Empathy is in a weird place right now. Most of us probably think the ability to place ourselves in someone else’s shoes is a good thing. That’s what compassion is all about right? But a recent trend in conservative Christian circles is calling empathy into question. Some people even believe it’s a sin.

Even those who think of empathy as a good thing struggle with the concept. Erica Steenberger, a therapist based in Chicago, admits that at times it can be overwhelming — and she’s basically empathic for living. “I’ve been really thinking a lot lately about the darker side of being someone who practices empathy on purpose as a career all day, every day, and there’s been some really hard parts of it that I was not prepared for,” she told the Explain It to Me hotline, Vox’s weekly, call-in podcast.

If therapists struggle with empathy, Steenberger says she sees the way people in different professions do too. “Maybe somebody works retail and throughout the day, they deal with some angry people, some disappointed people, and they have some regular interactions too. But they’re also chatting with their coworkers, and one of their coworkers is telling them about a really difficult thing happening in their family. And another coworker is talking about the stress of school. Then this person finishes their shift and they get in the car and they listen to the news and they’re hearing about Gaza or they’re hearing about deportations, and they’re imagining what it would be like to be in that situation,” she tells Vox. “I just don’t think someone going through that day is thinking about how much vicarious grief, vicarious stress, vicarious anxiety they’ve been around.”

So, is empathy a good thing, or a bad thing? According to Jamil Zaki, the answer is complicated. Zaki is a psychology professor at Stanford University, where he also leads the Stanford Social Neuroscience Lab. “I hesitate to just use good and bad to describe a psychological state like empathy. It........

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