There is a book called "The Sin of Empathy."

Not a metaphor. That is the actual title.

Published by Doug Wilson's Canon Press. Written by a pastor at Wilson's church.

Charlie Kirk told his audience he "can't stand the word empathy" and called it "a made-up new age term that does a lot of damage."

Allie Beth Stuckey wrote a book called "Toxic Empathy." Al Mohler put both of them on his podcast and nodded along.

An entire wing of the evangelical church has decided that feeling what another person feels is dangerous. That entering into someone else's suffering is a weakness to be guarded against.

And they do not realize they just rejected the entire gospel.

Emmanuel. God With Us. Not God Above Us. Not God Watching Us From A Safe Distance. God With Us.

The incarnation is the most radical act of empathy in the history of the universe.

God looked at a broken, bleeding humanity and did not send instructions.

He entered in.

He put on flesh.

He sat with the grieving.

He touched the untouchable.

He wept at the tomb of a friend he was about to raise from the dead.

That is empathy. That is the gospel.

And these men called it a sin.

This is why so many of us feel like strangers in our own faith. We did not leave the gospel. We took it seriously.

We looked at the immigrant, the poor, the queer kid sitting alone at the church potluck, the woman too afraid to speak, and we felt something.

We entered in.

We chose solidarity over safety.

That is not woke. That is the incarnation.

And if your theology cannot hold empathy, it cannot hold Jesus.