Keeping Christ in Christmas

"Empathy is not a soft substitute for holiness; it is the pulse of the Christian, and the Christmas, story. To call it a sin is to confuse the selfishness of self with the self-giving love of Jesus." -- Jonathan Hall

https://religionnews.com/2025/12/24/keep-christ-in-christmas-its-not-about-your-holiday-themed-caramel-macchiato-cup/ 

 

 There has been a lot of discussion about empathy of late.  Part of my doctoral work in understanding the social religious trending in recent decades has focused on how empathy is understood and applied.  

 So today reading this statement by Pastor Hall from North Hollywood peaked my interest.  So my response simply would be, "to refuse to recognize that human empathy is just as corrupted in our human nature as any other aspect of our character is misguided and unbiblical". 

 So yes, Pastor Johnson you can say I align with the camp that says many people including some Christians are "sinfully empathetic".  

Elevation of empathy as the pulse of Christian faith misreads both human nature and the Gospel. While empathy can move the heart, it is inherently unreliable, partial, and often self-serving, reflecting the corruption of our fallen nature. Scripture repeatedly warns that human inclination—“the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick” (Jeremiah 17:9)—cannot be the measure of godly action. Unlike empathy, which rises and falls with emotion or circumstance, God’s Word offers a fixed standard of love grounded in His truth. The danger of the essay’s approach is subtle: by making our feeling for others the metric of holiness, it places the subjective above the objective, potentially displacing Christ with ourselves.

Often human empathy leads to alignment with and affirmation of lifestyle choices and behaviors that are clearly misaligned to God's Word.   Often we hear argument that we must support xyz or any other alphabet combination because of God's command to love our neighbor.  But the second greatest commandment cannot be kept in a godly way when it is divorced from the first commandment.  It can hardly be called love as God defines love when we affirm people in their sinful choices because we feel empathy for them.  

Keeping Christ in Christmas is not about how tenderly we feel or how acutely we sense human suffering; it is about recognizing God’s objective action in Christ for our salvation. “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God” (Ephesians 2:8). True love for the neighbor flows from the First Commandment: to fear, love, and trust God above all things (Exodus 20:3). The Second Commandment—love for the neighbor—cannot violate the first; it must be ordered according to God’s Word. When Jesus healed the sick or touched the untouchable, He acted out of care and concern that was not darkened by sinful depravity and thus always in divine obedience to His Father’s will, fulfilling the law perfectly and giving Himself for sinners (Hebrews 10:5–7). Empathy, left unchecked, may comfort the conscience, but it cannot substitute for the objective guidance of God's Word, and it a pale unreliable substitute for the justification by grace alone through faith alone that alone keeps Christ at the center of Christmas, nor can it ensure that love for others remains rightly ordered to God’s truth.

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