After mentioning the need to add moral excellence and knowledge to our faith, Peter listed self-control. These first three characteristics are closely related. As we learn the difference between right and wrong, we must do what is right (display moral excellence) and refrain from doing what is wrong (exercise self-control).
“Now for this very reason also, applying all diligence, in your faith supply moral excellence, and in your moral excellence, knowledge, and in your knowledge, self-control, and in your self-control, perseverance, and in your perseverance, godliness, and in your godliness, brotherly kindness, and in your brotherly kindness, love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they render you neither useless nor unfruitful in the true knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 1:5-8).
For many, empathy is considered an unquestionably positive virtue. Yet in a new book provocatively titled The Sin of Empathy, author Joe Rigney challenges that assumption. In it, he argues that empathy is very different from the Biblical concept of compassion. In fact, he suggests that our culture has distorted compassion and created “empathy” as a justification for sinful and destructive behaviors. He described the pressure to conform to this counterfeit of compassion as living “under the progressive gaze.”
