Toxic empathy.
That’s the name of Allie Beth Stuckey's recent book and the topic of a fascinating discussion between her and David French. I very much appreciate that the two of them made this conversation happen; these types of rival discussions are an emerging pattern I’d like to see continue.
I'm writing this post because, watching their debate as it related to toxic empathy, I realized that French failed to land the plane, and Stuckey failed to see the runway he was aiming for. I wanted clarity for myself, regardless of whether they ever get it.
To rewind for a moment, this topic recently came up in my conversation with Pastor Steve Thomason. Here's a clip:
"What [those that use "toxic empathy"] are trying to say is that our generosity, grace and empathy can be used to manipulate us. It would be healthier if they just said that."
That gets right to my point: Stuckey's book should have been called Toxic Responses to Empathy. If she had named her book that, I would not have an issue with her title or rhetoric. My alternative title accurately describes what the book is about and reflects an author who wants to convey truth clearly.
But that's not what her book is named, and my issue isn't with her underlying thesis. My issue is with how she packaged it—and more deeply, that she chose to package it using the exact type of weaponized language she critiques her opponents for using.
Who Is My Neighbor Enemy?
To understand why someone would intentionally weaponize a word like empathy, we have to understand who they think they are fighting. Before diving into the linguistic specifics, it helps to look at the core dynamic between Stuckey and French, and where they locate the source of the problem.
Stuckey is acting as an outward-facing apologist, while French is acting as an inward-facing prophet.
Stuckey sees the primary problem as external. The enemy is secular progressivism assailing Christians. She is trying to bunker down, foster protectionism, and give her tribe the resources to stand their ground.
French is looking at his fellow Christians, seeing moral decay, and expressing deep concern. While Stuckey is criticizing progressives for being secular and sinful, French is trying to get her to see how secular and sinful their own group has become. To him, internal rot will do far more damage than any external rival.
- Stuckey keeps saying, "Look at how deceptive the other side is! I'm just trying to keep our side from falling for their lies."
- French keeps saying, "Look at how cruel our side is becoming! Your phrase is giving them an excuse to be meaner."
This brings us to the "Motte and Bailey" fallacy. In her debate with French, we see how Stuckey defends herself. She creates a highly aggressive, easily weaponized cultural catchphrase (the Bailey). But when challenged on the real-world damage the phrase causes, she retreats to the highly nuanced, easily defensible paragraphs hidden inside her book (the Motte).
In the end, neither side can win the debate because they are arguing from two completely different primary fears: French is terrified of a church consumed by cruelty, while Stuckey is terrified of a church consumed by deception. Because they lack a shared premise, the debate remains broken.
Definitions & Moral Relativity
When we are terrified of an enemy—whether that enemy is cruelty or deception—we often bend our language to fight them. One of the problems with moral relativism is that we all tend to become relativists when we get cornered. We twist words to avoid the harsh edge of truth. Defining toxic empathy as a toxic response to empathy seems to me like early-stage moral relativism. Let me walk through it. Here is the Merriam-Webster definition of empathy:
"the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another"
Stuckey doesn't actually take issue with this definition. In her book, she describes it as standing in another's shoes. There isn't anything toxic about doing this, according to her. The toxicity she describes is the response to the empathy, not the empathy itself.
So, what would actual toxic empathy be if we were to describe it accurately?
Based on the definition above, it would be the action of misunderstanding another. If I have a malformed view of how you see things, that is toxic empathy. If people are trained to think empathy itself is toxic, they may opt for a distorted understanding instead of the real thing. This leads to distorted responses. That seems like a much more dangerous dynamic than responding wrongly to a situation we accurately understand.
Conflation, Segmenting, Letting Go
Because the national debate is broken, it is up to us to untangle the terms they are blurring together.
- Empathy is one thing.
- How we respond is another.
When they get conflated, Stuckey and I would agree: it can get toxic. But when we focus exclusively on empathy being the toxic element, it just gives us a convenient excuse to be cruel.
Stuckey wants the benefits of a viral catchphrase—book sales, podcast clicks, cultural traction—without taking responsibility for the predictable way that catchphrase behaves in the real world.
Perhaps she's not unlike the rest of us who want the benefits without the responsibility. Perhaps she's acting as a mirror we'd rather not look at, showing us how much we want to play the power game in a worldly way.
In an issue like this, it's important to recognize our limits.
Writing (or reading) this blog post won't solve the national problem, but it may help me (and you) understand that problem better and make some local changes around the edges. We can be incredibly precise with our language, deeply empathetic to human suffering, and fiercely committed to the truth—all at the same time.
But we also need to recognize that while we are fighting our rivals, we can become the very problem we are fighting against. While rightist Christians call leftists secular and pagan, we also fail to realize that we are often just as barbaric as the other side.
And, when trying to reform our own groups, we can fail to recognize that our deepest problems cannot simply be resolved by appealing to shared virtues we no longer possess. Power structures constantly push us to act more barbarically, all while we continue calling ourselves Christians.
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