When our sympathy is unattached to the truth it can be very dangerous

When we have sympathy for someone, it must be because of something. It needs to be a real “thing” that we know has a real, and verifiable cause. And that “thing” must be worthy of sympathy. If not, at the very least we are being false or disingenuous, and actually could be the victim of a manipulative person with goals that require that sympathy in order to achieve some behavior or emotions from us that could not otherwise be achieved. Our true sympathy should be valuable and precious, and needed. It is a balm and salve to those who need and deserve it.

We can call bad sympathy, “untethered sympathy.” It is untethered to reality or truth. I have seen it many times when I was younger, in bars and clubs before I realized I was an alcoholic and quit drinking and living that life. The drunken friend crying in his beer to a woman over his miserable marriage and his unlovable spouse. However, in reality he was manipulating the sympathies of this woman, to go home with her. The story was always the same, “I am so heroic in this loveless marriage that I continue on for my children’s sake that if I only had someone who would sympathize and love me for all I suffer.”

This tactic of manipulation is not isolated to just drunks and so-called “heathen.” It is the favorite tactic of many of the fallen religious and powerful politicians throughout history.  It is the method used by the religious apologist I followed for over 30 years in print, Ravi Zacharias.

John Piper has weighed in on the misdeeds of late apologist Ravi Zacharias and identified the “lessons” Christians can learn from his posthumous fall from grace after he was accused of “sexting, unwanted touching, spiritual abuse, and rape.”

Piper correctly identified this manipulation tool of “untethered sympathy” and no accountability, as the path to the abuses that Ravi Zacharias slide down to disgrace and pain for many.

“There’s a lesson to be learned from Ravi’s manipulation of people — a lesson to be learned about the need for tethered sympathy,” Piper, chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary in Minneapolis, Minnesota, wrote on his Desiring God website.

Piper explained that every time sympathy is called for, it needs to be “tethered to the truth, so that it is given lavishly when the truth calls for it and is withheld when the truth clashes with it.”

“How did [Ravi] manipulate people into sinfully providing him with sexual stimulation? He did it by demanding untethered sympathy. He portrayed himself as an embattled, burdened, wounded warrior in the righteous cause of the gospel. And ironically, he turned his position of power into a form of neediness and woundedness. And then he tried to coerce untethered sympathy under the guise of calling for ‘kingdom therapy for the wounded warrior.’”

Piper said he had seen this kind of “demand and manipulation for untethered sympathy repeatedly among fallen Christian leaders.” “[They say], ‘The burdens are so great. The wounds are so many. Those who understand me are so few. The weight of faithful ministry — oh, it is so great. I deserve some relief. Have some sympathy on this poor, wounded warrior. Empathize with your embattled hero. I need your body if I’m to carry on in the Lord’s work,’” Piper paraphrased.

“To which the administrative assistant or the old college flame or the teenage boy in the locker room should say, ‘That’s disgusting. Don’t ever talk to me like that again. My sympathy is not for sale; it’s tethered to truth and righteousness.’” To those who came to Christ under Zacharias’ ministry or who had their faith mightily strengthened by what he taught, Piper advised: “Don’t let the imperfections and failures of men turn you away from the perfections and the triumphs of Christ, who will never, never fail you.”