Allie B. Stuckey joins us to discuss her new book, Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion, and why the church is no longer acting like an empathy club. She explains how the church needs to understand where empathy has its limits, and how it can actually do a lot of damage. Allie also discusses how progressives are able to exploit Christian compassion and how Christians need to understand how they are being used as a tool by the left to achieve their political goals and get their point across to the American people. This episode is sponsored by Noble Gold Investments, the official gold sponsor of The Charlie Kirk Show, a company that specializes in gold and physical delivery of precious metals. Learn how you can protect your wealth by becoming a Noble Gold Investor. That's where I buy all of my gold! Go to noblegoldinvestments.org/thecharliekirkshow and use the promo code CHALLENGE at checkout to get 20% off your first order of a 1-piece gold watch! It's where you get 10% off the purchase of a gold watch, a pair of silver and diamond necklace, a watch, and an additional 15% off of your first purchase when you become a member of the Noble Gold Investing Club. That's right, you get a 20% discount when you place an order of $100 or more! If you like the show, you're in the program, you can become a Patron! Subscribe to the show and receive 10% OFF your first month and receive a FREE shipping when you sign up for an additional month of the show! The show will have a limited edition gold membership when you buy a copy of $150 or two-and-a half-piece of the book is available for $150, plus an additional $50, and you get an additional two-week shipping plan when you get the offer of $99 or more get an ad-only offer when you enter the offer starts in the offer is available in Apple Paypal or Amazon Prime or VaynerMedia? Learn more about the show becomes available on Audible.com/VaynerMerry Christmas! TurnPoint USA is the official Gold! Click here to become a Member of the Charlie Kirk is a supporter of the program. Want to support The CharlieKirk Show? Subscribe here to receive a $100,000 and receive 5-of-a-day shipping offer?
00:00:00.000Hey everybody, here on the Charlie Kirk Show, Toxic Empathy.
00:00:02.000Wonderful conversation with Allie B. Stuckey, all about how the church needs to understand where empathy has its limits and how it can actually do a lot of damage.
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00:01:27.000Joining us now is one of the brightest and most important thinkers in the, you could call it the Christian movement, but Christian conservative, especially from a female perspective.
00:01:39.000Her new book perfectly addresses one of my Biggest passion issues that I haven't been able to summarize in a way that makes sense to myself yet, which is how the left and progressives are able to exploit Christian compassion.
00:02:29.000And I see it particularly from a female perspective and really started thinking about this mostly in 2020 after the George Floyd riots.
00:02:39.000And of course, in the midst of COVID, it's an election year.
00:02:42.000It was a confluence of a lot of things going on.
00:02:44.000and I was just so disheartened by the evangelicals, the Christian leaders, the pastors, the Bible study leaders, male and female, who were not only imbibing but just regurgitating this nonsense about Black Lives Matter, about riots being the voice of the unheard, systemic racism, how white people just need to listen and learn. I mean, it was all the secular progressive nonsense, but it was being said in a way that appealed to Christians
00:03:18.000I was speaking to a woman about this, an influential Christian woman, and I was trying to get her to understand like there's a dark underbelly to this stuff.
00:03:28.000And I was told over and over again by many influential Christian women that you just need to have empathy.
00:03:36.000That sometimes it doesn't matter what's true.
00:03:39.000Sometimes the facts, the data, the statistics don't really matter.
00:03:43.000You just need to have empathy for someone's story.
00:03:46.000And then the assumption was not only that I would feel badly for them, but that I would agree with them, that I would affirm this defunding the police movement, that I would agree that systemic racism is a plague, that I would agree that I have white fragility and all this stuff.
00:04:01.000And that's when I started to realize that this Empathy, feeling how someone feels.
00:04:07.000While it could lead you in a good direction, and we can talk about that, it can also lead you to make really not just stupid decisions because you're trying to affirm someone's pain, but really destructive, harmful decisions.
00:04:21.000And of course, the defunding the police, the social justice movement that we saw in 2020 did exactly that.
00:04:27.000So that's where this got started, and that's why I wrote this book.
00:04:31.000I have so many questions, and I just want everyone to understand one of the reasons why the American church is no longer acting like the church and instead like an Eat, Pray, Love book club is because of weaponized empathy, is because we don't understand the root of this word, and we think it's a core Christian thing.
00:05:05.000And if not, where does this word come from?
00:05:08.000The only place that we see this word in scripture, it's in the NIV translation, which is not my preferred translation.
00:05:17.000I'm not saying it's always bad, but it's a thought-for-thought translation rather than a word-for-word translation like the ESV. So it's a little bit less exact in its translation, but you can see this word empathy in And the Hebrews verse that says, we serve a high priest who empathizes with our weaknesses.
00:05:36.000Jesus was as we are, yet was without sin.
00:05:40.000And there is some beauty in that, that Jesus, that God became flesh.
00:06:07.000It may lead you to kindness, but it may also lead you to affirm their delusions.
00:06:13.000For example, if you feel the pain that someone feels who says, say it's a man who says that he's trapped in the wrong body and you feel his distress, you feel his purported confusion, he will lead you to the conclusion that you not only have to affirm his stated identity, but you have to get on board with every policy that he says makes him feel good, makes him feel better, alleviates his pain.
00:06:39.000That's what we see in the whole emotional manipulation tactic That parents are put through when their child comes out as quote-unquote trans.
00:06:47.000Would you rather have a living son or a dead daughter?
00:06:50.000Which means if you don't allow your child to transition, they'll commit suicide.
00:08:22.000And actually, I think that this empathy piece in guiding women's politics is misplaced mothering.
00:08:29.000As we have seen, there is a change happening in when women get married, when women have children, and many of them insist, especially those who hate J.D. Vance and all of that, they insist that they are so happy to Being child-free, that they're completely fulfilled by their jobs and travel.
00:08:49.000But really, that instinct that women have to mother, it doesn't go away.
00:08:54.000It's just directed in a new direction.
00:08:58.000So you're mothering your job, you're mothering your dog, you're mothering yourself, or you're mothering these hoisted up victims that the media tells you need your help and need your defense.
00:09:12.000So a woman can feel really good about voting for social justice when she's told that this poor Black person, this victim of police brutality, is being helped and nurtured by your vote for voting Democrat.
00:09:27.000This poor woman who is pregnant and needs an abortion.
00:09:30.000You are helping indirectly mother her, mentor her, We're good to go.
00:09:56.000I'm so defensive of my children in a very real physical way, like a mother bear kind of way, that if there was a threat toward them, I would shut down the critical thinking part of my brain and I would do whatever it takes to defend them.
00:10:12.000Well, I think this misplaced mothering has kind of a similar way that it plays out in our politics.
00:10:20.000I encourage all of you to get it, especially those of you that are in churches that have, let's just say, influences where you keep on hearing about empathy and that word.
00:10:31.000You need to read this and you need to challenge anybody in senior leadership of your church to read it as well.
00:10:37.000I want to be careful saying this, but I'm going to say it as precisely as I can.
00:10:42.000Toxic empathy can be used as an unclean spirit to destabilize the church.
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00:11:47.000So, Ali, what is this doing to the church, to the condition and the health of the Bride of Christ, this movement of empathy, as you call it, toxic empathy?
00:11:58.000Well, toxic empathy can lead to an obsession with people-pleasing.
00:12:01.000You put people on a pedestal and you care more about their offense and their feelings, their anger, their outrage than you care about shepherding your flock or being faithful to God.
00:12:12.000It means if you're led by empathy, then you are going to avoid the parts of the Bible that you are afraid will make some people mad, will hurt some people's feelings.
00:12:22.000I think that's what we see a lot in the church today.
00:12:25.000And really, they kind of Cover up that cowardice by saying, well, I just don't want to get divisive.
00:12:35.000Well, look, I mean, politics has become theological.
00:12:38.000So if you are preaching through the Bible, actually, if you just get to the first few verses of the Bible, Genesis 127, you're going to talk about things that are political, that God made us male and female right there.
00:12:50.000We've got the definition of gender and the definition of marriage to culture work questions, and that we were made in God's image.
00:12:57.000Another culture work question, meaning that we are innately valuable and shouldn't be killed inside the womb.
00:13:03.000So we've got abortion, gender and marriage all in the first chapter of the first book of the Bible.
00:13:08.000So if a pastor is simply being faithful to that, not even talking about what's going on in the news, not endorsing a candidate.
00:13:14.000If you are just preaching the word of God, you're going to get to these big political questions.
00:14:06.000And you're really kind of getting down to the fundamental issue here, which is the incentive structure of who we call pastors or shepherds is completely perverted.
00:14:15.000And so let me just play devil's advocate, of which I don't believe any of this, because I think, again, it is more of a feminine type.
00:14:22.000I don't mean this, don't be negative, it's just a more talking point.
00:14:26.000We're supposed to cry with the poor, and we're supposed to lament and weep with the widow, and we're supposed to go be alongside those who yearn for justice.
00:14:35.000There's a verse in Romans, there's a verse in Haggai, there's a verse in Nehemiah that all kind of relate to this.
00:14:41.000And then someone will say, but Allie, wouldn't it be a good thing if we empathize more?
00:14:47.000What is the worst thing that could come out of somebody who is feeling the pain of the downtrodden?
00:14:54.000Yeah, no, that's a really good question, and I'm glad you asked it like that, because there are probably listeners wondering.
00:15:00.000And I think it comes down to a mistaken conflation of love and empathy.
00:15:05.000We are called to mourn with those who mourn, rejoice with those who rejoice.
00:15:09.000Taking care of the poor and the fatherless, the orphan, the widow, is one of the things that the church does best.
00:15:16.000And I certainly don't think we should stop that.
00:15:18.000I make the argument all the time that from the...
00:15:22.000Pagan Roman era to today, Christians have always created a refuge for the most vulnerable, namely for children.
00:15:28.000We changed how the world saw children by universalizing the concept of the Imago Dei by telling everyone they're equally dead and sin apart from Christ and can be made alive in Christ by grace through faith.
00:15:39.000That radicalized how the world changed how the world saw human beings, how the world saw women and children.
00:16:01.000That means he alone gets to say what it is.
00:16:04.000And one of the qualifications of love, according to the God who is love, It is inextricably intertwined with the truth.
00:16:11.000So we can empathize with someone, the poor, the downtrodden, the orphan, but empathy becomes toxic.
00:16:20.000Empathy for anyone becomes toxic when it leads us to agreeing with sin, when it leads us to affirming a lie.
00:16:28.000When it leads us to make decisions that are ultimately harmful, not just for that person, but for society as a whole.
00:16:37.000So our empathy for someone, for example, a woman who feels like she's desperate and she needs an abortion, we can feel her pain and think, wow, that is so...
00:16:49.000But if we do what the media wants us to do, what left-wing activists want to do, we allow our empathy to lead us to affirming this choice of abortion, well, then we've forgotten about the other human being on the other side of this equation, and that's the baby.
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00:17:58.000Toxic empathy, how progressives exploit Christian compassion.
00:18:02.000So I want to get to a part of this in the political space, Ali.
00:18:05.000Wouldn't this explain then how a non-disciplined, a Christian not rooted in scripture could fall for open borders, mass amnesty, the abortion lies, because they know they're supposed to be compassionate, and then progressives weaponize the compassion towards their sinister worldview.
00:18:35.000They might point to, well, in the Old Testament, Israel is called to love the sojourner because they were sojourners, or Jesus says to love the least of these, and therefore we have to be for Open borders.
00:18:48.000Now, if you ask them what they mean by open borders, or if you ask them what they meant by immigration policy, they wouldn't be able to tell you.
00:18:55.000Usually they say they're not for open borders, but when it gets down to it, they don't believe in any border enforcement.
00:19:01.000And they do this in the name of empathy.
00:19:04.000And there's a great example of this in my book where we tell this story and we tell it from the left-wing perspective to try to get people to see what this looks like.
00:19:13.000The Washington Post reported about Maribel Diaz And she was a mom who fled gang violence in Mexico.
00:19:28.000And of course, the Washington Post at the end of it wants us to exclusively feel for her and then to conclude that deportation is always wrong.
00:19:36.000That it's racist and that we shouldn't basically have any border enforcement.
00:19:42.000But then we show the flip side of that.
00:19:44.000Who's on the other side of the illegal immigration equation?
00:20:43.000When I was Attorney General, I learned that the California Department of Corrections, which was a client of mine I didn't get to choose my clients.
00:21:04.000And when I learned about the case, I worked behind the scenes to not only make sure that that transgender woman got the services she was deserving.
00:21:15.000I made sure that they changed the policy in the state of California.
00:21:20.000So that every transgender inmate in the prison system would have access to the medical care that they desired and need.
00:21:30.000And I believe it was not only, I know it was historic in California, but I believe actually it may have been one of the first, if not the first in the country, where I pushed for that policy in a department of corrections.
00:21:42.000Ali, is that not a perfect example of toxic empathy?
00:21:48.000It makes you feel so much for one purported victim, quote-unquote, that you forget about everyone else.
00:21:55.000Obviously, Kamala Harris, I mean, you could say she has empathy for this person, or you could say she's just cynical, but...
00:22:01.000She has decided a policy based on this toxic empathy at the expense of the other people on the other side, which of course are the women.
00:22:11.000These are women who are now being forced into cells with fully intact males who are raping them and impregnating them.
00:22:19.000These are some of the most vulnerable women in the world.
00:22:22.000They typically have a history of sexual abuse themselves.
00:22:25.000This is the party that says they care for women.
00:22:28.000Remember, when Democrats say they care for women, they're only talking about abortion.
00:22:32.000They're not talking about other rights.
00:22:33.000They're not talking about other protections.
00:22:35.000In the same way that when Democrats talk about freedom, they're only talking about abortion and sexual immorality.
00:22:41.000This is another great example of that.
00:22:43.000And they use empathy, how you feel for someone's pain, in order to get you to latch on to really destructive and evil policies like this one.
00:22:54.000I know that you responded to it from a guy by the name of Raymond Ortland.
00:22:58.000He is the former founding pastor of Emanuel Church in Nashville, Tennessee, who issued one of the more foolish tweets I've ever seen from a pastor.
00:23:11.000I know you're not supposed to call somebody a fool.
00:23:13.000There's kind of a lot of ramifications to that.
00:23:16.000It's a verse out of Matthew, but I'm sorry, this warrants it.
00:23:20.000He tweeted, quote, never Trump, this time Harris, always Jesus.
00:23:27.000Ali, you respond to this on your YouTube channel.
00:23:32.000Yeah, this doesn't really surprise me from Ray Ortlund.
00:23:35.000Unfortunately, he's got people like Russell Moore who are on staff with his church, but it is demoralizing because this is not a church in Nashville that's like waving the pride flag that everyone would look at and say, okay, that's not even a real church.
00:23:49.000No, these are people who probably consider themselves conservative Christians, probably agree with us on 99% of theological issues, and yet, if you saw a lot of what he posted during the BLM George Floyd era, he clearly has been duped by this toxic empathy, which has made him believe that the truth doesn't matter, that facts don't matter, and has deluded people into thinking that Harris is somehow a better moral choice.
00:24:17.000I've heard pastors say, Well-meaning, maybe, pastors say, well, yeah, some of the policies on the Democrat side, we know they're demonic, we know they're bad, but Trump's personal character is really bad, as if Kamala Harris's character isn't worse.
00:24:34.000And policies last a lot longer than someone's personality or personal mistakes.
00:24:38.000There are a lot more consequences to that.
00:24:40.000And so this is the thing about toxic empathy is that it not only makes you wrong, but it can make you very, as you said, foolish.
00:25:32.000Yeah, you know, I have been speaking to a lot of pro-life pregnancy centers and a lot of pro-life organizations, a lot of churches, a lot of Christian women, and this is an idea they have, that even if they personally believe, for example, that marriage is between a man and a woman, that they are obligated to not say that. That actually love compels them to stay silent.
00:25:56.000And really, when you look at the history of the church, when you look at pagan Rome, it looks a lot like what America does today. There was a lot of gender confusion. There was sexual immorality and fantasy and abortion were widespread practices.
00:26:09.000This changed over the decades and centuries because of the persistence of Christians who, against real persecution, against martyrdom, against the tyranny of dictators like Nero, said, no, actually, the child sacrifice is going to end.
00:26:26.000Actually, marriage is between one man and one woman.
00:26:29.000Actually, all people, even poor people, they matter.
00:26:33.000They spoke against these powerful, deadly ideologies of the day, even to their peril.
00:26:39.000That is who the church has always been.
00:26:40.000It's not about garnering our own political power.
00:26:43.000It's about creating a refuge for the most vulnerable.
00:26:46.000It is about the liberty to share the gospel.
00:26:50.000We've got a woman, Beverly Williams, who was just sentenced to three and a half years in prison by the Biden administration because of unlawful assembly.
00:27:00.000she protested outside of a pro-life or outside of an abortion clinic.
00:27:06.000That's who the church has always been.
00:27:09.000And we have a responsibility to stand up against the regimes that are exacerbating and enabling evil.
00:27:16.000That's what Christians have always done.
00:27:22.000It's about taking the baton that has been passed to us by the martyrs, by the brave Christians who have stood in the stead of children and the most vulnerable for thousands of years.
00:27:33.000I think once you realize that, that that is the history of the church, that's the call of the Christian, and you get courage from the fact that that is our calling and that Jesus wins in the end, we can kind of forget about this silly, superficial, toxic empathy stuff, our fear of man, and just have courage to go forward.
00:28:07.000At the core of toxic empathy, yes, it is about pleasing man, doing what's easy.
00:28:13.000And empathy is actually a very cheap replacement for virtue.
00:28:17.000It's a very cheap replacement for love, which is inextricably intertwined with the truth.
00:28:22.000With love comes actual responsibility.
00:28:25.000Empathy just allows you to feel a certain way.
00:28:28.000That's not necessarily what Christians are called to.
00:28:30.000We're called to something more, something bigger, something more thoughtful, something wiser, and something a lot stronger than toxic empathy.
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00:29:41.000The book is Toxic Empathy by Ali Beth Stuckey, one of the most important voices in Christianity today.
00:29:49.000So Ali, I've been very disappointed by just the growing number of pastors that do not have moral clarity.
00:29:55.000And if you were to get them privately, it comes down to, well, they don't want to say anything that might drive people away from the church, which is just a bunch of BS. They're really saying that they don't want to offend people and they don't want to tell the truth.
00:30:09.000Because at the core, and I know that you're saying this, you've said this all hour, which is we must submit to God's definition of love, goodness and justice.
00:30:17.000We must submit to what we know is truth.
00:30:20.000We should not submit to human approval.
00:30:24.000Why is this so difficult for pastors to understand?
00:31:25.000This whole, like, after-party organization that claims to be outside of party politics that really is encouraging a lot of Christians to be dumb in their politics and to be progressive in their values is a great example of that.
00:31:38.000They actually think their compromise, their fence-riding, is a sign of righteousness and a sign of maturity when really I think it's more just about pleasing people, as you said, and not pleasing God.
00:31:53.000And Ali, now also do the rank and file, those of us that go to churches, we have a role.
00:31:57.000If your pastor is not doing the right thing, it doesn't matter if the music is good or the parking is organized or, you know, the coffee is tasty, you have to demand more out of your shepherds than just vibes and a TED talk.
00:32:13.000Yes, gosh, congregations are, they want clarity so much.
00:32:18.000And you might lose some people because of clarity, but you are going to give more people and more congregants courage and encouragement through your clarity.
00:32:28.000I know that you just had Pastor Johnny on from, I think it's Franklin, Tennessee, and he is amazing in his giving clarity to his congregation about the reality of the policies set before us, of the evil that is set before us.
00:32:44.000Because look, pastors, if you are not discipling your congregants when it comes to these issues, someone else will.
00:32:52.000The The world is happy to disciple the people in your church.
00:33:02.000They'll turn to the media to answer the questions specifically about things like abortion or gender or marriage.
00:33:10.000I think a lot of pastors think, well, if I just kind of preach through the Bible but avoid some of the controversial spots, then my congregation will be able to somehow deduce and piece together their worldview.