Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion

by Allie Beth Stuckey

But we don’t need studies to tell us what we already intuitively know: The same people needed to make a baby are needed to raise her. Only men can be dads, and only women can be moms. Each has their own irreplaceable role to play.

Are there exceptions to these observations? Sure. None of this is to say that all kids who aren’t raised by their mom and dad are destined for failure, that there aren’t stellar single parents, that same-sex parents don’t love their children, or that parenting dynamics can’t differ depending on the couple. There are children raised by their mom and dad who face the same challenges as children who aren’t. But we shouldn’t ignore the data or dismiss our own instincts and experiences when it comes to the need for mothers and fathers.

The sperm and eggs are considered donated (hence, “sperm/egg donor”) in order to abide by America’s legal prohibition against selling human tissue. Technically, they’re getting paid for their time and effort rather than for their sperm and eggs, but it’s obvious what’s really being bought: the DNA necessary to make a child.

After the baby is born, she’s immediately taken from the surrogate and given to her new male caretakers, one of whom is her biological father. She’s not only robbed of her biological mother, the egg seller, but she’s also separated from the only other person she’s ever known. For nine months, she’s found sustenance and security in the womb of the woman who carried her. She knows this woman’s smell, voice, and heartbeat. This is a powerful, primal bond that’s not meant to be broken. We understand this when it comes to puppies and kittens, who we know must be kept with their mothers for eight to twelve weeks after birth, but we’ve decided that for surrogate babies, it doesn’t matter.

Adoptees often speak of what’s known as the “primal wound” that they endured when they were separated from their moms as babies. Some suffer from this wound their whole lives, feeling abandoned and like they don’t fit in with friends or family, even if they have loving adoptive parents.

adoption is generally redemptive, whereas egg/sperm selling and surrogacy are not. Adoption has the power to redeem a broken situation, while these technologies create a broken situation.

Adoption helps a life that’s already been created, whereas the reproductive methods we’ve just described create a life with the express intention of takin...

We can have empathy for those who desire children, but we cannot accept toxic empathy, which demands that we agree that that pain should be alleviated by whatever means necessary. Instead, we must show true love, which has compassion for a person’s desire to be a parent while insisting that children’s rights supersede adults’ desires.

All progressive social experiments require children to make sacrifices: whether it’s abortion, gender ideology, race-based DEI education, or shutting down schools for COVID-19. The voiceless and most vulnerable are always made to pay the price.

the strong are supposed to sacrifice on behalf of the weak, not the other way around.

Children without fathers are always, without exception, categorized by Scripture as oppressed and in need of special protection. Yet through the redefinition of marriage and reproductive technology we’re creating fatherless children every day—and celebrating it.

And just as it’s been from the inception of the church, the Christian responsibility is to take up the cause of the fatherless—and the motherless. We must advocate for their right to a mother and father. We must defend their dignity from conception onward, refusing to accept a world in which tiny image bearers of God are bought, sold, frozen, and discarded.

Toxic empathy says we must only consider the feelings of adults who want children and affirm their relationship by agreeing with whatever means they choose to fulfill their wants. Biblical love sees the destructive consequences of this affirmation and prioritizes the rights and well-being of the little ones who can’t speak up for themselves.

We shouldn’t read the Bible asking, “What can I get away with?” Rather, we should ask, “How can I glorify God the most?” With the former mentality, people try to pick apart pieces of Scripture to see how we can still follow our desires without feeling condemned. But with the latter mentality, we’re going to read the Bible with the aim of understanding who God is and how we can best obey Him.

This doesn’t mean we try to initiate a friendship by confronting them about their sexual sin. That probably won’t work. After all, someone who doesn’t follow Christ must first repent of their unbelief before they repent of anything else. That means we get to share with them who God is and what He’s done for us before we have any conversation about sexuality and identity.

“How I feel does not tell me who I am. Only God can tell me who I am, because he made me and takes care of me.”

Without space and resources to provide to an unlimited influx of people, cities like New York are displacing their own population to make room for illegal immigrants. Ninety-five-year-old veteran Frank Tammaro said he was given a month and a half to find a new home after his New York City nursing facility was sold to house illegal immigrants.[26] The city’s homeless shelters are unable to adequately serve the homeless population because of the overflow of poor illegal immigrants in need of help.

Sure, no human is illegal—whatever that means. But humans do illegal things, and mass illegal immigration enabled and encouraged by our leaders wreaks unnecessary and preventable havoc on our nation.

The entire purpose of the American government is to protect America and Americans. That is its number one job.

But nationalism in its truest sense means placing the needs and interests of one’s own nation over the needs and interests of other countries. This is necessary and good. It’s a concept most seem to understand when it comes to other nations: People agree that Zambia, for example, has the right to protect its citizens, but when one asserts that America has the same right, they’re met with accusations of bigotry. America has this right and responsibility just as any other nation does.

In short, borders create order, while borderlessness creates disorder. Chaos and disorder always have victims, and they’re usually those with the least physical, economic, or political power to defend themselves.

him.” Contrary to popular opinion, borders aren’t an evil construct devised by tyrants. They’re a concept contrived by God.

A person leaving an impoverished or less-developed country for a more prosperous one doesn’t qualify as a refugee or asylum seeker.

America, just like every other country, neither has the capacity nor the obligation to allow everyone in who wants to enter. It cannot be one nation’s responsibility to take in the world’s impoverished.

Yes, we are exiles on this Earth, but we are not absolved of our responsibility to steward the places God has sovereignly put us.

In Jeremiah, God urges the Jewish exiles in Babylon to “seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare” (Jer. 29:7). If Jews were supposed to seek the welfare of a nation that had conquered them, destroyed their people, and burned down Jerusalem, how much more should we Christian exiles steward our own nations today?

the truth is much more complicated than the popular narrative would suggest.

But in reality, it’s not accurate to say an entire group of people with one level of melanin have all wronged another group of people with another level of melanin.

Forcing one group to bear responsibility for sins they did not themselves commit in the name of “reconciliation” is a form of toxic empathy bullying that is neither healthy nor godly.

Thanks to progressive soft-on-crime policies, the U.S. saw a 24 percent decline in arrests along with a 30 percent increase in homicides in 2020—the highest spike ever recorded.

But we are focused on drugs...

Just as discriminating against black people because of their skin color is wrong, so is discriminating against white people because of their skin color. Present discrimination doesn’t actually rectify any past injustices, it just creates new ones.

Social justice is not justice. That’s not only because it harms those it pretends to help, and it’s not only because it’s supported by philosophical and statistical errors.

Just as mistreating someone because they’re black is wicked, so is mistreating someone because they’re white or because they’re deemed “privileged.” God doesn’t see one form of mistreatment as less abominable than the other.

our righteous compassion for the poor can be exploited to support the policies that hurt the very people we’re trying to help.

The god of self tells a woman her wants and needs are more important than the life of her child.

The god of self tells adults that their sexual desire is more important than a child’s need for a mother and father.

Children suffer most from abortion, gender deception, sexual depravity, and the chaos that accompanies a failure to enforce the law.

Children are always the unconsenting subjects of progressive social experiments: from abortion, to the redefinition of the family, to reproductive technology, to gender ideology, to government policies that push their safety and well-being to the wayside.

Even people who call themselves Christians will chastise you for not being worldly enough. They may police your tone or tell you you’re making a big deal out of things that don’t matter.

It’s tempting as Christians to believe that we can be nicer than God, that we can appeal to people better by being more polite or gentler than He is. We feel like we need to take God off the hook for the harsher things He’s revealed through Scripture. Maybe if we’re squishy or silent or secular enough on the controversial issues of our day, then the world will like us. Then we’ll have earned enough of their respect, we think, to be heard by them, so we can lead them to Christ. But this is both unbiblical and ineffective. It’s self-idolatry: believing we are more loving and wiser than God, who is the source of all wisdom and is love itself (James 1:5; 1 John 4:8).