There’s a book making the rounds in evangelical circles right now warning against “toxic empathy.” Its central claim? That empathy leads people away from “truth,” makes one soft on sin, and ultimately opens the door to “progressive Christianity” (which is apparently considered a bad thing – being ‘woke’ – in Evangelical circles.)

But here’s the thing: If empathy threatens one’s theology, then the theology is the problem – not empathy.

As I watch Christian people continue to applaud the cruelty of ICE agents, it becomes clear that far too many “good” religious people hold to this belief that empathy is antithetical to the Christian life. How else can one explain people, who claim to be followers of Jesus, applauding as our federal government sanctions and boasts of the harassment of people because of the color of their skin, to arrest mothers and children at school, at graduations, at their jobs and, perhaps worst of all, as they show up at court to continue their legal process.

And we wonder why marginalized people don’t feel safe in Christian spaces. Because too often, the goal isn’t to listen or learn. It’s to fix. To change. To win.

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As I watch Christian people continue to applaud the cruelty of ICE agents, it becomes clear that far too many “good” religious people hold to this belief that empathy is antithetical to the Christian life. How else can one explain people, who claim to be followers of Jesus, applauding as our federal government sanctions and…

How could a people whose teacher tells the in the story of The Good Samaritan – a story that demonstrates a people considered unqualified for compassion and acceptance can be the heroes of a story – consider Christ’s command to be disdain for people from a foreign land? Yet, the same people who claim to love this story get a sick pornographic thrill of watching law enforcement gone wrong as the race-based cruelty is live streamed by the head of the Department of Homeland Security and Dr. Phil.

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I believe the reason for this ugliness in Christianity is as easy as A-B-C: “Always be Closing.”

You may recognize this mantra from the early 90’s move Glengarry Glen Ross. In the movie, a group of sales people are cruelly berated for not making their sales goals; for not “closing” enough deals. There is a similar, if unspoken, mindset in modern evangelicalism: that Christians should “Always Be Closing.” In other words, they must prioritize “closing the sale” with converts to their religion.

Thus, every conversation of an American Christian with someone “outside the faith” is framed as an opportunity to evangelize. To conquer. To convert. To win. To get another notch in one’s belt or jewel in their eternal crown.

That agenda is what poisons empathy

When a person feels like they must sell God rather than embody Love, they can’t risk truly knowing someone. That person can’t afford to listen to a “sinner;” to truly hear what they share when the “sinner” tells of a different viewpoint. The entire posture of the Christian becomes manipulative – avoiding feeling compassion for the other person’s story to be enabled to say “I love you but disagree with your lifestyle.”

When empathy gets stuffed down in the name of a sales pitch, what fills the vacuum is something far darker: indifference. And indifference builds up. Each time a person disregards the story of a human being, a bit of their own humanity is lost. That’s how people of faith can end up in the hypocrisy of claiming to care, while being incapable of hearing the immigrant story. They disregard facts of life for many immigrants that brought them to our soul not only because we’ve invited “illegals” to bring their cheap labor to us for decades, but also that American has been heavily involved in the chaos existing in the immigrant’s homeland through our economic and political interference in Central and South America for our own benefit.

The moment a person stops listening with their heart is the moment one becomes complicit in the systems that harm others.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called such a person “the White Moderate,” and declared them more harmful to justice than the KKK. Jesus called them “Whitewashed tombs:” people who look religiously good on the outside, but whose hearts are dead and unable to selflessly care about the needs of others.

And we wonder why marginalized people don’t feel safe in Christian spaces. Because too often, the goal isn’t to listen or learn. It’s to fix. To change. To win. And if you start to actually believe a queer person, or an unhoused person, or someone recovering from spiritual abuse? If you start to feel with them? You risk being labeled as a compromiser. Jesus certainly wore such a label.

Empathy is not toxic. Empathy is Christlike.

Jesus didn’t withhold emotional connection until someone signed the doctrinal statement. He didn’t say, “I’ll love you after you repent.” He wept at tombs, knelt with the outcast, touched the untouchable. He met people in the middle of their humanity, without needing to “close the sale.”

But I believe real empathy begins with this radical move:

Believe people when they tell you the truth of their pain.

Especially if they are marginalized. Especially if you are not.

For me, stepping out of evangelicalism wasn’t just a theological shift. It was an emotional unfreezing. I had to deconstruct not just doctrines, but defense mechanisms. I had to grieve the parts of me I had buried just to survive as a leader in that system.

And in that process, I learned: Big boys should cry.

Because emotional honesty is not a detour from spirituality. It is the very path of healing. And empathy is not something to fear—it is sacred ground.

If your theology can’t withstand your tears of hurting with another, it probably can’t withstand scrutiny either.

So this week, we cry. We feel. We believe each other – with deep empathy. And we call it holy. I pray the American Christian Church may one day, again, realize that the story of Jesus was not to condemn, but to restore connection to heaven. So that we can bring down divine empathy so that it truly can be “on earth as it is in heaven.”

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