Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion by Allie Beth Stuckey (Sentinel, 2024). The subtitle gives us the gist of where she is going with this. This volume lays all this out with clarity and biblical compassion. In five carefully argued and documented chapters, Stuckey explores these key areas: abortion, transgenderism, homosexuality, immigration, and social justice. She explains what she means by toxic empathy in her Introduction: 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 commonplace, biblical truths that dismantle toxic empathy from its foundations.

As has been discussed so often on these pages, there are some versions of the Christian faith that are good, wholesome, and biblical. Sadly, there are other versions that are not so good and are actually harmful because they are so very unbiblical.

Progressive Christianity is a clear case in point, and I have discussed this often. Three years ago for example I discussed 20 new books on this topic: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2021/09/24/20-top-books-examining-progressive-christianity-and-the-social-justice-movement/

While we need such detailed discussions critiquing all this, we can also sometimes get truth – albeit short, punchy and pithy truth – in the form of a meme. Two recent memes making the rounds nicely summarise the sorts of things I will be discussing here:

“If your God lets you do whatever you want to do, then your God is really you!”

“If your entire theology is ‘God is love’ and ‘Do not judge’, then you don’t have Christianity; you have Oprah.”

A brand-new book on these matters which is selling very well indeed can be highlighted here. I refer to Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion by Allie Beth Stuckey (Sentinel, 2024). The subtitle gives us the gist of where she is going with this.

In the name of love, compassion, tolerance and inclusion, leftists – both secular and religious – have been able to push all sorts of bad, immoral, and decidedly unbiblical agendas. These can range from socialism, abortion on demand, critical race theory, homosexuality, the erosion of freedom and democracy, cancel culture, and so on.

How many times have we heard for example that Christians should love everyone just as they are, never judge anyone, and just accept people, no questions asked. This was and is a key mantra of the left when it came to issues such as promoting homosexual marriage and the like.

Who does not want to be seen as being full of compassion, love and grace? Jesus had all this in abundance. Yet any plain reading of the gospel accounts will show us that he could be very strong in denouncing sin, in calling people to repentance, and even rebuking those whose lifestyles and views were radically divorced from that of God.

This volume lays all this out with clarity and biblical compassion. In five carefully argued and documented chapters, Stuckey explores these key areas: abortion, transgenderism, homosexuality, immigration, and social justice. She explains what she means by toxic empathy in her Introduction:

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….

 

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 commonplace, biblical truths that dismantle toxic empathy from its foundations.

 

Real love – the kind described by the God who created and is love (I 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).

 

That’s why empathy is different from love and why it also must be submissive to love. Putting yourself in someone’s shoes may help you feel their pain, but their pain isn’t determinative of what’s true or false, right or wrong. A person for whom you feel empathy may, in their pain, believe or demand things that are untrue, unhelpful, and even harmful. We can empathize with the pain of withdrawal for a drug addict, for example, but it would be cruel to give them the heroin they crave.

 

This tension between empathy and love is less relevant in most everyday interactions—like when you come across a struggling mom at the airport—and more intense when it comes to the politically charged issues of our day. In these circumstances, we often confuse the empathy that motivates us to help people around us with the empathy that’s demanded of us by progressive activists. (xvii-xviii)

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