty.

24:58 And so again, you attach the word empathy

25:01 to cowardice and difference and cruelty.

25:03 And people are like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

25:05 Bridge too far.

25:06 So what say you?

25:07 - Yeah, good.

25:08 So I'll give an example from the Bible.

25:09 So everybody knows the story of Aaron at the golden calf.

25:12 I assume people know this, right?

25:13 Israel's up on the mountain.

25:15 They just got the 10 commandments.

25:16 Don't worship other God, don't worship idols.

25:19 Moses goes up to talk to God in this big cloud

25:21 and Aaron is left in charge.

25:22 And the people come to him and they're like,

25:24 hey, we don't know what happened to that Moses guy.

25:27 We're kind of scared, right?

25:28 These people have been put through the ringer.

25:30 They've been traumatized, right?

25:31 Like they were in Egypt, they were slaves.

25:34 They've been let out.

25:34 They almost thought they were going to die at the Red Sea.

25:36 Then God made a way.

25:37 Moses has been God's like dude on the ground.

25:40 He's been, you know, made them feel safe and he's gone now.

25:42 He's up on the mountain.

25:43 They don't know what happened.

25:44 And so they're scared.

25:45 And then their emotions are so powerful

25:47 that Aaron's like, okay, I'll build you a calf.

25:49 And he does, he gives in.

25:51 And so people look at that and they go, he was a coward.

25:53 And I go, yeah, what, and how do you think

25:55 he justified that cowardice?

25:57 How do you, why do you think he went along

25:58 with what the people wanted rather than doing what God wanted?

26:00 Why did he do that?

26:02 And the answer, how would he have explained it to himself?

26:04 He's like, the people were hurting, right?

26:06 The people were, and so it's like the cowardice,

26:08 we can do, we do things that are cowardice

26:10 and we justify or rationalize them in the name of empathy

26:13 because we find other people's emotions so uncomfortable to us

26:17 that we'll do anything to make them go away.

26:19 So that's cowardice.

26:20 The indifference is empathy kind of acts like a spotlight

26:23 and it highlights, when it's untethered especially,

26:26 it highlights the suffering of certain people

26:28 and ignores other people.

26:30 So there's, I remember there's this advertisement

26:32 a number of years ago in like a political cant race

26:36 where it was like this young girl, teenager,

26:40 basically saying, I was raped by my stepfather.

26:43 And if so and so gets elected,

26:46 I would no longer have the choice that I had

26:49 whenever I was raped.

26:50 And so he's gonna take away my choice

26:52 because I had options and I had choice and everything like that.

26:54 And she said, so don't elect this guy.

26:57 And I thought, this is a great example

26:58 'cause what it's doing is it's awakening your compassion

27:01 for this girl, which is totally legitimate, right?

27:03 She's had this great evil done to her

27:05 and you should feel compassion for her,

27:07 you should go anger for the guy that did it,

27:09 you should be like, he should be in jail,

27:10 maybe he should be executed if we were a just society, right?

27:13 Like we should be, that's what should happen.

27:15 And so you feel compassion,

27:16 but who gets left out of the picture?

27:18 And it's like that unborn child got left out of the picture.

27:21 Her unborn baby who did nothing wrong,

27:24 but who's a real person is there, but totally ignored,

27:27 not a worthy object of empathy

27:29 and is just buried under these euphemisms.

27:31 And so we can be kind of indifferent

27:33 to the suffering of this child who was executed

27:36 because we're so overwhelmed with compassion for this girl.

27:39 And that's another way that kind of like it's selective.

27:42 And then that goes even farther, right?

27:43 It's cruelty to the child,

27:44 but like this is one of the things

27:46 I think it surprises people.

27:47 Like so in the modern world, people are like,

27:49 hey, we're very divided.

27:50 It's polarized, we're tribalism is everywhere,

27:54 you know, hatred everywhere.

27:56 We need more empathy.

27:58 And what the researchers are actually finding

27:59 is that when they go look like what effect does empathy have

28:02 on that kind of system,

28:03 it actually increases the tribalism and division.

28:06 And it's not surprising why.

28:08 It's like, well, because I so identify

28:10 with this group of people, their pains,

28:12 their suffering, the oppression that they're under,

28:14 that means I can justify great cruelty toward their enemies

28:19 because I have so much compassion for them.

28:21 And so C.S. Lewis, one of the guys,

28:22 I quote him a ton in the book, he's one of my heroes,

28:24 he has this line where he says,

28:26 pity a good emotion like pity,

28:28 when it's detached from justice,

28:30 when it's detached from love, right?

28:32 So there's that untettering.

28:34 It's that it leads through anger to cruelty.

28:37 It leads through anger to cruelty.

28:38 And so all of a sudden you start to like rewind the tape

28:40 over the last 10 years.

28:41 And you think about the way that the most empathetic people

28:44 who were talking about the oppression of various groups.

28:47 And then you realize like, you know, that person,

28:49 if you crossed them, could absolutely unleash

28:52 a mob of rage against you.

28:54 If you violated whatever their empathy was,

28:57 they just hate and you're like,

28:58 why, like there ain't no mob like an empathetic mob?

29:02 And so you're going, look at all this empathy,

29:03 but what does it do?

29:04 Well, it just awakens the passions

29:05 and that passion shifts very easily

29:07 from compassion for that group, hatred towards you,

29:10 because you're on the wrong group.

29:12 So I think that's so empathy can justify great cruelty.

29:15 It's what's lurking.

29:15 It's because it unleashes those passions

29:18 and spreads destruction wherever it goes.

29:20 - One thing in addition to that,

29:22 empathy kind of causes people to,

29:23 and I don't mean this to be offensive.

29:25 I'm not a stranger to being offensive,

29:28 but it's almost like people turn their brains off.

29:31 The part of their brain that can just make calls

29:33 and make decisions.

29:34 'Cause if I were to tell you,

29:36 hey, my dad, you know, he went crazy.

29:38 He decided to go to liquor store and rob the place,

29:41 got into a scuffle there, decided to shoot the clerk.

29:45 Oh, sorry, twisting the story.

29:47 He gave the money he stole from the place to me.

29:50 And now I'm being charged with murder

29:54 because of something that my dad did.

29:55 And I'm gonna get the death penalty

29:57 because my dad killed somebody else.

29:58 Everyone will be like, wait, wait,

29:59 there's way too much in the story

30:01 that doesn't make any sense.

30:02 But in the exact situation that you described,

30:04 this horrific evil was done to a girl.

30:06 And they are, all they are doing is multiplying the evil

30:09 by killing the baby that is an innocent bystander in this.

30:13 But again, if you take it into those terms,

30:15 then we fall off in the euphemisms and clumps of sales

30:18 and all these different arguments

30:19 that absolutely don't go anywhere

30:20 if you use the full power of your brain.

30:23 But I think part of the thing is,

30:24 is because something, and we're gonna park here

30:26 just a little bit on the progressive gaze.

30:29 And so, and that's progressive G-A-Z-E, by the way,

30:34 for anyone that wasn't quite paying attention.

30:36 - Or the other one, I mean, it works both ways.

30:38 It does actually work both ways.

30:40 That's what she said.

30:41 But within the progressive gaze, in the book you argue,

30:45 hey, we have to get from out from underneath this gaze.

30:49 And so, just very quickly,

30:51 'cause I've got several quotes in reference

30:53 to the progressive gaze, what is it?

30:55 - Yeah, so the idea is basically that many of us come to have,

30:59 like I think the church in particular,

31:01 over the last 10 or 15 years,

31:02 came to have a little progressive sitting on their shoulder

31:04 evaluating whether or not they were being good Christians.

31:08 Okay, so we kind of adopt it.

31:09 We basically, out of a good desire,

31:11 like different churches were like,

31:13 hey, we need to reach people, we need to reach the lost.

31:15 And they, when they targeted secular urban progressives

31:20 as like the prime like mission field,

31:23 like we wanna reach those people with the gospel.

31:25 And so that meant we like studied and like,

31:28 looked at them and said, like, what do they care about?

31:31 What do they love?

31:32 What do they hate?

31:32 What are their concerns?

31:34 And let's show how the gospel meets those needs.

31:37 And as a result, we came to have this little progressive

31:39 on our shoulder who was like evaluating

31:41 whether or not we were good Christians.

31:43 So that meant like, are you being compassionate enough

31:45 towards the right groups?

31:47 And so progressive categories,

31:49 aggressive ideology defined, well,

31:50 this group is worthy of compassion, and that group isn't.

31:53 So when people said, you know, you gotta care about the poor.

31:56 And it's like, well, what they meant was,

31:58 I have to care about minorities and urban centers.

32:00 That's what the poor was.

32:01 If you said, oh, you mean like the white guy,

32:03 the white working class guy in West Virginia with the Red Hat,

32:07 you're saying I should really care about him?

32:08 It's like, no, no, that's not what we meant.

32:11 And so it was very selective, but Christians came to adopt

32:15 that as like the standard of compassion.

32:17 And so we began to adapt or massage the truth

32:21 and cater to that audience.

32:23 So we came to live under the progressive gaze,

32:24 which means there's certain things we wouldn't say,

32:27 we'd mute ourselves, 'cause we wouldn't wanna offend them.

32:29 And there's certain things we would really emphasize

32:31 in an accent because we were trying to like win them over,

32:34 but instead of actually trying winning them to the gospel,

32:37 we were just pleasing man.

32:39 And as a result, like this is how the church

32:41 started to get hijacked by wokeness,

32:43 by the social justice movement,

32:46 by all of these other, like these ideologies,

32:48 how did they creep in?

32:49 And it's like they hijacked our desire to be compassionate

32:52 under the progressive gaze and to be respectable.

32:55 Like what is a good kind of Christian,

32:56 the right kind of Christian?

32:58 And we would distance ourselves from the Christians

33:00 that weren't like that.

33:01 Oh, those cultural warriors, those moral majority,

33:04 those fundamentalists, like we're not like them.

33:07 And we'd put daylight between us and the bad Christians

33:09 in order to try to gain an audience

33:12 with this particular identity group.

33:16 - Yeah, let's go a little deeper there.

33:17 There's a quote from this section of the book.

33:18 "Christians began to censor themselves

33:21 and became reluctant to challenge woke ideologies."

33:23 As you just said, "To question species proposals

33:26 related to race, sex, and abuse,

33:28 and to speak clearly about progressive sins.

33:31 And so for any of these types of ideologies,

33:34 so let's just say, you know, Marxism,

33:37 communism, socialism, critical theory, feminism,

33:39 like all these different things,

33:40 this witch's brew of nonsense,

33:43 you need two types of people.

33:44 And I've said this a bunch.

33:45 You need conscious nefarious actors

33:47 and then you need useful idiots.

33:49 And so conscious nefarious actors,

33:51 I think a couple of examples of those

33:53 in our modern parlance, I guess,

33:55 as it pertains to Christendom would be Andy Stanley,

33:57 Russell Moore.

33:58 And then I think you have some well-meaning useful idiots,

34:02 like maybe you can say like a JD Greer

34:04 with the stuff that went on with the SBC

34:07 and some of the racial stuff that went on.

34:08 And I've listened to a sermon of his recently

34:10 where he was basically advocating like,

34:12 "Hey, you know, Christian should be the ones

34:15 standing up for the rights of LGBTQ+ people."

34:18 And then I'm just smacked with these recent stories

34:21 of these gay men that are legally able to obtain baby boys.

34:26 So there was a gay couple in the UK.

34:28 That was adopting a baby boy.

34:30 They were in the process.

34:31 This baby was in their care.

34:32 And these two men raped this 18 month old baby to death.

34:36 There's the other couple where one of the guys

34:39 in the couple from Pennsylvania is a registered sex offender

34:42 and his sex crime was against a child, against a boy,

34:45 but they were able to go around the system

34:47 even though the surrogate had to go through

34:49 all kinds of vetting in order to have this baby.

34:52 And then they give this baby boy unsupervised to two men

34:57 and one of them happens to be a convicted pedophile, right?

35:00 So is that the type of stuff for advocating for

35:02 when you advocate for the rights of LGBTQ+ people

35:05 in the same breath, you're going to say,

35:08 well, why can't they enjoy the magic of fatherhood

35:12 and the magic of having kids?

35:13 It's like, well, if you're an atheist, nature says they can't.

35:16 And if you're a theist, God says they can't.

35:18 So what exactly is the argument?

35:20 So let's talk a little bit about the conscious nefarious

35:23 actors and the useful idiots in this space.

35:25 - Yeah, that's right. So I call the useful idiots,

35:27 I called the respectable because they became very concerned

35:31 with credibility under the progressive gaze.

35:33 So they wanted to be seen as the right kind of Christian

35:35 by saying, you know, we're not going to thunder

35:37 against certain sins, we'll whisper about certain sins, right?

35:40 Like, so-- - Because apparently God whispers

35:42 about sins, you know, I think Sodom and Gomorrah

35:45 may have been a little bit loud,

35:47 but he-- - A little bit loud, right?

35:48 - But the idea was like, hey,

35:50 we're going to put the emphasis where we say the Bible does

35:54 and we're not going to actually challenge the cultural sins

35:56 that are staring us in the face.

35:58 And we're going to rationalize it under like,

35:59 well, we want to reach these people.

36:01 And so we're not going to like punch them hard

36:03 with like, no, this is just evil and wicked.

36:04 So like, and I think the Sodomite marriage

36:08 is a really good example.

36:09 I mean, I think even that, here's a good example.

36:12 The older term for homosexuality that was common

36:15 in legal documents and in society for years

36:18 was the word sodomy, came from the Sodom, right?

36:21 And then over time, it was like, hey, that's a mean word.

36:25 That's a mean word, we shouldn't use that word,

36:27 we should use a word like, if it was clinical,

36:30 it'd become a sexual, if it was pop culture, it'd be gay.

36:32 And we tried to make, we softened the language

36:34 and we stopped saying like, no,

36:36 the Sodomite marriage doesn't exist.

36:38 And in doing so, like, we catacized ourselves

36:41 into thinking this isn't a big deal,

36:42 we suppressed the gag reflex that we ought to have

36:45 towards those sins and we covered them over

36:48 and like masqueraded at as like, this is just one more way

36:51 that people do it.

36:52 And now that Obergefell happened and everything,

36:55 we just kind of got to make peace with it.

36:57 And then what happens is we did that.

36:59 And then now we're seeing all of this insane fruit

37:03 of that sort of slide, whether it's the trans stuff,

37:06 whether it's the horrors that you just described

37:08 in surrogacy and gay adoption.

37:10 We see that and we're going like, well,

37:12 how do we stop that?

37:13 It's like you train already left the station

37:14 because you were trying to be too nice.

37:16 You were trying to be empathetic rather than being principled

37:20 and saying, what does God say?

37:22 Like, so the key thing is,

37:24 should you be compassionate to people who have unwanted,

37:27 you know, same-sex desires?

37:28 Absolutely.

37:29 But you have to be clear, you have to be clear

37:32 that like those desires are wicked and vile

37:35 and need to be repented of and put to death

37:37 every time they arise, not coddled and catered to

37:41 out of some misguided sense of showing compassion.

37:43 And that's what happened.

37:45 And the world, you mentioned the nefarious actors,

37:48 when the world realized,

37:50 oh, Christians are trying to please progressives.

37:53 Progressive groups started pouring money

37:56 into being like, well, let's just hijack that baby.

37:58 How about that?

37:59 Let's just steer.

38:00 They realized there's, and they,

38:02 so you have these nefarious progressive activists

38:05 who had billions of dollars and that they would funnel

38:08 to Christian organizations with credibility,

38:11 to mute Christian witness or to play up,

38:14 hey, focus on climate change,

38:16 hey, focus on social justice,

38:17 focus on these other things,

38:19 stop talking about sexual ethics,

38:21 because that was the progressive agenda.

38:23 And it was very, very effective.

38:25 I think now we live in a time where there's a little bit

38:27 of a backlash, and it's like,

38:28 this is part of what my book is trying to do is say,

38:30 this is the play that was run,

38:32 we need to learn how to avoid it

38:33 while still being truly compassionate.

38:36 - Well, and Joe, I think the issue here as well,

38:38 is people are just way too quick

38:41 to write off someone as a meanie-mean pants.

38:43 Like, oh, that Megan Basham, she's so,

38:45 she's dividing the brethren.

38:47 That's what she's doing,

38:48 because she's pointing out things

38:49 that you can go look up for yourself,

38:51 sermons that you can go listen to for yourself.

38:54 And again, it's like we're untethering

38:57 from realistic logic when it comes to certain things.

39:00 So specifically with the homosexuality thing,

39:01 because here's two men having a conversation right now,

39:04 we are not same sex attracted.

39:06 That is not our flavor of sinful bent.

39:09 But let's just say this, because again,

39:11 Christians have bought into the cultural lie,

39:13 that this is just how they were born.

39:15 These are Christians that listen to Lady Gaga, apparently.

39:17 They were just born this way.

39:18 There's nothing we can do about it.

39:19 So let's just make the tent bigger.

39:21 Well, let me just say, what if my flavor of sin

39:25 was I like to get angry and fight people?

39:27 - Yeah, right.

39:28 - So when I get angry, I go into a bar

39:30 and I'm wearing a red shirt and that guy's wearing a blue shirt

39:33 and I don't like blue.

39:34 And so I drag him out by his coat

39:36 and then I decide to beat him half to death

39:38 in the parking lot.

39:38 And then I say, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

39:40 That's just who I am.

39:41 - Born this way. - I was born this way.

39:43 I'm angry and I like to fight.

39:46 Don't judge me.

39:47 Are you passing judgment on me?

39:48 That's mean.

39:50 Again, nobody would think that that's a realistic way

39:52 to operate in the world.

39:54 But it's just where people go

39:56 because it's where the focus of their ire is.

39:59 - Although it's interesting.

40:00 I think that some people would actually go with that

40:02 is provided you were a part of the correct victim class.

40:05 So one of the things that untethered empathy enabled

40:08 was what I've affectionately called the victimhood Olympics

40:11 that we live through,

40:12 where people continue to see what victim classes,

40:14 what oppressed classes do I belong to

40:16 because the greatest victim sets the agenda.

40:19 - Yep.

40:20 - And the greatest victim can get away.

40:22 The victimhood conferred invulnerability.

40:24 So I remember right after that October 7th deal in Israel

40:28 where Hamas went in and did all those horrors,

40:31 there was a spokesman for Hamas on some news show

40:34 and they were asking him, how could these people do this?

40:37 And he was like, well, we're victims.

40:38 Everything we do is justified.

40:41 And I just thought that's the logic right there, right?

40:43 That's the logic that we have introduced into the system

40:46 is if we were a victim, everything you do is justified

40:48 any rage, any outburst.

40:50 How did like they, after George Floyd people,

40:53 they burned cities to the ground, they did.

40:55 And democratic politicians, you know, sprung them from,

40:59 sprung them from jail posted their bail.

41:01 And it's like, why was that happened?

41:03 Well, because they were victims of oppression

41:06 and therefore anything they did was justified.

41:09 That's what's happening in our cities

41:10 under progressive politicians

41:12 who are catering to criminals, right?

41:16 It's what, in the UK, you can go to prison for a decade

41:19 because you post a social media thing

41:21 that's not politically correct.

41:23 But if you rape someone, and you're a part of the right

41:26 victimhood class, if you're an Islamic immigrant

41:29 and you rape a bunch of white girls,

41:32 then you'll get out in a year or two.

41:34 But if you post a meme, calling that out.

41:36 So it's like, justice is totally perverted

41:39 and it's all being done under the name of compassion.

41:42 We need to have compassion for designated victim groups.

41:45 It's not true compassion.

41:46 It's true compassion would say,

41:48 we're gonna tether ourselves to justice.

41:49 Mercy and justice go together.

41:52 And if we're tethered to justice,

41:54 it means we have some emotional distance.

41:55 Like you were talking earlier about the way

41:57 you can kind of lose yourself.

41:58 You don't think clearly.

41:59 It's like, yeah, you gotta have some emotional distance

42:01 to say what's true, what's good, what's the law,

42:04 what's the proper standards.

42:05 And then you make the decision

42:07 and now you can be compassionate.

42:09 But compassion flows out of that.

42:10 If it goes first, it won't work.

42:13 - When it's a bastardization of what justice even is,

42:16 because we get these ideas,

42:19 because there are things that should be

42:20 incredibly uncontroversial to say out loud,

42:24 but they become things you can't even think.

42:26 Like gay surrogacy and adoption should be completely illegal.

42:29 It should be unthinkable, but if you say that out loud,

42:31 it's one of the worst things you could possibly say.

42:33 The fact that a boy could become a girl,

42:37 that a child could become an animal, like a furry.

42:40 Like these are, of course, things that are ridiculous.

42:43 Like, oh, we shouldn't take advantage of human beings

42:46 that can't kill themselves and allow them to be murdered.

42:49 Well, of course, we can't do things like that.

42:51 But again, we untether from those types of things.

42:54 And it does come back to those groups.

42:56 I do wanna read a quote from the book

42:57 just to put a finer point on what you said.

42:59 And all of this, many Christians,

43:00 and especially Christian leaders,

43:01 had their eyes on three groups,

43:03 all of whom reinforce the progressive gays,

43:06 victims or oppressed groups, those are the objects of empathy,

43:09 advocates, those are the arbiters of justice,

43:12 and other respectable Christians,

43:14 and those are the purveyors of credibility.

43:17 And so it distorts the lens that we see actual justice through

43:22 because we're like, okay, well, this person,

43:24 because of their lived experience,

43:26 because of their standpoint of epistemology,

43:28 we apparently need to change what knowledge is, right?

43:31 It's tied into gnocicism and all the things.

43:33 We need to change what real life actually is,

43:36 because this person feels a particular way.

43:39 And so I think that does go back staying in a Christian context

43:42 to where people talk about abuse or trauma or church hurt.

43:47 Now, when I hear the phrase or the term church hurt,

43:49 I am automatically just assume this isn't real.

43:53 Kind of like when someone says,

43:54 we found a noose on a construction site.

43:56 My brain just goes, no, you didn't.

43:57 You found a rope in a slip knot

43:59 that's helping people like guide metal beams.

44:02 That's what you found, right?

44:03 And so until proven otherwise,

44:05 I'm just going to assume you're absolutely full of crap.

44:07 The problem is, is there are 100% people

44:10 that have been abused, traumatized, taken advantage of,

44:13 had money stolen, been sexually molested,

44:15 all kinds of things inside the church,

44:18 and that is legitimate church hurt.

44:20 But when a pastor says, hey,

44:22 stop doing that particular sin, it's bad for you.

44:25 Like it's going against what God would say.

44:28 You're like, I've been church hurt.

44:29 So I guess we can talk about the expansion of terms,

44:32 like trauma or abuse or church hurt.

44:35 - Yeah, so what happened was,

44:36 out of real concern for victims,

44:37 which there were real victims,

44:38 there were real people who've been wrong, like he said.

44:41 And the way that we then began to try to address it,

44:44 people realized, right?

44:45 It's opportunistic, right?

44:47 Let's expand those definitions.

44:48 And now, whereas abuse used to mean

44:49 like physical or sexual violence,

44:51 like it had a definition.

44:52 Like that's what, to be abusement,

44:54 physical sexual violence, all of a sudden,

44:56 that term gets expanded, you get some concept creep,

44:59 other things get smuggled in there.

45:02 So now it's like it's psychological or emotional abuse

45:05 or spiritual abuse, these sort of terms.

45:07 And I would even say, sometimes people were like sinned against.

45:10 But by using the term abuse,

45:11 basically it shut down any discussion,

45:14 because once someone had been identified

45:16 as the victim of abuse, everything they said was right.

45:19 You couldn't question them.

45:20 You couldn't, you couldn't say,

45:21 well, wait a minute, wait, did that really what happened?

45:23 If you said, well, let's get his side.

45:25 What did he say happened?

45:27 It's like, it doesn't matter.

45:28 Why are you revictimizing them?

45:30 And so in terms, trauma used to mean like a blow to the head

45:34 that's outside the, or end and then psychologically,

45:37 like you went to Vietnam and saw your buddies blown up

45:39 because a kid gave him a Coke can with a grenade.

45:41 Like that was traumatic, so you had PTSD.

45:44 And then all of a sudden it was like a pastor told you one time

45:46 that you were sinning against your husband.

45:49 And now you say, I've been traumatized by my pastor.

45:52 And so that, and so they were trading on the potency

45:55 and the power of those words to get people to adapt to them.

46:00 And as a result, real victims, like you said,

46:03 so now if there was actually ever someone

46:05 who was really church hurt, they've so deluded the language

46:09 that a lot of people go, this is like the boy who cried wolf.

46:11 I don't believe it anymore.

46:12 And it's tragic, which is one of the reasons why people go,

46:15 why are you writing a book on empathy?

46:16 And I'm like, because compassion is too important

46:20 to leave in the hands of people who are gonna

46:22 unhitch it from truth.

46:23 Because when they do, we lose compassion itself.

46:26 Like you will harden people's hearts to real suffering

46:29 if you're constantly manipulating them.

46:31 It's just like if, on a personal level,

46:35 everybody's been on the receiving end of a guilt trip

46:37 or a pity party by someone in their family, right?

46:39 When they maximize their pain and suffering,

46:42 they, you know, their minor inconveniences

46:44 or they get dramatic and they try to manipulate you.

46:47 Once you finally realize that's what they're doing,

46:49 you stop actually paying attention to,

46:50 you know they don't mean it.

46:52 You're just kind of like, you brush it off.

46:53 And so if they really did face something hard,

46:57 you've been, you go, yeah, but I don't believe you

46:59 because you've lied so many times about your suffering.

47:02 You've exaggerated so much

47:03 that I don't feel compassion for you anymore.

47:06 And so that's where we are as a society right now.

47:09 So the reason there's a chapter in my book called

47:11 In Praise of Compassion is I don't want to lose compassion

47:14 even as I want people to learn to resist

47:16 the manipulations of untethered empathy.

47:19 - When I think this all kind of circles

47:21 around the same drain to what I alluded to earlier,

47:23 which is feminism.

47:24 So I do want to go to this quote here from the book.

47:27 Untethered empathy and tandem with a desire

47:29 for respectability and credibility under the progressive gaze

47:32 is the means by which various aggrieved groups

47:34 have been able to steer communities into catering

47:36 to greater and greater folly and injustice.

47:38 And a key ingredient in making this steering effective

47:41 is feminism.

47:42 Indeed, we can't adequately address the dangers of empathy

47:46 without considering feminism and its impact on the church.

47:49 - So feminism has taken many forms, obviously.

47:51 So 1800s, early 1900s, you know,

47:54 that's the first way feminism, that's suffrage, right?

47:56 Then we got second way feminism.

47:58 That's around the sexual revolution.

47:59 Like, hey, I can do whatever I want with my body.

48:01 And also I have the right to be equally

48:03 as unpregnant as a man.

48:04 Third way feminism is, hey, women are actually better

48:06 than men, we don't need them, they're awful.

48:09 They're just kind of add-ons to a culture.

48:11 Even though when we call the police,

48:13 we definitely don't hope it's a fat lesbian cop

48:15 that shows up, we want the big burly man, right?

48:17 And then fourth way feminism, they're trying to figure out

48:19 what to do.

48:20 It's like, all right, can a man become a woman?

48:22 What is a woman?

48:24 And then you've got like TERFs, you know, trans, you know,

48:27 exclusionary radical feminists or whatever, they're like,

48:29 wait, wait, wait, no, no, feminism is for women,

48:31 not for dudes that are, you know, voyeuristic

48:34 and want to dress up like girls because it, you know,

48:36 it gets them sexually aroused or those types of things.

48:39 And so I guess talk to me about what the downstream

48:42 consequences will one, the church putting itself

48:45 downstream of a feminist culture, obviously,

48:46 this is all fairly predictable.

48:48 But let's just start the conversation there.

48:50 - Yeah, so when I say feminism, I have in mind

48:52 particularly this, the fundamental lie of feminism

48:55 is men and women are interchangeable.

48:57 And I think that that shows up in a number of,

48:59 in different ways in the different phases,

49:00 first, second, third, and there could be things

49:03 at different places where I'd go, yeah, that was a good idea,

49:06 but it was badly managed because I even think

49:09 the first way feminism totally disrupted the household

49:12 as the basic unit of society and many of our problems

49:14 are downstream from that.

49:15 But what I'm really targeting is this lie

49:17 of interchangeability, which says men and women

49:19 can just are interchangeable.

49:20 And the reason it dovetails with empathy is this,

49:23 women are the more empathetic sex by nature.

49:27 And I mean that in like a good sense.

49:28 Like they are the first responders when people are hurting,

49:31 they nurture, they care, they move towards suffering

49:34 with comfort, like you think of a mom and dad,

49:37 like a kid falls down, scrapes his knee,

49:38 dads rub some dirt on it, get up, keep playing.

49:41 Mom's like, come here, let me give you a hug, I'll kiss it.

49:44 And so you have this kind of difference

49:46 that mom and dad bring to the table

49:48 because of the different natures of men and women.

49:50 And so it's a good thing that God made women

49:52 to be more nurturing, caring, kind, and empathetic,

49:56 relative to men.

49:57 But what is a blessing when it's there,

50:01 when it's like comforting the child who's crying,

50:04 becomes a liability if you're talking about

50:06 setting a perimeter and guarding something, right?

50:10 So if you're talking about guarding

50:11 the doctrine of worship of the church,

50:12 if you're talking about guarding a border,

50:14 if you're talking about defending a nation,

50:18 that empathy is a liability because if someone presents

50:22 themselves as a victim, in that context,

50:25 women, as the more empathetic sex,

50:27 are gonna be more prone to let it in.

50:29 And so that's what you've seen.

50:31 We take the church context, there's a reason

50:33 that all of the denominations that decided

50:35 we're gonna ordain women to the pastorate

50:37 back in the '50s, '60s, and '70s very quickly

50:41 began unleashing all kinds of sexual morality

50:44 on their churches, right?

50:45 So they're gonna approve of all of the LGBT stuff,

50:48 they're gonna ordain same sex,

50:50 they're gonna gait people to the ministry,

50:52 they're gonna sanction sodomite marriage,

50:54 they're gonna fly the trans flag.

50:56 Why is that, there's a causation here?

50:59 It's not just a correlation, it happens to be the case.

51:02 It's because women are more empathetic

51:03 and gay people began to present themselves as victims.

51:06 So these lady pastors, quote unquote,

51:09 decided, well, we gotta show them compassion

51:11 by affirming and validating them

51:12 and fighting for their rights and so forth.

51:14 And then here's the, this is the other piece of it.

51:16 Once you have that dynamic in place,

51:20 good men really struggle to deal with female wolves,

51:25 she wolves, or they just struggle to deal

51:28 with feminine agitation in general.

51:30 I think this is a key element of how this works,

51:32 how do guys get, you know, male empathy

51:35 for unhappy women, right?

51:37 I don't like it when she's mad, right?

51:39 I don't like it when she's upset.

51:40 That means I will mute, I will pull punches.

51:43 And it's, there's a good impulse there.

51:44 Like you don't hit girls.

51:46 So if you put, so it's like, we're taught don't hit girls.

51:49 And then you have women entering the proverbial boxing ring,

51:52 whether it's ideological combat, you know,

51:55 political combat, cultural combat, theological combat.

51:58 And they wanna like debate stuff.

51:59 And you're like, well, I don't,

52:00 I'm not gonna, if you're, if I'm talking to you

52:03 and you start to say something false,

52:05 you start to propound some heresy.

52:07 Well, you're a dude and I'm gonna be like,

52:08 "Hey, this is why that's wrong."

52:10 And it's gonna be like, we're gonna go at it, you know,

52:12 horn to horn.

52:13 If it's a girl, I'm gonna be like,

52:15 "Well, hold on, I gotta like take that into account."

52:18 Which meant that even good men kind of felt like

52:20 they were fighting with one hand tied behind their back

52:22 because they couldn't actually resist these errors

52:24 when they showed up and they kind of went along with it

52:27 and other men pressured them, "Hey, don't be mean to her."

52:30 And so that dynamic worked its way into the church

52:32 because we allowed women to be in positions

52:35 that God does not want them in

52:36 in terms of leading churches and, you know,

52:39 guarding, manning the ramparts,

52:40 guarding the doctrine of worship of a church

52:42 or in society, you know, women in the military

52:46 and the way that that's just wreak havoc

52:48 on, you know, our forces ability to do their jobs

52:52 because that's not where they're for.

52:53 There is a place for that compassion,

52:55 but you need to have the boundaries set.

52:57 You put the men put the wall up

52:58 and then women make it beautiful and glorious

53:00 and comforting inside.

53:02 But you can't put the comfort on the outside

53:04 otherwise you won't have a wall.

53:06 - Yeah, you put it this way in the book.

53:07 Here's the quote, "Here we see an additional layer

53:09 "to the emotional dynamics put simply.

53:11 "It is then men struggle to deal

53:14 "with the unhappiness and displeasure of women.

53:16 "Put another way, female distress activates male agitation."

53:19 So I wrote down in my notes before he said it like,

53:22 "Yes, so when people talk about women being

53:25 "in the special operations communities,

53:26 "whether that seals or marine recon

53:28 "or green braids or something like that,

53:30 "aside from the fact that physically they couldn't possibly,

53:33 "there's not a woman that's ever existed

53:34 "that could possibly live up to the physical standard

53:36 "without it being changed to cater to them.

53:38 "You put one girl, female, on a seal team,

53:42 "those seals who are bred to be protectors, right?

53:46 "Sheep dogs.

53:47 "All of a sudden, their focus is gonna be on

53:50 "preserving the life of that woman.

53:51 "She will never be seen as a Navy Seal.

53:54 "She will never be seen as equal to them.

53:56 "It is always someone that they are duty bound to protect."

53:59 And the same thing, I mean, there was a fairly crass

54:02 Bill Birdjoke from back in the day

54:04 where he talks about the reason why men

54:08 allow women to do things and say things

54:12 and kind of go crazy and all that

54:13 is because we want to have sex with them.

54:15 And so that's kind of the natural male tendency

54:18 is attractive woman.

54:19 I want to have sex, I want to pass on my jeans,

54:21 I want to procreate.

54:22 So if they start acting crazy,

54:23 or if they're legitimately crazy,

54:25 okay, we can kind of deal with that

54:27 and we'll deal with it enough.

54:28 And same thing why a lot of men don't stand up

54:30 to their wives because they want the possibility

54:33 that sex is going to happen today.

54:34 So they don't want to have the argument,

54:36 they don't want to bring up the thing

54:37 that that's wrong or hard.

54:39 But I think this also kind of goes into something

54:41 where you're talking about pastors

54:42 where changing their approach whenever they talk to a woman.

54:45 I don't know, I feel about this,

54:46 I've gone back and forth on it,

54:48 but a lot of churches have ministries, right?

54:50 So they have women's ministry

54:52 and you talked about this a little bit in the book.

54:53 They've got ministry to this type of group

54:54 and ministry to that type of group.

54:56 And they call it men's ministry,

54:57 but they basically mean men's program.

54:59 We do like a chili cook off once a year

55:00 and call it men's ministry, right?

55:02 But like, should men be in charge

55:05 of the women's ministry at their church?

55:07 Should men be the ones speaking at women's conferences?

55:12 Because these men are, they are the men that built the walls

55:16 and now they're set to be the watchmen on the walls,

55:19 as it says in Isaiah, or is it like, no, it's fine.

55:22 Like you can have intermingling, it can be all women,

55:24 it can be a mixture of both.

55:25 We don't necessarily need men guiding the women in that way.

55:28 - Yeah, I would say we need to distinguish two things.

55:30 So on the one hand, if we're talking about teaching doctrine,

55:34 teaching the basics of the faith,

55:35 absolutely, that's the responsibility of pastors.

55:38 And the pastors are the pastors of the whole church,

55:40 not just the men, and they can't outsource

55:42 that shepherding responsibility to women.

55:46 If you're talking about like, how to be a good mom,

55:49 how to be a good wife, like kind of the practical,

55:51 Titus 2 talks about this, older women should teach younger women

55:54 how to be into their kids and submissive to their husbands

55:57 and work with their hands and be diligent.

55:59 It's like, that's a totally appropriate thing.

56:01 We have some great women here who like, you know,

56:03 invest in our, the women of our church

56:05 to show them how to be good wives, good mothers,

56:08 good grandmothers, all this kind of stuff.

56:09 So that's appropriate, but what often happens is,

56:11 we migrate from there to, well,

56:13 she should be the one teaching doctrine to the ladies.

56:16 And she basically becomes kind of like,

56:18 the pastor for the women.

56:20 Lots of churches function this way.

56:21 And that actually is harmful in the long term,

56:24 because it basically creates like two churches,

56:27 and one of them is led by a woman who again,

56:30 as the more empathetic sect,

56:31 is probably gonna be more prone to allow certain errors

56:36 to fester if they're presented in a certain way.

56:39 If they're presented in that victimhood way,

56:41 as a way of showing compassion to people,

56:43 well, we won't draw the lines quite as clearly,

56:45 because we're, and so all of a sudden it's festering.

56:47 So I know for a fact that if you look back

56:50 over the last 10 or 15 years,

56:52 the two places that wokeness most prominently

56:55 entered into the church was either

56:56 through the women's ministry or the counseling ministry.

56:58 Those were the two places.

57:00 That's how it got in.

57:01 Because you had people who were primed

57:04 to not draw clear boundaries and instead lead

57:08 and be overwhelmed by their compassion and their empathy.

57:11 And therefore it allowed it to fester and it wrecked churches.

57:14 It divided them because it took so long

57:17 for people to figure out what the heck is even going on.

57:19 Why are we teaching these things?

57:20 Where did that book come from?

57:21 Why are we leading Sunday school classes

57:23 on books by Ebram X. Kendi?

57:25 Like, well, how did that get into our church?

57:26 And it's like, that's how it got into your church.

57:29 - When I think it expands out to other areas as well,

57:32 I'll read one last quote from this feminism section.

57:34 Crucially, however, what is a blessing

57:36 in one place is a curse in another.

57:38 The same impulse that leads a woman to move towards

57:40 the hurting with comfort and welcomes,

57:43 and welcomes becomes a major liability

57:45 when it comes to guarding the doctrine

57:47 and worship of the church.

57:49 And so obviously we've talked a little bit about that,

57:51 but getting even onto the worship side of things,

57:54 that's been a major complaint for men in my audience

57:57 and men that listen to me and things like that is,

58:00 they feel like if they sing these songs at church,

58:02 which you're made to feel bad

58:03 if you don't like contemporary Christian music,

58:05 that is a type of music.

58:07 That is not the music that is on God's playlist.

58:09 Can we just all agree on that?

58:10 That God doesn't have a particular kind of music.

58:13 That is worship only, but Christian metal isn't worship.

58:15 And Christian rap isn't worship like,

58:17 we kinda need to dispense with that.

58:19 But a lot of men, so the virile testosterone field

58:22 and the manly men as it were, they're in the congregations

58:24 and a lot of the people that are leading the worship,

58:26 they either are legitimately female

58:29 or they may as well be.

58:30 Because, and I don't care about the tight jeans

58:32 and all that stuff, some of that's just style.

58:33 I really don't care.

58:34 But when they see these effeminate or feminine people

58:38 singing songs about lamb of God only,

58:42 never line of Judah and very emotive language

58:45 and very much so like, oh, Jesus is my boyfriend.

58:48 I just wanna like embrace him to my bosom.

58:50 And it's not the Psalms, it's not even hymns.

58:52 Like, it's just, it's not something that gets a man going.

58:56 And that's not the point of worship to get you going.

58:57 You were there to worship God.

58:59 But again, we're made to feel bad

59:01 if we don't raise our hands and fall out in the aisle

59:03 when it's like, well, look at what you're,

59:04 you're trying to get me to read.

59:05 Like, is that even God?

59:07 There's a new song that came out.

59:08 I don't know if it was Bethel or Furtick's church

59:10 or whoever, we're there like, we need another Pentecost.

59:13 It's like, wait, what?

59:15 What?

59:15 Like another Pentecost I get, it sounds good and poetic.

59:19 What you're trying to say is we need a movement

59:20 of the Holy Spirit, but good gracious.

59:23 And so it's almost like, is this why you think God said

59:25 only men can be pastors and heads of household?

59:28 Is that kind of the whole reason?

59:29 - I think that's a big part of it.

59:31 And I think, you know, it's in our church community,

59:33 we sing Psalms and hymns and we sing them like,

59:37 we emphasize singing in parts so that actually the music,

59:40 like there's baselines and there's tender lines.

59:42 And so like, what voice did God give you?

59:45 Like, how deep is it?

59:46 And there's notes for you to sing

59:48 so that you kind of lay down like a foundation.

59:50 And then the ladies can go do all of the like,

59:52 the, you know, up and down and like to hit the high notes

59:55 and all that kind of stuff.

59:57 And it actually works together because it allows the men

59:59 to sing like men and the women to sing like women,

1:00:01 as opposed to where most modern worship service

1:00:04 says everybody's gonna sing the same thing

1:00:06 and it's always gonna be at the higher end of the spectrum,

1:00:08 it's gonna be what the ladies sing

1:00:10 and the feel of the music.

1:00:12 Like we sing a lot of Marshall songs,

1:00:14 songs that you feel like I go, we go fight right now.

1:00:16 We can go like, like the son of God goes forth to war, right?

1:00:19 Shout out and pray on where, you know,

1:00:21 gaining ground, I'm glory hallelujah.

1:00:23 Like we sing songs like that

1:00:25 because we think it's important for men to sing.

1:00:28 We think the songs are a battering ram

1:00:30 that we lay to the, you know, gates of hell every Sunday.

1:00:33 We just like, boom, another battering ram.

1:00:34 That's how we talk about worship in our context

1:00:37 because we want men to lead the way in singing.

1:00:40 We want men to sing in their homes.

1:00:41 That's another thing like I can sing songs in my house

1:00:45 that we sing in church.

1:00:46 It's hard if you're just a dad

1:00:48 and you're like, all right, I want my family to sing,

1:00:50 you know, we're gonna read the Bible and sing a song.

1:00:52 If you try to sing some of those songs

1:00:53 that you're singing in church, the ones you're describing,

1:00:56 it's like dad's gonna lead that.

1:00:57 It's like probably not.

1:00:59 So you're just never gonna do it.

1:01:00 But if you have a song that like, hey,

1:01:02 every member of the family has a part.

1:01:03 Everybody, and then it's a beautiful picture actually

1:01:06 of like the church, right?

1:01:07 Different members of the body with different strengths,

1:01:10 different abilities all coming together

1:01:11 in a common purpose.

1:01:12 Like that's what music should do at its best

1:01:14 is illustrate that and instead we've just kind of like

1:01:17 melted it all down and feminized it.

1:01:20 And it's no reason that men kind of,

1:01:21 they feel like I know I wanna be holy.

1:01:24 So you have, I know you, I'm sure the guys in your audience

1:01:25 like I wanna be godly and but what's being presented

1:01:29 as godliness feels like in order to be godly

1:01:31 I have to be a feminine.

1:01:33 And so there's a tension between their natural impulse

1:01:36 to be a man and their spiritual impulse to be godly.

1:01:40 And I'm saying we ought to cultivate worship services

1:01:43 where men are able, their manhood is meant to come out

1:01:47 as godly and faithful manhood, as pious manhood,

1:01:49 holy manhood, and not simply reduced

1:01:52 to this kind of effeminate version.

1:01:55 - When I think we should be slow to castigate these men

1:01:58 because so I've heard pastors and I've heard worship leaders

1:02:01 talk about the man sitting there

1:02:03 with his arms cross or his hands in his pockets.

1:02:05 But one of the greatest emails I've got in the history

1:02:07 of me doing ministry was from a worship leader

1:02:09 after I released the episode called

1:02:11 contemporary Christian music is for women and effeminate men

1:02:13 and he goes, it wasn't until your episode

1:02:17 that I had ever even considered the men in the congregation.

1:02:21 I was picking the songs and again,

1:02:23 most of the voices he's hearing in the congregation

1:02:25 are the female voices.

1:02:26 He's like, I never thought about what key it was in.

1:02:28 I never thought about if a man could hit that key.

1:02:30 I never thought about why the men were not being participatory.

1:02:33 I thought it was because they probably weren't Christians

1:02:35 or not good ones.

1:02:36 And I'm like, that might be the case.

1:02:38 They may be there with their hands in their pockets

1:02:40 because they're prideful and because they don't wanna be seen

1:02:43 as weak and they think raising their hands is weird

1:02:45 and that's sinful somehow.

1:02:47 But maybe worship pastor, maybe lead pastor,

1:02:50 maybe that's not it.

1:02:52 Maybe there's something else.

1:02:53 And again, I know it's like,

1:02:55 hey, if this isn't your style of worship,

1:02:57 like, hey, that's no excuse, you need to worship God.

1:02:59 But at the same time, it's like if you keep giving them,

1:03:02 you're bludgeoning them with the same feminist bat.

1:03:04 Don't be shocked when they act the exact same way

1:03:07 every Sunday, but Joe, we're running out of time here.

1:03:09 So this is gonna have to be the last question of the day,

1:03:11 but it's prescription time.

1:03:12 I guess, we've done a lot of description

1:03:15 of some things that have gone on.

1:03:17 Now we need to prescribe, okay?

1:03:18 So what are pastors, what are men inside of the church,

1:03:21 men inside of their own homes?

1:03:22 What are they to do to fight against the sin of empathy,

1:03:25 the progressive gaze, the impact of feminism

1:03:27 and everything else that we brought up?

1:03:28 - Yeah, good.

1:03:29 So my book Leadership and Emotional Sabotage

1:03:31 is like the lengthy end, it's not lengthy.

1:03:33 It's actually, you can read it like in an afternoon.

1:03:34 But the basic idea is we need sober-minded,

1:03:37 steady leaders who have gravity and gladness

1:03:42 and are able to stabilize communities

1:03:45 that are just shot through with passions.

1:03:47 So my definition of sober-mindedness, real briefly,

1:03:50 is it's a clarity of mind, a stability of soul

1:03:53 and a readiness to act.

1:03:54 This is this key virtue in the Bible.

1:03:56 It shows up in all the lists of like,

1:03:57 what does a pastor have to be?

1:03:59 And it's just Christian maturity, right?

1:04:01 So clarity of mind, you're not clouded by the passions,

1:04:03 right?

1:04:04 They're not, you know, fogging you up

1:04:05 to where you can't see clearly.

1:04:07 Stability of soul, you're not tossed

1:04:08 by your emotions or the emotions of others.

1:04:10 When emotions rage, you have some ballast in your boat

1:04:13 because you fear the Lord.

1:04:15 And so instead of having the progressive gaze,

1:04:16 a little progressive on your shoulder,

1:04:18 you've got Jesus on your shoulder.

1:04:19 What does he think about this?

1:04:20 What's his evaluation?

1:04:22 I wanna please him, not please people.

1:04:24 So there's a ballast there, and then there's a lean-in.

1:04:26 There's a lot, it's not a passive checkout, abdicate,

1:04:30 you know, just retreat.

1:04:32 Instead, it's I'm ready to take responsibility for myself

1:04:35 and for what God has entrusted to me.

1:04:37 That's the kind of men that we need.

1:04:39 Sober-minded leaders who have gravity and joy.

1:04:42 And then from that, if they have that,

1:04:44 if you're sober-minded, then when suffering shows up,

1:04:47 somebody's hurting, you can actually lean in like Christ did.

1:04:50 You can weep with those who weep.

1:04:52 You can rejoice with those who rejoice.

1:04:54 You can be moved with compassion to relieve their suffering,

1:04:57 and you can do so wisely and faithfully

1:04:59 because you're not being steered by emotions.

1:05:01 Your emotions are following your sober-minded conviction.

1:05:05 And so that's the kind of leader that we need in our homes.

1:05:08 That's what we need in churches.

1:05:09 That's what we need in our nation.

1:05:11 And that's why I've written these books.

1:05:13 - All right, very good, and amen.

1:05:14 But we've done it out a lot of stuff,

1:05:15 but that's all for me.

1:05:16 Is there anything else you wanna get off your chest?

1:05:19 - No, if people like it, if you can get both books

1:05:22 on audiobook, go to canonplus.com.

1:05:25 It's a subscription service.

1:05:26 There's stuff for the kids like, yeah, yeah.

1:05:27 So you got shows for the kids, documentaries,

1:05:30 lots of sermons, lots of books.

1:05:32 Joe 99, that's, so Joe 99 is a coupon code.

1:05:36 99 cents for the first month.

1:05:38 You can listen to all the books you want.

1:05:40 See if you like it.

1:05:40 If you like it, keep listening.

1:05:41 If not, go do something else with your money,

1:05:43 but that'd be the best way to get it.

1:05:45 canonplus.com, Joe 99 as a code.

1:05:49 - Guys, the books and the link to Canon Plus

1:05:51 is gonna be in the show notes.

1:05:52 Joe, thanks again for coming on.

1:05:53 - Thanks, Kyle. Appreciate it.

1:05:55 - There you go, guys.

1:05:55 I hope you enjoyed my time with Joe,

1:05:56 but before that you go, we got a couple of things

1:05:58 that we're gonna put in the quick resilience boost

1:06:00 at Undaunted Life.

1:06:01 Our mission is equipping men to push back darkness

1:06:03 with content that forge a spiritual mental

1:06:04 and physical resilience.

1:06:05 So I've got links to where you can get your copies

1:06:07 of the sin of empathy and leadership

1:06:09 and emotional sabotage.

1:06:11 And also where you can check out Canon Plus.

1:06:14 Thank you for listening to this podcast.

1:06:15 Wherever you're listening to this,

1:06:16 please subscribe, rate, and leave us a positive five star

1:06:19 review.

1:06:20 If you want me to come speak live at your event

1:06:21 or on your podcast, just shoot me an email

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1:06:25 That's i-n-f-o@undonton.life.

1:06:27 Follow us on Instagram and like us on Facebook

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1:06:33 Just go to www.undonton.life.

1:06:36 And as always, we wanna thank the band Holy Name

1:06:38 for allowing us to use their music for our content.

1:06:40 The music on this podcast is our song Perpetua,

1:06:42 which is off their self-titled debut album

1:06:44 on Face Down Records.

1:06:45 The links are in the description.

1:06:47 I'm your host, Kyle Thompson.

1:06:49 Remember, keep pushing back darkness,

1:06:52 keep forging spiritual, mental, and physical resilience.

1:06:56 Keep seeking the lion of Judah.

1:06:58 (upbeat music)

1:07:28 You