Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion

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.

But it’s a toxic empathy that pushes us not only to have compassion for someone’s difficulties but to unquestioningly affirm their feelings, because, if we were in their shoes, we’d want our feelings to be affirmed. But what about when affirmation causes damage to the very people we say we’re loving? The truth is, this toxic empathy is a dangerous guide for our decisions, behavior, and public policy. What someone wants or feels can’t tell us what’s morally right or beneficial, either for the person as an individual or for society as a whole. Feelings are often misaligned with reality and can actually blind us from—rather than lead us to—wisdom.

Yes, Scripture does clearly and unequivocally condemn homosexuality as sin, despite baseless claims to the contrary. Leviticus 18:22, 1 Corinthians 6:9, 1 Timothy 1:10, and Romans 1:26–27 all prohibit homosexual relations and condemn them as inherently disordered. But even if these negative verses didn’t exist, the Bible’s positive definition of holy marriage and sexuality would be sufficient in telling us what Christians should believe and how we must live.

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.

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.

One group that God repeatedly commands Christians to honor and uplift is the fatherless. Mistreating fatherless children was forbidden in ancient Israel (Ex. 22:22). God describes Himself as their father and defender (Deut. 10:18; Ps. 68:5). God regards advocating for the fatherless as righteous, and He condemns as wicked exploiting them (Jer. 7:6, Ps. 94:6). Children without fathers are always, without exception, categorized by Scripture as oppressed and in need of special protection.

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.

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). 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.

Actually, we’re told it’s not murder at all. It’s “planning parenthood.” It’s “reproductive freedom.” It’s “bodily autonomy.” It’s “women’s rights.” It’s not a baby that’s being killed, it’s “pregnancy termination,” the removal of a “clump of cells.” People on the side of abortion use all kinds of euphemisms, half-truths, and straight-up lies to obscure what the procedure is and does. “Baby murder” simply isn’t good PR, so sterilized, misleading, unscientific terminology is adopted to make what’s always the gruesome killing of an innocent human more palatable to the public.

While empathy asks us to understand their desires, toxic empathy demands that we affirm them,

That’s what Christians do. We share arrows with our brothers and sisters when they’re in the line of fire.

God’s faithfulness is proved not by the elimination of hardships but by carrying us through them. Change is not the absence of struggles; change is the freedom to choose holiness in the midst of our struggles. I realized that the ultimate issue has to be that I yearn after God in total surrender and complete obedience.

You are living a lie, and the path you’re on won’t give you the happiness you’re seeking. Your sin, which you think is your friend, is actually killing you. That love, purpose, and identity you’re seeking—it won’t be found in sex, alcohol, your job, your boyfriend, yourself, your gender identity, or any of that. These things can only be found in the God who created you.

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.

As we’ll see again and again

This is what I mean when I say that social justice isn't justice: justice is about a fair and impartial process, whereas social justice is about equal outcomes. Lady Justice is blind, holding equal weights, but Lady Social Justice would have open eyes, assessing the skin color, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, and other characteristics of each party and placing her thumb on the scales accordingly, in an attempt to rectify either real or perceived, past or present injustices against one party.

This story isn’t an anomaly. This is what pro-life Christians do. They show up

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.

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.

like this: “Christ says, ‘Give me All. I don’t want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want You. I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it. No half-measures are any good…. Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked—the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you Myself: my own will shall become yours.’