Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion

by Allie Beth Stuckey

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.

Both heartbreaking and an eye-opener.

Even so, 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 taking the child away from its mother or father.

And yet another "how they getcha": "Adoption rips families apart. Adoption causes trauma." I don't think most people would deny this is true in some, perhaps many, cases. It's a "both, and." *And,* adoption is redemptive where sperm/egg donation isn't.

Put another way, opposite-sex couples most often turn to these fertility treatments in desperation for the children their union could, in principle, naturally create, but same-sex couples use these interventions to have children their relationships would never otherwise be able to produce. 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.

children’s rights supersede adults’ desires.

PREACH. They're vulnerable. The system dictates they can't speak up for themselves. You're grown up and you can (the royal "you.") When are we going to quit treating kids like commodities? When are we gonna quit being so STUPID?

The redefinition of marriage is a radical social experiment at the behest of adults and at the expense of children.

Right. Adults screw up and screw around, kids pay for it, and kids grow up and perpetuate the same problems because they know no other way. Again, we have got to quit being stupid.

Rather than exploiting the helpless, we’re to honor and lift them up.

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.

It’s illogical because the absence of condemnation doesn’t equal support. Just because we don’t see Jesus mentioning homosexuality by name in the Gospels—just as we don’t see him mentioning, say, sex trafficking or torturing animals—doesn’t mean he supports it. It misrepresents Jesus because He is God. Therefore, whatever God says in the Old or New Testament, Jesus says also. Jesus’s words aren’t limited to what we read in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The entire biblical canon is His, and it’s all authoritative and without error (2 Tim. 3:16–17). The argument also represents a misunderstanding of Scripture. We shouldn’t read the Bible asking, “What can I get away with?” Rather, we should ask, “How can I glorify God the most?”

marriage as anything other than a man and a woman matters so much. Two men or two women can’t represent Christ, the groom, and His Bride, the church: only a man and woman can do that.

“Love is love” is a circular motto that is therefore open to any and all definitions. If love is just love, then lust can be love, predation can be love, bestiality can be love…the possibilities are endless.

law can permit sin, but Christians should not accept laws that approve of or are designed to make it easier to sin.

But it’s another thing for the state to call “marriage” that which God declares is not marriage. Then the state isn’t just allowing error, it is promoting and defending it—and making it easier for people to turn their backs on God.

people who believe in God’s total authority and goodness, we should always seek to vote in a way that aligns with our worldview. To do so isn’t scary “Christian nationalism” or “fascism,” as critics of conservative Christians say. It’s just doing what everyone else has a right to do in America: bringing your moral beliefs to the voting booth.

And, most importantly, they’re people made in God’s image. That fact alone means these people have great worth and must be treated with dignity and respect. Plus, God seems to pay particular attention to the plight of sojourners. In ancient Israel, he prohibited His people from mistreating them (Ex. 22:21).

Who Gets Our Empathy?

But the reality is, there are people on both sides of the immigration debate that deserve our compassion. There is pain felt and loss endured by both citizens and those here illegally. That’s why empathy, even in its best form, isn’t a sufficient determinant of right and wrong, nor is it an adequate driver of policy. There will always be hurt people on all sides of any issue.

In fiscal year 2021, Border Patrol made nearly 1.7 million apprehensions of illegal immigrants, the largest number ever recorded.[8] That is more illegal immigrants entering in one year than the urban population of any single city in America except for New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago.[9] It’s enough people to replace the population of New Hampshire, Maine, Rhode Island, or that of seven other states.[10] Border Patrol estimates that another two million immigrants crossed the border illegally and got away, though there is no way they could know for sure, in large part due to the sheer volume of immigrants. The Department of Homeland Security estimates that an even larger number—four million—crossed the border in that same fiscal year, 2021.[11] If that level of illegal immigration stayed steady for President Biden’s term alone, in just four years more illegal immigrants would have entered the country than the population of forty-six states.[12]

While good data is hard to find, you can’t help but notice that the hordes of people on our southern border are almost all young, military-age men. Statistically, in any society that is a dangerous demographic. But because of the sheer numbers arriving, we have no ability to judge the intentions or backgrounds of these young, unattached men. What we do know is that in fiscal year 2023, Border Patrol caught 160 illegal immigrants on the terrorist watch list compared to 100 in 2022. In 2019, 280 potential terrorists were caught crossing the border.[14]

From 2016 to 2020, nearly 750 members of MS-13—a notoriously vicious and violent gang from El Salvador—were charged with federal crimes. Between 74 percent and 90 percent of those gang members were here illegally.[16] That means up to 675 members from a single gang committed crimes that never should have occurred. Americans living in the border towns of California, Texas, and Arizona, many of them immigrants themselves, have been forced to sacrifice the safety of their families and security of their property to accommodate the presence of human smugglers (also known as coyotes) and immigrants crossing the border.

The danger of illegal immigration isn’t just about illegal immigrants themselves, but also the consequences of having a border that is easily crossed.

human lives. The vast majority of fentanyl in the United States is smuggled across the Mexican border, thanks to a sinister partnership between Mexican cartels and the Chinese Communist Party.

In 2022, 73,654 people died from a fentanyl overdose. This number has skyrocketed since 2013, with deaths increasing dramatically every year for the past ten years.[21]

These tragedies include children. A two-year-old in Akron, Ohio, died from fentanyl in 2022.[22] That same year, a one-year-old in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, died from the same cause.[23] A ten-month-old was taken to the hospital after coming into contact with fentanyl on the ground at a park in San Francisco.[24]

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]

According to the Center for Immigration Studies, in 2023 the Biden administration flew 320,000 illegal aliens to 43 different airports in the U.S.—all funded by the American taxpayer.[41]

Stories of the rape of women and girls by cartels and coyotes is tragically common, though the vast majority go unreported. In the same PBS report, a woman and her daughter who couldn’t keep up with their coyote were offered a deal: let him rape her daughter, and he would help them make it. The mother refused, and the coyote left them in the desert. The only reason she and her daughter survived was because they were found by Border Patrol.[51] In a report from May 2017, Doctors Without Borders found that nearly one in three immigrant women were sexually abused as they traveled through Mexico.[52] Rape is so routine on the immigrant journey that women are urged to take birth control just in case.[53]

Yes, but those rapes don't fit the larger narrative. Those rapes didn't lead to increased power for Planned Parenthood. Those rapes made people question what "empathy" really means and is about. So the majority of people didn't hear much if anything about them.

the United States isn’t in charge of our own border; the cartels are. Right now, the border is essentially a battle zone between cartels like Sinaloa and Los Zetas. The groups are in a murderous war to take over various regions along the border, terrorizing both immigrants and American and Mexican citizens. When cartels control a region of the border, they are able to ensure that only their paying customers (illegal immigrants) are able to cross there.[54]

And meanwhile, the families of fentanyl victims are silenced because it's "racist" to talk about what really happened (among other issues).

We

don’t have to fix the rest of the world before we secure our own country. We can have compassion for the plight of immigrants without advocating for liberal border policy that endangers our own citizens and incentivizes trafficking.

Illegal immigration isn’t compassionate. We can feel for people like Maribel while still keeping in mind the big picture. 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.

It boggles my mind that while the "toxic empathy" movement loves to parse words, they can't separate the (true) concept that no human is illegal, from humans doing illegal things. (Which, if they want to play word games, I can do that all day long, but I have learned it's a waste of energy).

There’s no question that legal immigration allows people into our country

who offer incredible contributions to our culture, economy, and overall health as a nation. America not only accepts more legal immigrants than every other country each year,[57] we also have the largest foreign-born population of any nation.

doesn’t matter how people feel about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. What was terrifying is that large numbers of people in America publicly supported a terrorist group that was, at the very same time, posting videos online of its members raping, mutilating, and killing civilians.

Every nation has this right to sovereignty. Sovereignty is legitimacy. A nation’s legitimacy is necessary to enact and enforce laws, which represent the rights of a country’s citizenry. If a country has no borders, it has no sovereignty. If it has no sovereignty, it has no legitimacy. If a country has no legitimacy, it has no authority to create laws. If it has no laws, chaos ensues, rights are lost, and citizenship means nothing. A country without any meaningful citizenship isn’t a country at all.

"Sovereignty is legitimacy." And that's why, when I travel to another country, I hold myself to their standards and rules. That's why, if I entered another country illegally, it wouldn't surprise me to be detained or worse (not that I would do that, just for argument's sake). My ever-present question is, why do so many Americans expect the U.S. to be any different? Why have we sacrificed our legitimacy?

Some people call ideas about sovereignty “nationalism,” and there’s much fear surrounding the “nationalist” label because of the progressive attempt to link it inextricably with white supremacy and fascism. 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.

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.

Again, it's a double standard, and it is mind-boggling.

Countries are like families. As parents, the needs of our own children are paramount. We seek to keep them safe and help to meet their needs. This doesn’t mean we don’t want these things for the children of other families. It doesn’t mean we hate our neighbors or view ourselves as inherently superior. It doesn’t preclude us from helping those in need or being hospitable to visitors. But it does mean that we will be careful about whom we allow into our homes and how long we allow them to stay. If they pose a threat to our family, we’ll kick them out. We won’t invite strangers to sleep in our children’s beds, eat our children’s food, and wear our children’s clothes while our own children go without. That wouldn’t be virtuous; it would be cruel and irresponsible.

We’ve been fed a steady diet of guilt over the past few decades that has convinced us via toxic empathy that in order to be kind and compassionate, we must believe that America and America alone has no right to prefer our values and our culture over others.

Virtually every nation on earth has a history of conquest, slavery, and injustice.

Right. The U.S. is not particularly evil in that regard. (Conversely, we're not particularly virtuous either, but that steady diet of guilt is killing us faster than cancer and diabetes ever will).

America is unique, however, in what we’ve accomplished in the way of equality of opportunity, equal justice, freedom, and prosperity.

But it’s not only okay but reasonable and right, for a Christian to allow God’s Word to shape what we think about policies and how we vote. We just have to make sure we’re doing so properly, through thoughtful exegesis and application. That means we must seek to understand the context.

And few things irritate, no, infuriate, me more than a Christian who takes Scripture out of context.

When Christian conservatives use Psalm 139:15–16, for example, which says that God carefully, fearfully, and wonderfully knit us together in our mothers’ wombs, as our reason to oppose abortion, we’re not taking the verse out of context. That’s what Scripture says, and that’s what it means: God made us in the womb, therefore we have human dignity in the womb.

Just because aliens wanted to enter into Israel didn’t mean that the Jews were obligated to suspend the enforcement of their laws. Reciprocity and respect were requisite.

America is not ancient Israel, though, so Christians don’t have the responsibility to enact Old Testament laws here. But Christians can and should look at both the Old and New Testaments to learn what actions create a just, peaceful society and what actions enable injustice and chaos.

God gave genders, marriage, family, language, laws, customs, and traditions that brought order to His people and still bring order in many ways today.

Order is a blessing, while disorder is a curse.

It doesn't get much simpler than that. Now of course, you can misuse the definitions and connotations of order and chaos, but that's parsing words and playing word games again.

God blesses His children by ordering our footsteps and bringing order to nations (Ps. 119:105; Dan. 2:21; Ps. 22:28; Rom. 13:1–2).

It’s true that Jesus wasn’t a white, Republican American. It’s also true that there’s a chance the deportation of illegal immigrants could include someone who would have been a leader at a church. But these statements don’t paint the full picture, and they wrongly imply that people who favor limiting immigration, either legal or illegal, are un-Christlike.

First, let’s clarify the difference between an immigrant and a refugee or asylum seeker. Out of the millions of immigrants illegally crossing into America, very few are true refugees or asylum seekers. U.S. law is explicit: refugees are those who have a “well-founded fear of persecution due to their race, membership in a particular social group, political opinion, religion, or national order.”[72] Not only that, but applicants must first apply for refugee status outside America in a neighboring country. An asylum seeker must meet the “refugee” definition and must be seeking admission at a port of entry of the United States. A person leaving an impoverished or less-developed country for a more prosperous one doesn’t qualify as a refugee or asylum seeker.

Second, it’s important that these Christian critics of immigration law enforcement get specific: How many must America accept to be considered Christlike? Ten million? A billion? More? Are there any limits or restrictions for which a Christian can advocate without being condemned as unloving? Do we have the right to express any concern about who’s entering into our country, from where, or how many? Or is the Christian position really that we must h...