Toxic empathy: Pastor Ray Ortlund’s call to support Kamala Harris
Ray Ortlund, emeritus council member of the Gospel Coalition, is using his platform to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris for president.
“Never Trump. This time Harris. Always Jesus,” Ortlund wrote in a social media post on Threads.
But this isn’t the first time he’s engaged in leftist talking points. In 2020, Ortlund posted alongside a photo of George Floyd, “Dear racists, why do you keep treating me well? Don’t you understand yet that I identify with the man on the pavement, not the man in power? So if you’re going to keep behaving in your racist ways, then come after me too. I demand it. I too am the man you hate — but God loves.”
Allie Beth Stuckey of “Relatable” believes Ortlund is giving “a really great example actually of toxic empathy.”
“He says I am the man, I identify with the man on the pavement. Well, when it comes to justice, when it comes to these big statements that can inform policy, that has an effect on people’s lives. It really doesn’t matter whom we identify with. What matters is what is true,” Stuckey says.
“We don’t show partiality to someone because they’re rich, because they’re poor, because they’re influential, because they have no influence, white or black, because we perceive that they are on the side of the oppressed or we perceive that they’re on the side of the oppressor. That is not the truthful proportionate and impartial justice that God doles out,” she continues.
The problem with toxic empathy, Stuckey explains, is that “when we feel how someone feels so strongly, we become blinded to both reality and moral reality and we no longer are able to make right judgments.”
In 2021, Ortlund received blowback for another post made on social media, where he said that he rejoices “at the decline of Bible Belt Religion.”
“It made bad people worse — in the name of Jesus,” Ortlund wrote.
While Ortlund had made some points in his post that Stuckey agrees with, the overall message was one she did not.
“If we are champions of God’s authority and his ways and his rightness then it should be seen as a good thing when the culture becomes more Christian,” she says.
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