Truth, Toxic Empathy, and Sexuality


By Bill Muehlenberg - Posted at Culture Watch:

We need a biblical approach to crucial issues:

The new book by Allie Beth Stuckey, Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion (Sentinel, 2024) is selling quite well, and for good reason. It is an important volume dealing with important issues. Primarily, it is about how religious lefties are pushing a false and unbiblical view of compassion, empathy and love.

I have already written a review of this book, but more can be said about it, and quoted from it. For my previous piece on this key volume, see here: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2024/10/27/right-and-wrong-empathy-right-and-wrong-christianity/

In that article I looked at three of the five main topics she discusses: abortion, immigration, and social justice. Two other chapters were not covered – on the trans revolution and homosexuality. Those topics I will discuss here. But first, as to how she identifies toxic empathy and how we can spot it, she speaks of “the danger of being led by empathy rather than by truth-filled love.” She says this:

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.


Kindness is good, and empathy can be good too. But empathy that affirms sin or lies is always misguided. How can we tell when empathy has become toxic? How can we tell when the point of an emotionally charged argument isn’t to help us love someone but instead to approve of a damaging progressive agenda? Here are a few red flags that we’ll see repeatedly in these pages:
  1. The use of euphemisms…
  2. Contradictions to God’s word…
  3. Exclusively political ends…
  4. Christian-sounding words with unchristian meanings…
  5. Emotional language… (xxv-xxvii)
What she has to say abut two of the most radical and controversial issues of the day is worth examining more closely. As to the trans agenda, she begins with some real-life stories of people involved in this – as she does in each chapter. And she also mentions her own childhood experience, recalling how she was quite tomboyish.

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