Thou Shalt Not Care

How the Church Made Empathy a Sin

The so-called "sin of empathy" has got to be one of the most absurd theological gymnastics routines ever performed. Picture a bunch of medieval clergymen, robes flowing, stroking their beards, and thinking, Now, how do we get people to commit mass murder without all that pesky guilt getting in the way? And voilà! They came up with the brilliant idea that feeling bad for the people you’re slaughtering was actually the real sin. Not hacking them to pieces—no, no, that was perfectly fine. But feeling even a twinge of "Hey, maybe torching this village is kind of messed up?"? That’s where the devil gets you!

A Holy Loophole for Killing

This whole doctrine was essentially a religious Get-Out-of-Guilt-Free card. You see, when you tell people to march off to the Holy Land and stab everyone who doesn’t worship exactly like they do, you run into a small problem: humans, despite our flaws, are generally wired to feel a little bad about hacking innocent people to bits. So the Church did what any power-hungry institution would do—it called a board meeting (or whatever medieval popes did before PowerPoint) and decided that the real problem wasn’t murder. It was caring.

Think about the logic here. If you’re about to plunge a sword into some poor soul’s chest and your brain goes, Hey, maybe don’t?, that’s not your conscience talking—it’s Satan trying to lure you into sin! You can practically hear the Crusade recruiters:

"Do you want to serve God? Do you enjoy long walks through foreign deserts? Do you have a deep and abiding love for bloodshed? Great! But if you start feeling all soft-hearted about the people we’re killing, remember: that’s not the Holy Spirit. That’s just weakness, and we can't have that!"

And just like that, empathy became the enemy.

A Convenient Little Contradiction

The funniest part about this whole scheme is that it flies in the face of everything else Christianity teaches. Love your neighbor? Nope, not that neighbor. Turn the other cheek? Nah, just stab the cheek and move on. The same Church that spent centuries preaching about kindness and charity suddenly decided that compassion was optional—if it got in the way of their war efforts. It’s like a restaurant that proudly serves "The World’s Best Vegetarian Menu" and then hands you a steak.

And let’s not forget the mental gymnastics it took to sell this nonsense. Imagine some poor Crusader, fresh off the battlefield, sitting in confession:

Crusader: "Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned."

Priest: "What did you do, my son?"

Crusader: "Well, I burned down a village, killed some peasants, and took a few prisoners."

Priest: "All perfectly fine! What’s the problem?"

Crusader: "I, uh… I felt bad about it."

Priest: (GASPS) "You what?!"

That was the world they built—a world where basic human decency was treated as the enemy.

The Real Sin

Now, looking back, it’s clear that this whole "sin of empathy" business was never about faith. It was about control. It was about making sure that armies of ordinary people could be turned into weapons without the annoying burden of a conscience slowing them down. And once you let someone convince you that kindness is a sin, well, suddenly, there’s no limit to what horrors you can justify..

So the next time someone tries to tell you that empathy is a sign of weakness, remind them that this was the same logic used to justify some of history’s worst massacres. And then, with a big smile, say, "If loving people is wrong, then I don’t wanna be right."