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# The sin of empathy
- URL: https://violet-wood.ghost.io/the-sin-of-empathy/
- Published: 2026-08-16T22:17:56.000Z
- Updated: 2026-08-18T05:38:55.000Z
- Author: Violet Wood
- Tags: Politics, Gender

In a world of constant bad news, it takes a lot to shock me. But I was shocked by this [Guardian article](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2025/apr/08/empathy-sin-christian-right-musk-trump?ref=violet-wood.ghost.io) from early in Trump's second term.

Quite soon in the reign of the new American king (for the conservative majority on the Supreme Court has crowned him king), we knew what sort of man he was. Donald Trump hates most people. He sees them not as human beings but as objects to be exploited. That much is obvious from his programme of mass deportations, cuts in aid and federal support programmes, his chainsaw approach to the federal government and his crash-and-burn foreign and economic policy. The only people that Donald Trump likes are autocratic foreign leaders, rich white men, and the sycophants who bolster his self-image as the centre of the universe.

It is clear as anything that this activity is not only irreconcilable with the Christian message but is actively opposed to it. Christ gave us two great commandments: love God with your whole heart, and love your neighbour as yourself. The Bible calls us to live ethical lives. Micah 6.8: ‘He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.’ One of my biblical takeaways is the fundamental human dignity of every person on this planet. God loves everyone and we must do the same – no matter how undeserving they are.

This creates a dilemma for American Christians – particularly the white conservative evangelical sort. How to reconcile their support for Donald Trump with their religious obligations? The Guardian article shows how they, and the American right more generally, have squared their conscience.

The answer is simple. Empathy is a sin. Empathy is the ability to see things from the point of view of other people and enter into their suffering. These Americans are saying: Yes, it’s good to care about other people, but only to a certain extent. Many undesirable people – let’s call them immigrants, trans people, feminists, non-white people – have elevated themselves to the status of victimhood and are exploiting the compassion gene in decent white Americans. Responding to their alleged needs is contrary to common sense and, in some cases, contrary to a conservative evangelical understanding of biblical teaching on issues of gender and sexuality. So the only right thing to do is to trash them all, and save America in the name of social Darwinism.

The bible recognises that a war is going on and offers advice on how we should fight it. I have always thought that there is a very thin line separating the material and the spiritual world, and that I am walking on the edge. The only way I can explain the current position of the American right is that something deeply unpleasant has entered the body politic. They have moved on from hating the sin but loving the sinner. They are now hating the sin and hating the sinner.

Last year my Lent book was Doorways to Hope, Forty Days of Spiritual Wisdom by the spiritual director and retreat leader Christopher Chapman. One reflection is entitled Hope and Dialogue. He contrasts two attitudes to life: mastery and dominance on the one hand, and relationships founded on humility and reverence on the other. The first of these places ourselves at the centre and sees the role of other people as meeting our need to possess. Apparently strong, and reliant on might, it is rooted in fear and insecurity and it excludes everyone who might challenge our way of thinking. In contrast, the way of God is the way of love, dialogue, openness and acceptance. 

This is the gospel of love, not the gospel of hate.

Postscript: if you think it couldn't happen here, think again. The Reform Party spokesman, Robert Jenrick, has just announced a package of benefit cuts aimed at foreign nationals and the disabled. Announcing the policy in the Daily Telegraph at the weekend, he said the amount spent on disability benefit was “not generosity … it is suicidal empathy”. As so often, the American poison has infected the British far-right.