Are We Going To Empathize With Evil Villains Now?

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Stories once gave us moral clarity. There are heroes and villains in stories, real and fictional, and the difference was plain: villains do evil based on human conditions of greed, jealousy, betrayal, and selfishness; heroes choose good in spite of the evil and brokenness in the world and their own pain.

In the age of toxic empathy and no judgment, just affirmation, we’re now getting the villains’ backstories and a world and culture that sympathizes with evil.

Moral stories don’t suggest that only villains experience pain and suffering or need to be understood. The most compelling heroes are the ones that have suffered the most and still chose to put others’ needs ahead of their own — even to the point of laying down their life for another.

That’s something almost unheard of in today’s society, where even a mild inconvenience is cause for a lengthy social media post with the caption “this is my villain backstory.”

What does it say about a society that can relate more to villains than heroes, and is proud of it?

We used to laud the heroes not because their personal character is perfect, but because they choose to love, serve, protect, and sacrifice in the most extreme of circumstances. The “everyday heroes” are quieter, but no less virtuous.

Self-sacrifice is something we have largely abandoned in favor of self-promotion, self-appreciation, self-affirmation, and self-service. We justify it under the rationale that we don’t need self-improvement or self-awareness.

Cruella wasn’t evil; she was misunderstood. Maleficent wasn’t evil; she was betrayed by a man. The Wicked Witch wasn’t evil; she was wounded. Lindsay Clancy wasn’t evil; she suffered postpartum psychosis.

Now the villains are sympathetic, and the heroes are distrusted and their motives questioned. Lines are blurred intentionally so we’re not sure who is the hero and who is the villain. Culture tells us maybe no one is really a villain after all, and it’s a matter of understanding and never assigning judgment. Only those who don’t consistently affirm any evil are, ironically, cast as villains.

The Bible tells us something radically different. We are supposed to judge evil. It’s called discernment.

Our culture increasingly treats moral judgment as the greater sin. “Judge not” has become perhaps the most quoted — and most distorted — verse in the Bible.

In Matthew 7, Jesus does not prohibit moral discernment. He condemns hypocritical judgment: the person who condemns the speck in his brother’s eye while ignoring the log in his own. In that very chapter, Christ commands His followers to recognize false prophets “by their fruits.” We cannot identify corrupt fruit without judging it to be corrupt and knowing what a corrupt versus healthy fruit looks like.

Jesus elsewhere commands, “Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment” (John 7:24). Paul tells Christians, “Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good” (Romans 12:9). Ephesians instructs believers to “take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness but instead expose them” (Ephesians 5:11).

Christians are not called to be judgmental in the sense of being self-righteous, cruel, or eager to condemn. Final judgment belongs to God alone. But we are commanded to exercise discernment — to distinguish truth from falsehood, righteousness from sin, and good from evil. We are called to live this in our own lives, disciple it in our churches and families, discipline where needed, and advocate for it in policy in our communities.

We cannot abhor evil if we refuse to identify it.

Nor does identifying evil mean denying the humanity of the person who committed it. Christianity uniquely allows us to say both: This act was evil, and this person is still made in the image of God. The sinner may be offered mercy, but mercy has meaning only after sin has been named and importantly accounted for.

The cross destroys the modern fantasy that compassion requires moral ambiguity. At Calvary, God did not minimize evil, redefine it as woundedness, or pretend sin carried no guilt. He judged sin with perfect justice and offered sinners perfect mercy through Christ.

Grace does not call evil good. Grace rescues us from evil.

Isaiah warned, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness.” That warning is especially urgent in a culture that turns villains into victims, heroes into suspects, and judgment into the only remaining unforgivable sin.

A society that can no longer distinguish the hero from the villain will eventually stop producing heroes — and leave the innocent and defenseless before villains whose backstories apparently matter more than their victims.

We must never become so determined to understand evil that we lose the courage to call it evil.

(Editor's Note: This article was posted first on The Christian Post website HERE.)

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