Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion

by Allie Beth Stuckey

But empathy alone is a terrible guide. It may be part of what inspires us to do good, but it’s just an emotion and, like all emotions, is highly susceptible to manipulation. That’s exactly what’s happening today. Empathy has been hijacked for the purpose of conforming well-intentioned people to particular political agendas. Specifically, it’s been co-opted by the progressive wing of American society to convince people that the progressive position is exclusively the one of kindness and morality. I call it toxic empathy.

The goal of statements like these—examples of toxic empathy—is to get us to suppress our opposition to a particular issue or point of view by playing upon our desire to be a good person.

But empathy and kindness are not synonymous, and neither are empathy and compassion. Kindness describes how we treat someone, either in word or deed. Compassion means to suffer with someone who’s struggling. Both kindness and compassion are necessary components of love. But empathy literally means to be in the feelings of another person. Empathy by itself is neither loving nor kind; it’s just an emotion. Love, on the other hand, is a conscious choice to seek good for another person. The erroneous conflation of love and empathy has convinced the masses that to be loving, we must feel the same way they do. Toxic empathy says we must not only share their feelings, but affirm their feelings and choices as valid, justified, and good. This confusion has not only made us a morally lost people but it’s also harmed the very people empathy-mongers claim they’re trying to help: the truly marginalized and vulnerable.

Toxic empathy claims the only way to love racial minorities is to advance social justice, but “justice” that shows partiality to the poor or those perceived as oppressed only leads to societal chaos. Empathy can help us see their perspective and foster compassion, but that’s all it can do. It can’t guide us into making the right decisions or donning the wise, moral, or biblical position. Toxic empathy bullies us into believing that the unwise, immoral, and unbiblical position is actually the righteous one.

But as I’ve learned more about these subjects, I’ve realized how vital it is to push past superficial, feelings-based arguments and to pursue what is good, right, and true.

Christians are called to love, not just empathy. While empathy may help us love, it is not love itself. Empathy feels pain, but love always “rejoices with the truth” (1 Cor. 13:6). We must seek and speak the truth in love (Eph. 4:15). Because God is love and is the Source of truth, we can only embody this truth-and-love dichotomy to which we’re commanded by defining both love and truth as He defines them (1 John 4:8). We look to His Word—not our feelings—as our guide in all things, including the hot-button cultural and political issues of our day.

To love means to want what is best for a person, as God defines “best.” God’s definition of what is good and loving will almost always contradict the world’s definition, which will inevitably put us at odds with mainstream culture. While this is uncomfortable, the sacrifice is worth it. The truth can change lives.

His Word never returns void; it will always accomplish what He wills (Isa. 55:11). That means when we tell the truth as He defines it, no matter how nervous we are or how uncomfortable it is, it will bear fruit in accordance with His perfect will.

there will always be critics telling you you’re being too harsh and divisive. They’ll demand, of course, that you have some empathy, which is typically code for: “You must agree with me.”

For the Christian, empathy should never compel us to affirm that which God calls sinful or to advocate for policies that are ineffective at best and deadly at worst.

truth-filled love urged me to talk about the fixed, biological male-female binary, knowing that embracing this reality is a better, healthier, biblical alternative to living a lie and mutilating the body. This approach is always worth risking hurt feelings.

This book isn’t about killing empathy. It’s about embracing God’s vision for love, order, and goodness. My goal is to equip you with commonsense, biblical truths that dismantle toxic empathy from its foundations.

Again: real love—the kind described by the God who created and is love (1 John 4:8)—always includes truth. The two are inextricably intertwined, since true love celebrates truth (1 Cor. 13:6). Christians are called to this kind of love regardless of whether we feel empathy or not. Christians love because Christ first loved us, not because we feel a certain way or have had a particular experience (1 John 4:19).

Black Lives Matter and those aligned with the organization seemed intent on indicting some people of racism and alleviating other people of responsibility based on the color of their skin.

Empathy, apparently, would bid me to agree with Black Lives Matter. Empathy would help me excuse rioting and violence in the name of racial justice. Empathy would confirm that George Floyd’s death was indeed the result of white supremacy. Empathy would demand that I uproot the racist systems upon which our country and our police system were founded. Empathy would open my eyes to the fact that racism is all around us.

Then and now, in the world of social media activism, outrage is considered the measure of virtue, but only outrage going in the “right” direction.

That’s the danger of being led by empathy rather than by truth-filled love. You latch on to what sounds and feels good rather than what is good, often to the detriment of the very people you think you’re trying to help. And it impacts much more than debates about policing or racism.

THE USE OF EUPHEMISMS: Euphemisms obscure the truth to make a position seem more palatable. Think “reproductive rights” for killing an unborn child, or “gender-affirming care” for bodily mutilation.

CONTRADICTIONS TO GOD’S WORD: Sometimes these contradictions are obvious (e.g., “Jesus isn’t the only way to heaven”), but most of the time, they’re not. Just like the Devil tricking Eve or tempting Jesus, unbiblical statements are often paired with something true.

It’s crucial we know our Bible and train ourselves to think critically about the things we read and hear—especially when they’re viral or catchy.

EXCLUSIVELY POLITICAL ENDS: When calling for empathy, inclusivity, and love, are they talking about how we treat these people as individuals, or are they actually speaking of achieving certain political ends?

CHRISTIAN-SOUNDING WORDS WITH UNCHRISTIAN MEANINGS: The concepts of equality, equity, liberation, oppression, inclusion, and social justice can all be, in some way, found in the Bible, but the Bible defines them differently than progressive activists do. Biblical equity, for example, means fair, impartial judgment (Ps. 99:4). Progressive equity means equal outcomes.

EMOTIONAL LANGUAGE: Manipulative rhetoric lacks substantive, logical arguments and replaces them with demands that you feel a certain way. If you’re really loving, caring, understanding, empathetic, etc., you will buy into a particular position. Often, your rational points will be rebuffed with accusations of callousness instead of thoughtful responses.

When they call you hateful, bigoted, racist, or any other epithet, it usually means they don’t know why they believe what they believe, so their insecurity manifests itself in anger. This kind of bullying is frustrating, but you have the power to let it roll off your shoulders.

You know such an allegation is ridiculous, and you don’t need to dignify it with a response. Simply continue to kindly, humbly, but confidently stand your ground.

When these red flags show up, it means someone is using toxic empathy to capitalize on the Christian’s righteous desire to be compassionate to the outcast and the weak, distorting biblical love into progressive activism and manipulating women into supporting issues that are harmful and, in many cases, sinful.

For example, to promote infanticide, they tell us “abortion is health care.” To destroy God-ordained sex differences, they say “trans women are women.” To pressure us to accept “gay marriage,” they declare “love is love.” To promote open borders, they assert “no human is illegal.” And to radically reshape an America they’ve deemed racist, sexist, transphobic, and more, they insist that “social justice is justice.”

What’s the difference between a child conceived in rape and a child not conceived in rape? In other words, why are diagnoses or the circumstances surrounding a person’s conception justification for killing them?

It’s true that most abortions happen in the first trimester. But scientifically, these babies are still equally human. They’re just smaller and less developed. And killing them is still brutal.

Abortion isn’t health care. What other form of health care involves killing a human being? Abortion is a vicious practice, no matter when it happens and no matter how much empathy we have for mothers in tough situations.

In other words, in a situation where the mother’s physical life is at risk, the baby should be delivered, and, if medically possible, helped to survive. In some cases, like when the complication occurs early in the pregnancy, the baby’s survival isn’t possible, so the mom must be saved by delivering her child. This is very different, scientifically and morally, from purposely and violently killing the baby inside the womb.

The disagreement is really centered on whether that little human is a person—with value and rights. There has been much debate around what makes a human a person. Is it sentience? Age? Independence?

If we acknowledge that a baby in the womb (or fetus, embryo, or zygote—it doesn’t matter, because they’re all different stages of human development, like infancy and adulthood) is indeed a human being, then there needs to be some kind of reasonable justification on the part of abortion advocates for purposely ending their life.

In what other situations should we use size, location, dependence, age, sentience, poverty, disability, abuse, or conception circumstances to advocate for the extermination of people who have already been born?

A good rule of thumb is this: if you’re on the right side of an issue, you don’t have to lie to convince people to join you.

If we define personhood as anything other than being human, which happens at the moment of fertilization, we’re in arbitrary, dangerous territory—dangerous territory that Western societies have traveled into before.

Sanger saw a dire need to prevent pregnancies—not just for women’s well-being but also for the sake of eliminating poverty and hereditary disease. Ultimately, she wanted a “clean” race of humanity that wouldn’t weigh the world down with its neediness, which meant popularizing contraception and discouraging the fertility of women—usually poor working-class and black people—whose large families, she believed, were holding them back.

Malthus’s theory, however, was wrong. While the world population has increased by seven billion people since 1800,[11] extreme poverty has decreased from 84 percent to 24 percent.[12] As it turns out, human beings add to and benefit our environments more than we subtract and detract from them.

A common idea among supporters of eugenics was that certain ethnicities were innately inferior, both intellectually and morally. Galton argued that social ills such as poverty and crime were driven largely by unfavorable hereditary characteristics. Some ethnicities, he believed, were innately inferior, both intellectually and morally, and thus he rejected the “unreasonable” sentiment “against the gradual extinction of an inferior race.”

In 1927, the Supreme Court ruling in Buck v. Bell effectively agreed, ruling mass sterilization was constitutional. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. declared: “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”[15] Sanger was especially concerned about limiting black births, writing to the heir of the Procter & Gamble fortune that “the most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We don’t want the word to get out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.”[16] But the horrors of the Holocaust and the worldwide sympathy it evoked eventually forced Sanger and her eugenicist contemporaries to update their message. In 1942, the American Birth Control League dropped “birth control” from their messaging and used the term “planned parenthood” instead.[17] The new organization, Planned Parenthood, would shift its focus from breeding a pure racial stock to encouraging the use of contraception, offering abortions, and providing infertility treatments.

Despite dropping “population control” and “eugenics” from its public list of goals, Planned Parenthood has followed the eugenics program to its inevitable conclusion.

The partnership between eugenics, depopulation, and abortion is still prominent. Microsoft cofounder and activist Bill Gates is a major investor in providing worldwide access to birth control for the purpose of curbing population growth. In a 2010 TED Talk, he warned: “The world today has 6.8 billion people. That’s headed up to about 9 billion…. Now, if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower that by, perhaps, ten or fifteen percent.”

Gates, Buffett, and the Rockefellers are only a portion of the Malthus-motivated American elites funding abortion. With unquantifiable power and prestige, the world’s billionaires carry the torch of the population control industry’s doctrine of death. Abortion supporters may feel genuine empathy for those on the margins and believe they are providing ways to alleviate pain. Maybe Sanger felt the same way. But that empathy is inextricably intertwined with evil ideas like eugenics and population control. There is no compassion, no love, no humanity, no goodness to abortion. Not ever, and not today.

In sum, many of these “pro–all life” arguments suggest that compassion demands we give less of our attention to preventing abortion and more attention to improving the lives of women and to causes other than abortion. Advocates of this position are typically hesitant to support legal restrictions on abortions. However subtle, this is toxic empathy in action. It takes attention away from the true victim of abortion—the baby—and her legal right to life, and instead focuses only on the pregnant woman. The truth is, the pro-life movement is already going above and beyond to meet the needs of women. They’re just not waiting for the government to do the job they know God has called them to do themselves. In addition to advocating for laws that protect the lives of babies, pro-lifers are serving women and families in incredible, transformational ways.

This story isn’t an anomaly. This is what pro-life Christians do. They show up, in big and small ways. They meet needs. They love—before, during, and after birth. “We need to do more for women” is not an excuse to support the legal killing of children. It’s toxic empathy masking the brutality of abortion and obscuring the reality that the work is already being done. The only question is whether we will choose to be a part of it.

It shouldn’t surprise us that those who advocate for the legal dismemberment of innocent children are also violent in general. Of course, not all abortion advocates are terrorists. But because murder is the foundation of the movement, it’s expected that its loudest, strongest activists will seek to inflict their enemies with pain and death.

There is no scientific, philosophical, moral, logical, or constitutional justification for abortion. But, most importantly, there’s no biblical one either. It’s wrong to kill someone because, no matter what abortion advocates say, people aren’t just clumps of cells. We’re made in the image of God, which elevates us above the status of plants and animals (Gen. 1:27). Humans, and humans alone, have souls. According to the creation account in Genesis, we matter more than any other part of creation.

He roots his reasoning for this punishment in a reality that is just as true today as it was then—human beings are valuable because man is made in His image.

But my inability to understand the plans God carries out for his own glory doesn’t obscure his clear commands. If we love God, we will love the things he loves and hate the things he hates. If we love God, we will seek every means possible to protect voiceless, vulnerable children from the horror of abortion.

Christians have no reason to waver on, belittle, or push the abortion crisis to the side. We can and should care about all different kinds of people, both in and outside the womb, and the struggles they face. But all of this is a distraction from the central problem with abortion: it kills an innocent human being. And if abortion kills an innocent human being—an image bearer of God—fighting to secure that baby’s right to live is the first and most urgent order of business.