Understanding Toxic Empathy and Its Implications

Hey guys, welcome to the show. Today I have a very special guest, Allie Beth Stuckey, and we're going to talk about her new book, Toxic Empathy, How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion. It's a fascinating read. And if you don't know who... know who Allie Bastucky is. She is the host of Relatable, which is a podcast where she analyzes culture, news, and politics from a biblical perspective. She's also written another book called You're Not Enough and That's Okay. I'm excited to talk to her about this new book, Toxic Empathy. Welcome, Allie Bastucky. Thank you so much. So good to have you on. This is your first time on The Becca Cook Show, which I'm thrilled to have you on. Yes. So toxic empathy, how progressives exploit Christian compassion. First of all, did you coin this phrase toxic empathy? I think so. I can't say that no one has ever said it in the history of the world, but in certainly there are people who have talked about for a while, the dangers of empathy and the nature of empathy, actually not being as virtuous as psychologists and therapists. you know, various experts today say that it is. But I think I did coin the phrase toxic empathy. I at the very least, I'm trying to bring it into the mainstream discourse. I think you are. So so give us kind of a general definition of what that is. Yes. Toxic empathy is a tool of emotional manipulation that is typically employed by progressive activists or the progressive media to get. people, I say particularly women and even more particularly Christian women, to believe that the only compassionate or moral side of an issue is the progressive one. And we see this in a variety of ways. But in the book, I go through five subjects in which I see this being employed most prominently and pervasively, and that is abortion, that's gender and sexuality, that is, or rather gender, and then sexuality and the definition of marriage, immigration, and what's referred to as social justice. Yeah. And so, and by the way, what is the difference between, because you talk about this in the introduction, the difference between kindness and empathy? Yeah. So there's a difference between kindness and empathy. There's a difference between love and empathy. Abigail Schreier has this amazing book called Bad Therapy. And in it, she talks about empathy actually not being either good or bad, but really just being. uh, neutral. If empathy means to put yourself in someone else's shoes. So you feel the way that they feel that could be a good thing, or it could be a bad thing depending on what it inspires you toward. So I give this example in the introduction before I had kids when I would fly and there was a crying baby on the plane. Of course, my thought was what a lot of people's thoughts are, which is, oh my gosh, that's annoying. It's aggravating. How does this affect me? What is that parent going to do to manage that child's behavior to me? my flight more comfortable. Now that I'm a mom of three, five, three, and one, I so know how that goes. So when I see a mom with a baby on a plane, my first thought is never how is this affecting me, but how can I help her? Why? Because I have been there and I know that there is no one who wants that baby to stop crying more than that sweet mom who is doing her very best to calm the child down. I've been there. Me being there. allows me to put myself in that woman's shoes. And the empathy that I feel toward her inspires me to help her to encourage her to put myself second. And so empathy can inspire you towards kindness, it can inspire you towards generosity and hospitality. But empathy can also blind you to reality or morality. And one example of that is if I have so much empathy for the man who says that he is confused about his gender or the man who just says that he is a woman. And he says, the only way for me to be happy, the only way for me to feel okay and comfortable with myself is to dress up like a woman for you to call me female, for me to go into the women's restroom or the women's locker room to play on the women's sports team. And if you don't affirm me, then you're hateful towards me. And you're not empathizing with me and you're not being compassionate. If all of my feelings are stuck in his feelings to the point to where I affirm his delusion and affirm that deception. I am ignoring the well-being, the rights, the needs. of everyone else on the other side of that moral equation. And not only that, but I'm denying both physical reality and biblical reality. So it's not really empathy that we should be pursuing. It's virtue, it's love, it's kindness, because all of those things must be rooted in the truth, whereas empathy is really just rooted in how we feel. Yeah. And I see a lot of, you know, obviously we know this, a lot of evangelical pastors are falling for this, this kind of toxic empathy. And caving on all of these issues in your book. So it's very discouraging. And you mentioned in the introduction, you mentioned there's a few red flags that we'll see repeatedly in the pages of your book. Talk about a couple of those red flags, like the euphemisms. Yes. So you on abortion, this is one example. Really, we see euphemisms when it comes to any of these issues, especially on the progressive side. But the use of euphemisms is an indicator that the person giving you their side of the argument really isn't confident in the morality of their stance. When you talk about something like abortion, you hear words like reproductive rights or bodily autonomy or reproductive freedom or reproductive... justice, or even when you get down to women's health, exactly choice. When you get down into the nitty gritty, you hear things like the contents of pregnancy or pregnancy tissue, even fetuses used as a euphemism as if it doesn't mean offspring or small child in Latin, even abortion is somewhat of a euphemism because we are talking about the killing, the purposeful killing. So the murder. of a child. When we get right down to it, the entire abortion conversation is shrouded in euphemism from the other side, because the barbarity of the reality of what abortion is, just isn't palatable. Like it's, it's not appealing, even to people who say that they're ardently pro-choice. If they were so pro-choice and so pro-abortion, they would just say blatantly what it is, but they won't because they know that saying baby killing is really bad PR. And so When people are using those euphemisms, when they can't speak plainly, when they are trying to push you away from the sources of their information or the sources of their arguments or the science of what an abortion is, that's a really good sign for you to dig a little bit deeper, to ask them to define their terms, to ask them how they came to those conclusions. What are they reading? What are they listening to that have helped them draw those conclusions? And that can get you at a better place to have some kind of productive conversation. Yeah. And another euphemism or another red flag is Christian sounding words with unchristian meanings. Can you talk about that? Yeah. So love, tolerance, justice, inclusion, empathy, even all of those can have some scriptural support to them, depending on the context, depending on what you're talking about. Especially when we hear this word love. God is love, 1 John 4, 8. And so when we hear that this is the loving position or the loving thing to do or the loving thing to say or that's unloving the way that you're saying that or the fact that you have that position at all. Of course, for the Christian who are called to love, who are compelled by the love of Christ to love other people who have a symbol of love in God made flesh dying on the cross for us, that's going to. for lack of a better word, like trigger us a little bit. It's using our own language against us. And to hear from the secular world that we are being unloving or making someone feel unloved, I think our natural propensity is to say, oh, well, how can I fix that? The last thing that I want you to feel is unloved by me, a Christian. But of course, the truth is, is that because God is love, he only has the authority to define it. And he defines it in many ways. But one of the ways that he defined it. in 1 Corinthians 13, 6, is that love always rejoices with the truth. It never rejoices in wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth, which means that love for the Christian has to be intertwined with the truth always for it to really be love. That is the key difference between love and empathy. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Paul had it right. And okay. So in the first lie, the first chapter is lie number one, abortion is healthcare. And just a couple of questions from this chapter. What is the whole, quote, holistically pro-life lie? Yes, holistically pro-life is a term that I first heard. Gosh, it was probably. Around 2018, 2020, I would say that I first heard it in the Trump presidency, maybe even before that. And I just don't remember when Trump was running for office. But certainly in 2020, when you saw a lot of professing evangelicals say, you know, I can't vote for Trump or I can't vote Republican. Many times they would cite concerns about racism or what they would say were draconian measures at the border. And in response to other Christians saying, OK, but what about the abortion issue? We've got Biden over here who is for abortion through all nine months. At least he won't say otherwise. And the response would typically say, well, I'm holistically pro-life. And so holistically pro-life puts the focus not on legally protecting a baby's right not to be murdered and not even really on abortion, but on all of these other issues. So they might say, sure, Republicans. might get it right when it comes to abortion or the pro-life side might get it right when it comes to abortion. But immigration is a pro-life issue too. Welfare is a pro-life issue too. Police brutality is a pro-life issue too. And in that way, they water down what it means to be pro-life. I'm not saying there's not a discussion to be had about all of those other issues, but that's not what it means to be pro-life. Abortion is the only literal tangible issue of life in- death that is on the ballot, that is really at stake here. We're not voting on something like euthanasia quite yet. And so that is just the way of kind of deflecting, of saying, well, all of these issues matter just as much as abortion. So I'll call myself holistically pro-life to kind of ignore that particular issue. Well, this leads to the next question, which is, what is the anti-pregnancy center propaganda? Because there's You know, there's so many lies about that, too. So talk about that. Yes, there was a Time Magazine article that came out a few years ago about a pregnancy center that I know the staff that works at this pregnancy center. They are wonderful, wonderful people. I know the director well. It's called Prestonwood Pregnancy Center. And Time Magazine wrote a bunch of just straight up lies. It was really just libel about who they are and what they do, saying that they. lie to these women, that they won't tell them about abortion and that there are fake medical professionals at this clinic, of course, which is not true at all. I have walked through the client process with them. I've seen exactly how it works. This pregnancy center functions like all pregnancy centers I've visited do. These women come in, many times they are very afraid. They're typically alone. They don't have a father in the picture. Sometimes they're destitute. Sometimes they do walk in thinking that they are going to be able to get an abortion because they just don't know. Google showed them the clinic's name. And so they walked in thinking they would get an abortion. It's true that these these centers don't offer abortion. They're not going to promote abortion. They're not going to advertise for abortion. They won't lie and and not tell them what an abortion is. In fact, it will give them all the information about what an abortion procedure entails. And then they will offer something like a free sonogram. So that woman will get to see the baby inside of her womb. She'll probably get to hear that beating heart. And the woman is so much more likely to choose life just from that information that, of course, Planned Parenthood doesn't show her because it doesn't profit them for her to keep her baby to parent or to put her baby up for adoption. And so these pregnancy centers are incredible. They offer all kinds of free resources, not just material needs, but also parenting classes, educational courses for them. This particular director of the pregnancy center I was just talking about was there during labor for one of her clients who ended up choosing life. The entire pregnancy center, the volunteers at the local church filled this woman's apartment with groceries, with a crib, with a rocking chair. This woman ended up coming to Christ right there in her apartment because of the love of Christians. She was baptized before her baby was born. And then she dedicated her baby at this church that was connected to the pregnancy center. The pastor got up and told a little, you know, the story about this woman and how she chose life. The entire congregation stood up and gave her a round of applause, which I think is just a beautiful earthly reflection of what heaven does when a lost soul is one. And so that's the work that is going on every single day in the lives of pro-lifers. So for those who say, you know, I can't vote for the pro-life ticket, or I can't support the pro-life cause until... Pro-lifers care about what happens after birth. I'm saying that work is already being done. It's been being done. It's time for you, if you're worried about that, to go ahead and get off the couch, go to your local pregnancy center and ask them, how can I help? Then you might have a right to complain about what's going on after birth. Yeah, I like that. I mean, and I mean, even my church in LA, I mean, we're so pro-pregnancy, so pro-life. And we provide all of these material needs for women who are struggling with this. And so Christians get like some sort of bad rap on this, but Christians love to help people who want to carry their child to term. And yeah, it's just it's just false. Yeah, it's fake news. Exactly. And that's I mean, that's why you have the majority of these pregnancy centers are run by evangelical Christians. The majority of parents who adopt are. evangelical Christians, not a hundred percent, but the majority. And this is something that even the New York times had to begrudgingly admit. And so I'm not sure that it's the pro-life voters who need to be chastised for not doing enough for babies and their moms. Yes, exactly. Okay. So lie number two, trans women are women. This is chapter two. Yeah. A couple of questions. What are the roots of trans treatment? How do I let's see how I summarize this. This is a chapter that was really hard for us to keep concise. And we didn't even get into the entirety of the dark underbelly that is the transgender treatment. I'm sure you've talked about this on your show. The the the roots of gender ideology and john money and Alfred Kinsey and the roots of sexology. If you go back to john money and really his pedophilia apology in a lot of his writings. It's very disturbing. And of course, he transitioned so-called a young man named David Reimer, who was a twin boy who had had a botched circumcision, who told his parents, hey, you should raise this young boy as Susan. He'll never know the difference as long as we kind of can surgically manufacture him into looking like a girl put him on hormones. He'll never know the difference because he had this idea. John Money had this idea that gender, of course, was socially conditioned and that our anatomy, our biology, our DNA didn't determine any of our behaviors or any of our propensities, that it was all just part of society and how your parents raised you. Of course, this young man who was raised as Barbara, he realized at some point, of course, without knowing what happened to him, this is not right. I don't feel right. I am totally in. like they are calling me a woman. I do not feel like a woman. And it actually turns out that, uh, that John money had conducted these awful experiments on these twin boys, forcing them into sexual interactions while they were being filmed while other doctors were taking notes of the sexual interactions between these twin boys. It was just awful. He was a terrible person. Alfred Kinsey, who was like the father of sexology, same way they. all believed that gender was just a social construct. They loved fantasizing about the idea of a boy becoming a girl or even being forced to become a girl and vice versa. It's very sick, very craven stuff. But of course, these twin boys, the Reimer twins, after they realized what happened, they grew up, they tried to live normal lives. Both of them ended up dying by suicide. It's just an absolutely tragic story. That is the foundation of gender ideology. That is the foundation of... so-called transgender medicine, and we're still told that we need to celebrate it, and it's still operating in the same way. Unfortunately, I hate to say, but it's simply true. Many of these men who are all of a sudden declaring themselves women, they're not confused, they don't have gender dysphoria, they're not even deceived. They are addicted to pornography. They're addicted to a very dark form of pornography, and they have, through this pornography, I believe. been convinced and even you could say hypnotized in some way into believing that they are women. And that's one perspective, or it is just a fetish that they are forcing everyone else to participate in. I think once we realize that, not to say we shouldn't have compassion for people who are deceived by sin, especially young people who many times are victims of sexual abuse themselves, but I think we'll have a lot less. empathy for the plight of men who want to go into women's bathrooms when we realize it's it's not even really a mental disorder it really is just a sexual fetish that unfortunately a lot of women are being forced to participate in And so what, what do you say, what would you, what advice would you give a parent if they're told by a, I don't know, a psychologist or somebody who says, would you rather have a living son or a dead daughter? What would you say? It's such black, it's such emotional black. Yes, it is. And that's the perfect example of toxic empathy. And parents are told that all the time. They're told that by teachers, by school counselors. They're told that by their friends, by the media, by these activists, by psychologists, by doctors, by endocrinologists. And when you're a parent and you hear that from someone wearing a white coat who says, I'm here to save your child and your child is going to die, that child that you love more than anything in this world that you would die a thousand deaths for, that parent thinks this is the- only way to save my child's life. And you're right. It is complete and total emotional manipulation because what we've seen through the studies is that puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones do not decrease the likelihood of suicidal ideation at all. In fact, if anything, they actually increase the likelihood of suicidal ideation. Most of these kids have so many comorbidities. They have so many other issues. And I've talked to a lot of detransitioners. I know that you've talked to detransitioners too. Almost all of them experienced sexual abuse at a young age. Almost all of them were addicted to technology. Almost all of them were on Reddit and Discord and Tumblr and had these alternate universes that they were sucked into. Almost all of them had unstable homes. Almost all of them had autism, schizophrenia, other issues that really needed to be dealt with. And they all felt those who have detransitioned, like they were completely abandoned by the people in their life who were meant to not have empathy for them, but love them enough to tell them the truth. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, it's unconscionable to, to do that. Okay. So the third lie, lie number three, love is love. You say, Oh, talk about Talk about IVF and how it's problematic. Because I mean, I know you talk about this on your show a lot, but my audience may not understand how problematic this is. Yeah, I know. And you know, I hadn't either. And so if you're someone out there who hadn't thought about this until a few years ago, I would say probably five years ago, I hadn't really thought about it either. I'm pro-life. I love babies. I know a lot of couples who are wonderful couples. It was not easy for them to conceive. I know. people who are still trying to conceive and they can't, and they would be wonderful parents. And I want them to have a baby, but we have to be careful about in any means necessary approach to reproducing. And that is because we are talking about innocent, fragile life. I say that whenever technology takes us from what is, um, what is natural to what is possible. Christians are obligated to ask, is this moral? Is this biblical? Sometimes the answer is yes. Not all technology is bad, but when we're talking about reproducing, when we're talking about innocent life, we got to be really careful. And the truth is, is that more embryos are destroyed every year through IVF than through abortion. Right now we've got over a million frozen embryos, their souls on ice, and they are either abandoned. Many times couples will go through IVF. then they get divorced. Or then the woman finds out after giving birth to her two babies that she can't have any more children or she doesn't want any more children. So the three other embryos that she created because her doctor encouraged her to create as many embryos as possible. They're now frozen. She doesn't know what to do with them. Does she pay the freezer fee forever? Does she destroy these children whose sex is already determined, whose eye color is already determined? I mean, they are fully human being with their. own distinct DNA? Does she adopt them out to people that she doesn't know people she doesn't share values with? And so that is the ethical quandary what I just described, that every couple who partakes in IVF potentially faces. Now, I do know couples who didn't destroy any embryos, I do know couples that transferred every embryo. that they created. I will say that is a very rare case. And for anyone who is considering IVF, there is no guarantee that that is going to be you. In fact, it is highly likely that that won't be you. Doctors will tell you create as many embryos as possible. Many times these embryos are graded. If any have some kind of genetic abnormality, they're going to be discarded. And so the eugenics process happens on a daily basis through IVF. People decide what kind of what gender they want first, what order of gender they want. They'll abort a child if they created too many boy embryos. And so that is the dark side of IVF. America is the wild, wild west of the reproductive industry. Europe has much stricter regulations on the creation of life. So we should at the very least move in that direction. Yeah. And sticking in the love is love chapter. What is empathy for authenticity? Yes. Yes. Well, I tell the story of Glennon Doyle, and I'm sure most of your audience knows Glennon Doyle. She is an incredibly popular author, and she influences a lot of women. She has to be a Christian mommy blogger. And then, unfortunately, she and her husband, the father of her three children, they divorced, and she married U.S. soccer star Abby Wambach. And so... She is in a lesbian relationship now. And her story, how she tells it is one of liberation, that she was finally free, that she was finally, she finally found herself. She would probably say that she is closer to God than she has ever been, that she feels more loved, more known, more accepted, happier than she ever has. And how she describes her family, even with her ex-husband is one big happy family where her children are loved by so many people and everything is. harmonious and beautiful. It is really hard to read a story like that, to see a relationship like that, that seems joyful, that seems fulfilled, that seems whole. And to say that's bad. Like that is really difficult for most people because I think our mentality, even as Christians, we have the temptation to think that doesn't really affect me. That's not really hurting me. If she's happy, if she's fulfilled, if she's. you know, liberated, then who am I to say that's wrong? And it's not just Glennon. We think that about our friend or our cousin or our brother, the people that we see on TV who are finally happy. They've accepted who they are. They're no longer living in the closet. They're no longer, you know, donning this fake identity. They're authentic. They're being real. And so when we feel that empathy for that narrative of authenticity, we feel that empathy for that narrative of authenticity. authenticity, it can be really hard to extract ourselves from that entanglement until we remember again, that it's God who defines what right is and what good is and what love is. Yeah. What was the name of her book? It was like Untamed or something. Was that Glennon Doyle? Yeah. Yes. Untamed, I think was her latest like bestseller, but she had a lot of bestsellers before that. Yeah. Just disastrous. By the way, I mean, what does Glennon Doyle think about, for example, me? So basically, I've been chased for 15 years in vain, number one. Number two, it's like, according to the scriptures, following Christ is not supposed to be this kind of happy, give you a happy life. It's like Paul was stoned, jailed, beaten. shipwrecked and like that was his life. It was really difficult. And Paul was single. Paul was, all he cared about was getting the gospel out and running around the Mediterranean. It's like, that's, that's not this, this life isn't about, you know, Oh, my personal happiness, you know, she would say, yeah, there's so much happiness and joy that comes from following Christ, but it is not a happiness that comes from satisfying all the desires and lusts of your flesh. And thankfully, not the entirety of the Christian life is going to be just a slog of sacrifice. It might be for some people, depending on where God has called you. There's a lot of joy and a lot of goodness and a lot of blessing and a lot of happiness that comes from the beauty of just being a part of the local church and living a life in accordance to God's word. There is so much freedom and liberation that comes from no longer being a slave to sin. But you're right. We are called to deny ourselves, to take up our cross and to follow Christ. And I mean, God is really, really clear about the definition of marriage. I use an alliteration that I've used for years that kind of tries. I try to debunk what we hear a lot from the gin hat makers of the world, too, that those verses and you talk about this better than anyone. But she'll say that, you know, those verses in the Bible that talk about sexuality, talk about homosexuality. They're just. these like extraneous verses that are just here and there, and they don't really mean that much. Look at how much God talks about love and all of these. other things. But when we look at the definition of marriage in the Bible, like it is huge, it's rooted in creation. It's reiterated throughout scripture. It's repeated by Jesus himself. It is representative of Christ in the church. And therefore it is reflective of the gospel. Like people say, Jesus never talked about marriage, but in Matthew 19, when he is answering the question about divorce, Matthew 19, four through five, he said, have you not read that in the beginning, he made them male and female. And of course, he's talking about marriage, but he takes the time to define gender, to define marriage as between one man and one woman. That is how central it is. That is how important it is. It's so important that we get the depiction of Christ in the church as a bride and a bridegroom. Two men can't be a bride and a bridegroom, so they can't reflect Christ in his church. That's why we say it's not really a marriage. between two men. It's not really a marriage between two women because you can't reflect the eternal reality of the marriage between Christ and his church. And so it is so fundamental. And that is exactly why when you see people compromise on that issue, when you see people compromise on Genesis 1 27, they will eventually compromise on John 14 6. It almost always happens unless there's a, you know, grace and repentance there, but I've never seen someone hold on. to those two beliefs that, you know, Genesis 1.27 is, you know, a metaphor or not important, but John 14.6, that Jesus is the way, truth, and life, that that's literal, and we must hold on to that. Those two beliefs I've just never seen go hand in hand. Yeah, and when people say, you know, that Jesus never talked about homosexuality, first of all, that's such a red herring. Yeah, he didn't specifically address it, but as you said, he defined what marriage is. And he reiterated is what I meant to say. And the reason Jesus didn't have to address homosexuality is he was speaking to Jews who knew that it was a capital crime. In the Torah, there was no confusion. The reason Paul talks about it so much is because he's speaking to Gentiles who have no idea what is up with sex. They have no concept. Paul has to address it to them. But of course, Jesus doesn't have to do this to the Hebrews. I mean, they know what's up with homosexuality. They know it's true. And we have to be careful too. Like, I'm sure that all of us at one point were tempted to do this, but it's definitely popular in the culture today to only look at the Bible for, okay, what does it specifically say that I cannot do? Like, we're looking for a way to be let off. the hook. But really, we should be looking at the Bible and saying, okay, but what does God say is good? What does God say to do? How does he not only negatively define things, but how does he positively define things? And how can I best align my life to that? Yeah, I when I spoke, I spoke at Biola University, first time in 2013. And I remember after there was a Q&A afterwards, and this young student, young boy said, If I get married to a man and live the rest of my life and die, am I going to hell? I'm like, that's the wrong question. Like, why do you, why are you trying to just get away with as much possible sin you can and still somehow get into heaven? Like, that's like, that's not the gospel. Yes, yes, exactly. Yep. I think that's how, you know, and maybe that's the theology that a lot of us were raised with is that it's just a get out of hell free card kind of thing. Yeah. And as you said, it's a lot more than that. Yeah. Instead of like, how much can I just surrender my entire life to God and how much joy come? As you said, joy comes from that. It comes from obedience to God. I mean, you know, I always talk about this. It's like I I have I was surprised by this, surprised by joy. I was surprised when I became a Christian how joyful I felt. was just in obedience to God, because I finally was out of this postmodern world mentality. And I finally had guardrails and boundaries. And I was like, ah, I feel so safe and secure now. And I feel like I have a heavenly father who actually cares about me as concerned about my well-being. And so it's so joyful to, to, to be obedient. So we're running out of time. I just want to, um, You have a couple of things coming up. Talk about the Share of the Arrows event that's coming up in Dallas, Texas. Yes. So share the arrows is it's September 28th. I'm not sure when this episode is coming out, but if it's on Thursday, it'll be Thursday. Perfect. So September 28th. So if you're local to Dallas or you can travel, there's a lot of people traveling from all over, then come and join us right now. As we're speaking, we've got almost 4,000 women who are signed up to be there, which is just amazing. And I've got. people that a lot of you know Rosaria Butterfield, Elisa Childers, I've got Abby Halberstadt, I've also got Candace Cameron Bure and of course I'll be speaking too and Francesca Battiselli is going to lead worship and I mean you know that this is a chaotic time and Christians feel that we are being pushed to the margins. We feel that our worldview is not only being mocked as it has for a long time, but it's also being demonized. It's being blamed for the being the obstacle to progress. And so a lot of people are scared. They're scared for themselves. They're scared for their children. They're scared for their children's children. This is a time for us to come together and to gain courage from one another, to be equipped by the amazing teachers and the amazing encouragers that I just listed. And for us to look around at the thousands of like-minded Christian women next to us and say, okay. I'm not alone. I'm not alone. One, we know that God is with us and he wins in the end. That's the ultimate hope. But there is so much encouragement from fellowship and remembering that we are not alone. So I picked like some of the most amazing female speakers out there. That's a great lineup. I know. I know because I wanted this to be a rallying cry for Christian women. So they can go to sharethearrows.com and check that out. You can still buy tickets. And I would love to see y'all there. And yeah. And how can people, how can, it's so toxic. The book is Toxic Empathy, How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion. Yeah. People can pre-order the book, right? Yes, they can pre-order the book. And we didn't have time to go through the other two, which is Immigration and Social Justice. Those might even be the most controversial because like even among evangelicals, it's hard to find disagreement about this. But those were also kind of like. like the most fun for me to write. So people, if people want what I hope people get out of this book, especially Christian women is this is like a guidebook for how to have conversations with those that you disagree with, how to represent your biblical beliefs, your politically conservative beliefs about these issues in this election season. I pushed really hard for this book to come out before the election. So just in the nick of time. on October 15th. So I want you to get this book. You will be fully equipped to be able to defend all of your views on these controversial topics. So they can go to toxicempathy.com. They can see all the places they can buy it. There's an audio book too. And that should be all the information they need. And go watch your show Relatable, which is so good. You do four episodes a week, right? Yes. Four episodes a week. I don't know how you do that. There's a lot to talk about. And I have a great team. Honestly, even if I weren't doing my husband jokes, if you weren't paid to do this, you would pay to do it because I feel like I have so much to say. It's more of an outlet than anything else. So yeah, I'm thankful for it. Well, thank you for coming on the show. I appreciate your time. Thank you, Beckett. And keep up your good work. I'm just so thankful for you and for your voice and so thankful for how many people follow you and listen to you. We need a million more Beckett cooks in the world. So thank you so much. Thank you, guys. We will see you next time. Thanks.

She is the host of Relatable, which is a podcast where she analyzes culture, news, and politics from a biblical perspective. She's also written another book called You're Not Enough and That's Okay. I'm excited to talk to her about this new book, Toxic Empathy.

Welcome, Allie Bastucky. Thank you so much. So good to have you on.

This is your first time on The Becca Cook Show, which I'm thrilled to have you on. Yes. So toxic empathy, how progressives exploit Christian compassion. First of all, did you coin this phrase toxic empathy? I think so.

I can't say that no one has ever said it in the history of the world, but in certainly there are people who have talked about for a while, the dangers of empathy and the nature of empathy, actually not being as virtuous as psychologists and therapists. you know, various experts today say that it is. But I think I did coin the phrase toxic empathy.

I at the very least, I'm trying to bring it into the mainstream discourse. I think you are. So so give us kind of a general definition of what that is. Yes.

Toxic empathy is a tool of emotional manipulation that is typically employed by progressive activists or the progressive media to get. people, I say particularly women and even more particularly Christian women, to believe that the only compassionate or moral side of an issue is the progressive one. And we see this in a variety of ways. But in the book, I go through five subjects in which I see this being employed most prominently and pervasively, and that is abortion, that's gender and sexuality, that is, or rather gender, and then sexuality and the definition of marriage, immigration, and what's referred to as social justice.

Yeah. And so, and by the way, what is the difference between, because you talk about this in the introduction, the difference between kindness and empathy? Yeah.

So there's a difference between kindness and empathy. There's a difference between love and empathy. Abigail Schreier has this amazing book called Bad Therapy. And in it, she talks about empathy actually not being either good or bad, but really just being.

uh, neutral. If empathy means to put yourself in someone else's shoes. So you feel the way that they feel that could be a good thing, or it could be a bad thing depending on what it inspires you toward. So I give this example in the introduction before I had kids when I would fly and there was a crying baby on the plane. Of course, my thought was what a lot of people's thoughts are, which is, oh my gosh, that's annoying.

It's aggravating. How does this affect me? What is that parent going to do to manage that child's behavior to me?

my flight more comfortable. Now that I'm a mom of three, five, three, and one, I so know how that goes. So when I see a mom with a baby on a plane, my first thought is never how is this affecting me, but how can I help her? Why?

Because I have been there and I know that there is no one who wants that baby to stop crying more than that sweet mom who is doing her very best to calm the child down. I've been there. Me being there.

allows me to put myself in that woman's shoes. And the empathy that I feel toward her inspires me to help her to encourage her to put myself second. And so empathy can inspire you towards kindness, it can inspire you towards generosity and hospitality. But empathy can also blind you to reality or morality.

And one example of that is if I have so much empathy for the man who says that he is confused about his gender or the man who just says that he is a woman. And he says, the only way for me to be happy, the only way for me to feel okay and comfortable with myself is to dress up like a woman for you to call me female, for me to go into the women's restroom or the women's locker room to play on the women's sports team. And if you don't affirm me, then you're hateful towards me. And you're not empathizing with me and you're not being compassionate. If all of my feelings are stuck in his feelings to the point to where I affirm his delusion and affirm that deception.

I am ignoring the well-being, the rights, the needs. of everyone else on the other side of that moral equation. And not only that, but I'm denying both physical reality and biblical reality.

So it's not really empathy that we should be pursuing. It's virtue, it's love, it's kindness, because all of those things must be rooted in the truth, whereas empathy is really just rooted in how we feel. Yeah.

And I see a lot of, you know, obviously we know this, a lot of evangelical pastors are falling for this, this kind of toxic empathy. And caving on all of these issues in your book. So it's very discouraging. And you mentioned in the introduction, you mentioned there's a few red flags that we'll see repeatedly in the pages of your book. Talk about a couple of those red flags, like the euphemisms.

Yes. So you on abortion, this is one example. Really, we see euphemisms when it comes to any of these issues, especially on the progressive side. But the use of euphemisms is an indicator that the person giving you their side of the argument really isn't confident in the morality of their stance. When you talk about something like abortion, you hear words like reproductive rights or bodily autonomy or reproductive freedom or reproductive...

justice, or even when you get down to women's health, exactly choice. When you get down into the nitty gritty, you hear things like the contents of pregnancy or pregnancy tissue, even fetuses used as a euphemism as if it doesn't mean offspring or small child in Latin, even abortion is somewhat of a euphemism because we are talking about the killing, the purposeful killing. So the murder.

of a child. When we get right down to it, the entire abortion conversation is shrouded in euphemism from the other side, because the barbarity of the reality of what abortion is, just isn't palatable. Like it's, it's not appealing, even to people who say that they're ardently pro-choice.

If they were so pro-choice and so pro-abortion, they would just say blatantly what it is, but they won't because they know that saying baby killing is really bad PR. And so When people are using those euphemisms, when they can't speak plainly, when they are trying to push you away from the sources of their information or the sources of their arguments or the science of what an abortion is, that's a really good sign for you to dig a little bit deeper, to ask them to define their terms, to ask them how they came to those conclusions. What are they reading? What are they listening to that have helped them draw those conclusions? And that can get you at a better place to have some kind of productive conversation.

Yeah. And another euphemism or another red flag is Christian sounding words with unchristian meanings. Can you talk about that?

Yeah. So love, tolerance, justice, inclusion, empathy, even all of those can have some scriptural support to them, depending on the context, depending on what you're talking about. Especially when we hear this word love.

God is love, 1 John 4, 8. And so when we hear that this is the loving position or the loving thing to do or the loving thing to say or that's unloving the way that you're saying that or the fact that you have that position at all. Of course, for the Christian who are called to love, who are compelled by the love of Christ to love other people who have a symbol of love in God made flesh dying on the cross for us, that's going to. for lack of a better word, like trigger us a little bit.

It's using our own language against us. And to hear from the secular world that we are being unloving or making someone feel unloved, I think our natural propensity is to say, oh, well, how can I fix that? The last thing that I want you to feel is unloved by me, a Christian. But of course, the truth is, is that because God is love, he only has the authority to define it. And he defines it in many ways.

But one of the ways that he defined it. in 1 Corinthians 13, 6, is that love always rejoices with the truth. It never rejoices in wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth, which means that love for the Christian has to be intertwined with the truth always for it to really be love. That is the key difference between love and empathy. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. Paul had it right. And okay. So in the first lie, the first chapter is lie number one, abortion is healthcare.

And just a couple of questions from this chapter. What is the whole, quote, holistically pro-life lie? Yes, holistically pro-life is a term that I first heard.

Gosh, it was probably. Around 2018, 2020, I would say that I first heard it in the Trump presidency, maybe even before that. And I just don't remember when Trump was running for office.

But certainly in 2020, when you saw a lot of professing evangelicals say, you know, I can't vote for Trump or I can't vote Republican. Many times they would cite concerns about racism or what they would say were draconian measures at the border. And in response to other Christians saying, OK, but what about the abortion issue? We've got Biden over here who is for abortion through all nine months.

At least he won't say otherwise. And the response would typically say, well, I'm holistically pro-life. And so holistically pro-life puts the focus not on legally protecting a baby's right not to be murdered and not even really on abortion, but on all of these other issues.

So they might say, sure, Republicans. might get it right when it comes to abortion or the pro-life side might get it right when it comes to abortion. But immigration is a pro-life issue too. Welfare is a pro-life issue too. Police brutality is a pro-life issue too.

And in that way, they water down what it means to be pro-life. I'm not saying there's not a discussion to be had about all of those other issues, but that's not what it means to be pro-life. Abortion is the only literal tangible issue of life in- death that is on the ballot, that is really at stake here. We're not voting on something like euthanasia quite yet. And so that is just the way of kind of deflecting, of saying, well, all of these issues matter just as much as abortion.

So I'll call myself holistically pro-life to kind of ignore that particular issue. Well, this leads to the next question, which is, what is the anti-pregnancy center propaganda? Because there's You know, there's so many lies about that, too.

So talk about that. Yes, there was a Time Magazine article that came out a few years ago about a pregnancy center that I know the staff that works at this pregnancy center. They are wonderful, wonderful people.

I know the director well. It's called Prestonwood Pregnancy Center. And Time Magazine wrote a bunch of just straight up lies.

It was really just libel about who they are and what they do, saying that they. lie to these women, that they won't tell them about abortion and that there are fake medical professionals at this clinic, of course, which is not true at all. I have walked through the client process with them.

I've seen exactly how it works. This pregnancy center functions like all pregnancy centers I've visited do. These women come in, many times they are very afraid.

They're typically alone. They don't have a father in the picture. Sometimes they're destitute. Sometimes they do walk in thinking that they are going to be able to get an abortion because they just don't know.

Google showed them the clinic's name. And so they walked in thinking they would get an abortion. It's true that these these centers don't offer abortion.

They're not going to promote abortion. They're not going to advertise for abortion. They won't lie and and not tell them what an abortion is. In fact, it will give them all the information about what an abortion procedure entails.

And then they will offer something like a free sonogram. So that woman will get to see the baby inside of her womb. She'll probably get to hear that beating heart. And the woman is so much more likely to choose life just from that information that, of course, Planned Parenthood doesn't show her because it doesn't profit them for her to keep her baby to parent or to put her baby up for adoption.

And so these pregnancy centers are incredible. They offer all kinds of free resources, not just material needs, but also parenting classes, educational courses for them. This particular director of the pregnancy center I was just talking about was there during labor for one of her clients who ended up choosing life. The entire pregnancy center, the volunteers at the local church filled this woman's apartment with groceries, with a crib, with a rocking chair.

This woman ended up coming to Christ right there in her apartment because of the love of Christians. She was baptized before her baby was born. And then she dedicated her baby at this church that was connected to the pregnancy center.

The pastor got up and told a little, you know, the story about this woman and how she chose life. The entire congregation stood up and gave her a round of applause, which I think is just a beautiful earthly reflection of what heaven does when a lost soul is one. And so that's the work that is going on every single day in the lives of pro-lifers. So for those who say, you know, I can't vote for the pro-life ticket, or I can't support the pro-life cause until... Pro-lifers care about what happens after birth.

I'm saying that work is already being done. It's been being done. It's time for you, if you're worried about that, to go ahead and get off the couch, go to your local pregnancy center and ask them, how can I help? Then you might have a right to complain about what's going on after birth. Yeah, I like that.

I mean, and I mean, even my church in LA, I mean, we're so pro-pregnancy, so pro-life. And we provide all of these material needs for women who are struggling with this. And so Christians get like some sort of bad rap on this, but Christians love to help people who want to carry their child to term. And yeah, it's just it's just false. Yeah, it's fake news.

Exactly. And that's I mean, that's why you have the majority of these pregnancy centers are run by evangelical Christians. The majority of parents who adopt are.

evangelical Christians, not a hundred percent, but the majority. And this is something that even the New York times had to begrudgingly admit. And so I'm not sure that it's the pro-life voters who need to be chastised for not doing enough for babies and their moms. Yes, exactly.

Okay. So lie number two, trans women are women. This is chapter two. Yeah. A couple of questions.

What are the roots of trans treatment? How do I let's see how I summarize this. This is a chapter that was really hard for us to keep concise. And we didn't even get into the entirety of the dark underbelly that is the transgender treatment.

I'm sure you've talked about this on your show. The the the roots of gender ideology and john money and Alfred Kinsey and the roots of sexology. If you go back to john money and really his pedophilia apology in a lot of his writings.

It's very disturbing. And of course, he transitioned so-called a young man named David Reimer, who was a twin boy who had had a botched circumcision, who told his parents, hey, you should raise this young boy as Susan. He'll never know the difference as long as we kind of can surgically manufacture him into looking like a girl put him on hormones.

He'll never know the difference because he had this idea. John Money had this idea that gender, of course, was socially conditioned and that our anatomy, our biology, our DNA didn't determine any of our behaviors or any of our propensities, that it was all just part of society and how your parents raised you. Of course, this young man who was raised as Barbara, he realized at some point, of course, without knowing what happened to him, this is not right. I don't feel right. I am totally in.

like they are calling me a woman. I do not feel like a woman. And it actually turns out that, uh, that John money had conducted these awful experiments on these twin boys, forcing them into sexual interactions while they were being filmed while other doctors were taking notes of the sexual interactions between these twin boys. It was just awful.

He was a terrible person. Alfred Kinsey, who was like the father of sexology, same way they. all believed that gender was just a social construct.

They loved fantasizing about the idea of a boy becoming a girl or even being forced to become a girl and vice versa. It's very sick, very craven stuff. But of course, these twin boys, the Reimer twins, after they realized what happened, they grew up, they tried to live normal lives.

Both of them ended up dying by suicide. It's just an absolutely tragic story. That is the foundation of gender ideology. That is the foundation of...

so-called transgender medicine, and we're still told that we need to celebrate it, and it's still operating in the same way. Unfortunately, I hate to say, but it's simply true. Many of these men who are all of a sudden declaring themselves women, they're not confused, they don't have gender dysphoria, they're not even deceived.

They are addicted to pornography. They're addicted to a very dark form of pornography, and they have, through this pornography, I believe. been convinced and even you could say hypnotized in some way into believing that they are women.

And that's one perspective, or it is just a fetish that they are forcing everyone else to participate in. I think once we realize that, not to say we shouldn't have compassion for people who are deceived by sin, especially young people who many times are victims of sexual abuse themselves, but I think we'll have a lot less. empathy for the plight of men who want to go into women's bathrooms when we realize it's it's not even really a mental disorder it really is just a sexual fetish that unfortunately a lot of women are being forced to participate in And so what, what do you say, what would you, what advice would you give a parent if they're told by a, I don't know, a psychologist or somebody who says, would you rather have a living son or a dead daughter? What would you say? It's such black, it's such emotional black.

Yes, it is. And that's the perfect example of toxic empathy. And parents are told that all the time. They're told that by teachers, by school counselors.

They're told that by their friends, by the media, by these activists, by psychologists, by doctors, by endocrinologists. And when you're a parent and you hear that from someone wearing a white coat who says, I'm here to save your child and your child is going to die, that child that you love more than anything in this world that you would die a thousand deaths for, that parent thinks this is the- only way to save my child's life. And you're right. It is complete and total emotional manipulation because what we've seen through the studies is that puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones do not decrease the likelihood of suicidal ideation at all.

In fact, if anything, they actually increase the likelihood of suicidal ideation. Most of these kids have so many comorbidities. They have so many other issues. And I've talked to a lot of detransitioners.

I know that you've talked to detransitioners too. Almost all of them experienced sexual abuse at a young age. Almost all of them were addicted to technology.

Almost all of them were on Reddit and Discord and Tumblr and had these alternate universes that they were sucked into. Almost all of them had unstable homes. Almost all of them had autism, schizophrenia, other issues that really needed to be dealt with.

And they all felt those who have detransitioned, like they were completely abandoned by the people in their life who were meant to not have empathy for them, but love them enough to tell them the truth. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, it's unconscionable to, to do that.

Okay. So the third lie, lie number three, love is love. You say, Oh, talk about Talk about IVF and how it's problematic.

Because I mean, I know you talk about this on your show a lot, but my audience may not understand how problematic this is. Yeah, I know. And you know, I hadn't either. And so if you're someone out there who hadn't thought about this until a few years ago, I would say probably five years ago, I hadn't really thought about it either.

I'm pro-life. I love babies. I know a lot of couples who are wonderful couples. It was not easy for them to conceive. I know.

people who are still trying to conceive and they can't, and they would be wonderful parents. And I want them to have a baby, but we have to be careful about in any means necessary approach to reproducing. And that is because we are talking about innocent, fragile life. I say that whenever technology takes us from what is, um, what is natural to what is possible.

Christians are obligated to ask, is this moral? Is this biblical? Sometimes the answer is yes.

Not all technology is bad, but when we're talking about reproducing, when we're talking about innocent life, we got to be really careful. And the truth is, is that more embryos are destroyed every year through IVF than through abortion. Right now we've got over a million frozen embryos, their souls on ice, and they are either abandoned.

Many times couples will go through IVF. then they get divorced. Or then the woman finds out after giving birth to her two babies that she can't have any more children or she doesn't want any more children.

So the three other embryos that she created because her doctor encouraged her to create as many embryos as possible. They're now frozen. She doesn't know what to do with them. Does she pay the freezer fee forever? Does she destroy these children whose sex is already determined, whose eye color is already determined?

I mean, they are fully human being with their. own distinct DNA? Does she adopt them out to people that she doesn't know people she doesn't share values with?

And so that is the ethical quandary what I just described, that every couple who partakes in IVF potentially faces. Now, I do know couples who didn't destroy any embryos, I do know couples that transferred every embryo. that they created. I will say that is a very rare case.

And for anyone who is considering IVF, there is no guarantee that that is going to be you. In fact, it is highly likely that that won't be you. Doctors will tell you create as many embryos as possible. Many times these embryos are graded. If any have some kind of genetic abnormality, they're going to be discarded.

And so the eugenics process happens on a daily basis through IVF. People decide what kind of what gender they want first, what order of gender they want. They'll abort a child if they created too many boy embryos.

And so that is the dark side of IVF. America is the wild, wild west of the reproductive industry. Europe has much stricter regulations on the creation of life.

So we should at the very least move in that direction. Yeah. And sticking in the love is love chapter.

What is empathy for authenticity? Yes. Yes. Well, I tell the story of Glennon Doyle, and I'm sure most of your audience knows Glennon Doyle.

She is an incredibly popular author, and she influences a lot of women. She has to be a Christian mommy blogger. And then, unfortunately, she and her husband, the father of her three children, they divorced, and she married U.S. soccer star Abby Wambach.

And so... She is in a lesbian relationship now. And her story, how she tells it is one of liberation, that she was finally free, that she was finally, she finally found herself. She would probably say that she is closer to God than she has ever been, that she feels more loved, more known, more accepted, happier than she ever has. And how she describes her family, even with her ex-husband is one big happy family where her children are loved by so many people and everything is. harmonious and beautiful.

It is really hard to read a story like that, to see a relationship like that, that seems joyful, that seems fulfilled, that seems whole. And to say that's bad. Like that is really difficult for most people because I think our mentality, even as Christians, we have the temptation to think that doesn't really affect me.

That's not really hurting me. If she's happy, if she's fulfilled, if she's. you know, liberated, then who am I to say that's wrong? And it's not just Glennon. We think that about our friend or our cousin or our brother, the people that we see on TV who are finally happy.

They've accepted who they are. They're no longer living in the closet. They're no longer, you know, donning this fake identity.

They're authentic. They're being real. And so when we feel that empathy for that narrative of authenticity, we feel that empathy for that narrative of authenticity. authenticity, it can be really hard to extract ourselves from that entanglement until we remember again, that it's God who defines what right is and what good is and what love is. Yeah.

What was the name of her book? It was like Untamed or something. Was that Glennon Doyle?

Yeah. Yes. Untamed, I think was her latest like bestseller, but she had a lot of bestsellers before that.

Yeah. Just disastrous. By the way, I mean, what does Glennon Doyle think about, for example, me?

So basically, I've been chased for 15 years in vain, number one. Number two, it's like, according to the scriptures, following Christ is not supposed to be this kind of happy, give you a happy life. It's like Paul was stoned, jailed, beaten.

shipwrecked and like that was his life. It was really difficult. And Paul was single.

Paul was, all he cared about was getting the gospel out and running around the Mediterranean. It's like, that's, that's not this, this life isn't about, you know, Oh, my personal happiness, you know, she would say, yeah, there's so much happiness and joy that comes from following Christ, but it is not a happiness that comes from satisfying all the desires and lusts of your flesh. And thankfully, not the entirety of the Christian life is going to be just a slog of sacrifice.

It might be for some people, depending on where God has called you. There's a lot of joy and a lot of goodness and a lot of blessing and a lot of happiness that comes from the beauty of just being a part of the local church and living a life in accordance to God's word. There is so much freedom and liberation that comes from no longer being a slave to sin. But you're right. We are called to deny ourselves, to take up our cross and to follow Christ.

And I mean, God is really, really clear about the definition of marriage. I use an alliteration that I've used for years that kind of tries. I try to debunk what we hear a lot from the gin hat makers of the world, too, that those verses and you talk about this better than anyone. But she'll say that, you know, those verses in the Bible that talk about sexuality, talk about homosexuality.

They're just. these like extraneous verses that are just here and there, and they don't really mean that much. Look at how much God talks about love and all of these.

other things. But when we look at the definition of marriage in the Bible, like it is huge, it's rooted in creation. It's reiterated throughout scripture. It's repeated by Jesus himself. It is representative of Christ in the church.

And therefore it is reflective of the gospel. Like people say, Jesus never talked about marriage, but in Matthew 19, when he is answering the question about divorce, Matthew 19, four through five, he said, have you not read that in the beginning, he made them male and female. And of course, he's talking about marriage, but he takes the time to define gender, to define marriage as between one man and one woman.

That is how central it is. That is how important it is. It's so important that we get the depiction of Christ in the church as a bride and a bridegroom. Two men can't be a bride and a bridegroom, so they can't reflect Christ in his church.

That's why we say it's not really a marriage. between two men. It's not really a marriage between two women because you can't reflect the eternal reality of the marriage between Christ and his church. And so it is so fundamental. And that is exactly why when you see people compromise on that issue, when you see people compromise on Genesis 1 27, they will eventually compromise on John 14 6. It almost always happens unless there's a, you know, grace and repentance there, but I've never seen someone hold on.

to those two beliefs that, you know, Genesis 1.27 is, you know, a metaphor or not important, but John 14.6, that Jesus is the way, truth, and life, that that's literal, and we must hold on to that. Those two beliefs I've just never seen go hand in hand. Yeah, and when people say, you know, that Jesus never talked about homosexuality, first of all, that's such a red herring. Yeah, he didn't specifically address it, but as you said, he defined what marriage is.

And he reiterated is what I meant to say. And the reason Jesus didn't have to address homosexuality is he was speaking to Jews who knew that it was a capital crime. In the Torah, there was no confusion. The reason Paul talks about it so much is because he's speaking to Gentiles who have no idea what is up with sex.

They have no concept. Paul has to address it to them. But of course, Jesus doesn't have to do this to the Hebrews.

I mean, they know what's up with homosexuality. They know it's true. And we have to be careful too. Like, I'm sure that all of us at one point were tempted to do this, but it's definitely popular in the culture today to only look at the Bible for, okay, what does it specifically say that I cannot do?

Like, we're looking for a way to be let off. the hook. But really, we should be looking at the Bible and saying, okay, but what does God say is good?

What does God say to do? How does he not only negatively define things, but how does he positively define things? And how can I best align my life to that?

Yeah, I when I spoke, I spoke at Biola University, first time in 2013. And I remember after there was a Q&A afterwards, and this young student, young boy said, If I get married to a man and live the rest of my life and die, am I going to hell? I'm like, that's the wrong question. Like, why do you, why are you trying to just get away with as much possible sin you can and still somehow get into heaven?

Like, that's like, that's not the gospel. Yes, yes, exactly. Yep.

I think that's how, you know, and maybe that's the theology that a lot of us were raised with is that it's just a get out of hell free card kind of thing. Yeah. And as you said, it's a lot more than that. Yeah. Instead of like, how much can I just surrender my entire life to God and how much joy come?

As you said, joy comes from that. It comes from obedience to God. I mean, you know, I always talk about this.

It's like I I have I was surprised by this, surprised by joy. I was surprised when I became a Christian how joyful I felt. was just in obedience to God, because I finally was out of this postmodern world mentality.

And I finally had guardrails and boundaries. And I was like, ah, I feel so safe and secure now. And I feel like I have a heavenly father who actually cares about me as concerned about my well-being. And so it's so joyful to, to, to be obedient.

So we're running out of time. I just want to, um, You have a couple of things coming up. Talk about the Share of the Arrows event that's coming up in Dallas, Texas. Yes.

So share the arrows is it's September 28th. I'm not sure when this episode is coming out, but if it's on Thursday, it'll be Thursday. Perfect. So September 28th.

So if you're local to Dallas or you can travel, there's a lot of people traveling from all over, then come and join us right now. As we're speaking, we've got almost 4,000 women who are signed up to be there, which is just amazing. And I've got. people that a lot of you know Rosaria Butterfield, Elisa Childers, I've got Abby Halberstadt, I've also got Candace Cameron Bure and of course I'll be speaking too and Francesca Battiselli is going to lead worship and I mean you know that this is a chaotic time and Christians feel that we are being pushed to the margins. We feel that our worldview is not only being mocked as it has for a long time, but it's also being demonized.

It's being blamed for the being the obstacle to progress. And so a lot of people are scared. They're scared for themselves. They're scared for their children.

They're scared for their children's children. This is a time for us to come together and to gain courage from one another, to be equipped by the amazing teachers and the amazing encouragers that I just listed. And for us to look around at the thousands of like-minded Christian women next to us and say, okay.

I'm not alone. I'm not alone. One, we know that God is with us and he wins in the end.

That's the ultimate hope. But there is so much encouragement from fellowship and remembering that we are not alone. So I picked like some of the most amazing female speakers out there.

That's a great lineup. I know. I know because I wanted this to be a rallying cry for Christian women. So they can go to sharethearrows.com and check that out.

You can still buy tickets. And I would love to see y'all there. And yeah. And how can people, how can, it's so toxic. The book is Toxic Empathy, How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion.

Yeah. People can pre-order the book, right? Yes, they can pre-order the book.

And we didn't have time to go through the other two, which is Immigration and Social Justice. Those might even be the most controversial because like even among evangelicals, it's hard to find disagreement about this. But those were also kind of like. like the most fun for me to write.

So people, if people want what I hope people get out of this book, especially Christian women is this is like a guidebook for how to have conversations with those that you disagree with, how to represent your biblical beliefs, your politically conservative beliefs about these issues in this election season. I pushed really hard for this book to come out before the election. So just in the nick of time.

on October 15th. So I want you to get this book. You will be fully equipped to be able to defend all of your views on these controversial topics.

So they can go to toxicempathy.com. They can see all the places they can buy it. There's an audio book too.

And that should be all the information they need. And go watch your show Relatable, which is so good. You do four episodes a week, right?

Yes. Four episodes a week. I don't know how you do that. There's a lot to talk about.

And I have a great team. Honestly, even if I weren't doing my husband jokes, if you weren't paid to do this, you would pay to do it because I feel like I have so much to say. It's more of an outlet than anything else. So yeah, I'm thankful for it.

Well, thank you for coming on the show. I appreciate your time. Thank you, Beckett. And keep up your good work. I'm just so thankful for you and for your voice and so thankful for how many people follow you and listen to you.

We need a million more Beckett cooks in the world. So thank you so much. Thank you, guys. We will see you next time. Thanks.

Transcript for:Understanding Toxic Empathy and Its Implications

Transcript for:
Understanding Toxic Empathy and Its Implications