Coming This Week on Tov Unleashed
This week on Tov Unleashed we have posts about:
The recent trend by some to complain about and diminish the importance of empathy among pastors and Christian leaders. I find this trend alarming and offer an evaluation of the weaknesses of the claims.
The prophet Jeremiah could be a wonderful book for churches: sermons, Sunday School classes, home Bible studies and personal Bible study. John Goldingay’s wonderful book has two chapters accessibly map the many, many themes at work in the scroll of Jeremiah. Join us for the post on Tuesday.
We return to a brief description of how evangelicals shifted from a conversionist approach to America’s problems to a gospel plus law + order.
Thursday we go through Brent Strawn’s chapter on how many understand the God of the Old Testament as really mean.
Our lecture on Friday… come for the surprise!
I’d be interested to see you do a post — or series of posts — on empathy versus compassion. Frankly, I don’t like it that empathy often takes precedence over compassion. Paul Bloom, an evolutionary psychologist at Yale, has written an exceptional book on this: Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion. In it, he outlines the ridiculous, and in many cases disastrous, consequences of basing social policy on empathy. I wonder if the same could be said in the church.
I look forward to reading your argument, Scot.