Unashamed with the Robertson Family - Ep 1002 | Allie Beth Stuckey Leads the Way for Christians to Talk About Social Issues with Love

Episode Date: December 5, 2024

Jase, Al, Zach, and Missy discuss the exploitation of Christian compassion with Allie Beth Stuckey, the BlazeTV host of the “Relatable” podcast and author of the NYT bestseller “Toxic Empathy.�� Allie Beth offers a guide for talking about such emotional subjects within our society and how Christians can recognize when they're being manipulated by political factions and the secular establishment. Missy’s recent brush with politics and President Trump leaves her more motivated than ever to speak out for truth, and the guys are impressed by Allie Beth’s articulate and compassionate expression of her deeply held values. -- Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I am unashamed. What about you? Welcome back to Unashamed. We have one of our favorite guests. We have my favorite. Well, Jace's favorite. There's no doubt about it. Jace, you want to introduce our guests. I have come a long way if you are calling me your favorite guest. I'm glad I said that. I thought that was obvious. Babe, I do this. Do you like my little mathematical equation every time I've been introducing you. Do you know what it is? What? One plus one is one. Oh, yeah. In Christ. I love it because the math, the new math, is different from a kingdom perspective. Well, I just remember the first time I ever came on your podcast, I've never seen you so nervous. So I'm glad to know that he

settled in. You make me nervous. That's a fact. But I think that's good. If you're not nervous about something, it doesn't matter. The only time I get nervous is when something really matters. Well, because you're his ultimate fact checker. I call it accountability on steroids. That part, we need to, there's a little something called grace. A little thing called grace. Which is needed because Jay says a little something we call hyperbole that happens quite often on this. However, let's just go ahead and get this out of the way because I did something on the last podcast that I now have to confess.

because... You told quite the story about you, Missing. I told the story and no one knew in our inner circle what happened. And so I just announced it to the world about our little trip to a little place called Mara Lago. I don't even know if I'm pronouncing that by it. No, you got it. And so I told about that, babe, because I could not have been more proud in that moment as a public speaker. and my self-confession of my biggest weakness,

my whole first half of my life, was actually publicly speaking. And I don't mean in front of an audience. I mean just anywhere. I was kind of a shy, keep-it-to-yourself kind of guy. But that moment when you're standing on stage and we have all these kind of political gurus

and different people of influence around us and other people had received these influence awards. And one of them was the, I think it's the current Mississippi. She's Attorney General Lynn Finch. She's amazing. She argued before the Supreme Court for the Dobbs case and won. Oh, by the way, she received an award right before Missy, so she spoke before Missy. So now Missy gets up after her and in between the president speaking.

which happened all of a sudden. And Missy was at the end of her speech. But she was reading Acts 17, which is so, and I don't want to just say that chapter flippantly, because when you start thinking about what she was reading, how God created all people, gave them life, breath, and everything else, and put them at the exact time

and the exact places where they should live so they would reach out for him and find him. I mean, just think about looking at the perspective of you being on this earth and being in these moments. Yeah. And so since you can't make this stuff. But I'll say this too, Missy,

because Jace really did a nice job honoring you being in that moment, and it's hard for you to talk about it because you're humbly receiving an award. But you think about it. Jace talked about this before the election that at a Kamala Harris route, a person shouted out Jesus' Lord, and that person was told by Cabala Harris,

you're at the wrong rally. Go down the road to the smaller rally. Exactly. So the idea then that the person who won the presidency is waiting in the wings as you're sharing Act 17 and is available to hear that, and then thanks you for saying what you said. I mean, you know, or at least acknowledges.

I'm just saying that the idea is that, obviously these are God or Dame moments. So one of the things that inspires us is that we step up, we're all imperfect people. And, of course, Trump gets a lot of that because of his past. I mean, he was just a Democrat a dozen years ago, you know. And yet at the same time, it's the open of the possibility. It's the fact that the mom's event was there at Marlago.

And you were there. It's moms for America, and they are a fantastic organization. but she, Kimberly Fletcher is her name, she never gave up. So, Zach, if you'll remember in 2017, they asked me to speak at what they called a Mom's March in Omaha, Nebraska, and they rented out this huge civic center there. And Sarah Palin was there and Candy Carson, and we all each were giving like eight-minute speeches that we could give. And I worked on it.

Zach tweaked it for me. Like, I wanted to hit all the controversies with truth. and wanted to make sure that I did it, you know, not in a mean way. But boy, I mean, that speech, that speech was awesome. And no one heard it. Yeah, there was very few people there. No one came. The best speech that no one heard.

Because the moms for America were just getting started. And Missy tells a funny story about being backstage. I guess I can tell that. And because it's like all the speakers were a little disappointed that there wasn't a bunch of people there. Now look, you fast forward seven years later, they're rolling. They were all there. But she's talking here

with Ben Carson's wife and Sarah Palin and they were all like, well, you know what? Why are you here? And they were like, well, I heard you were going to be here. And it was like, they were all saying, well, it must be something big. These are very well known. Well, it got to Candy Carson

because we looked at her because I said, I'm here because I saw that Sarah Palin was speaking and Sarah Palin looked at Candy and she said, well, I'm here because you were going to speak and Candy went, we all looked at Candy and she went, I don't have anything else to do. And we just busted out laughing. But anyway, Kimberly says that was the launching point. So it did some good for that organization because they're fantastic about getting the information and the correct history of America into the moms in their communities to go and speak in the school board situations and to teach in their communities about really what the Declaration

of Independence really says and what the Constitution really says and how we're founded on godly principles. And they took a lot of credit this past weekend for flipping 10 counties in California, just grassroots knocking on doors and getting moms together for meetings. They call them cottage meetings. They do a lot of work for the Republican Party and getting the truth out there. And when I was sent this information that they were going to give me this award, I thought at Mar-a-Laga, and it's called Mothers of Influence, and with A.G. Finch, and I thought it was a mistake. I thought this could not have been real, honestly. It was like, this is a huge honor because of everything that they have done the last few years,

and of course where it's going to be. And I just thought, I don't even know, like, if I'm not on tell anybody about this and not even going to tell my kids, because, then they're going to have to up in their lives and feel obligated to go. And they're all, you know, raising kids and they have jobs. And Mia said, I cannot wait to come home that Friday. I'll be out for a week. And I'm as soon as I get out of class, I'm going home. And I thought, I'm not going to tell her about this, you know.

And anyway, long story short, read got it out of me from some other, another angle. And I had to tell him. And his jaw dropped. And basically, he was like, can we come? I was like, yes. I would love to have you there. Now I have to tell the other kids, and of course they dropped to everything. That, to me, is the biggest honor for them to say, mom, I'm coming to support you.

This is amazing. It kind of fits the brand, though. From my perspective. I mean, you know, it is a mom's for America. They're your kids. I know, but they're grown. And, you know, if there were my little kids, I could say, hey, pack up. We're going to do this.

That's how proud they are of you, Mrs. Well, and from my perspective of being a fly on a wall at an environment. event, which is what I was. It was like the people who didn't know me, they were like, oh, you're with her. And the Secret Service were like, check they go. Oh, yeah. You know, surprisingly, a lot of them recognize. I mean, they love you. So much they, they knew who was, which was great. It came on hand, it came in handy getting us out of there. Because they were like, now who are you all? And he's like, oh, I know this guy. Let me tell the story backstage because this is what, I mean, of course, I'm knocking around

in my head because I said, the president may be there. He may not be there. You know, whatever. So I'm like, what if he is? What if he's not? What is my speech going to have three to five minutes? I can't speak in three to five minutes. But I was going to do my best. Knocking around in my head, what am I going to say to accept an award about being recognized as a mom? And then, of course, our country.

And so I worked and worked and worked and worked and got it down. And I'm standing backstage, waiting to be called. And the ladies came to me. I could tell something had happened. Chaos. Chaos started ensuing. And I was a little nervous already because I'm about to be called. and she said, we don't know what to do with you.

And I said, okay. And she said, well, he's on his way. He's on his way. So we don't know whether to hold you. We don't know whether to send you. We don't know. We don't want to take away your mama. And I just put my hand on her arm and I said, do whatever you need to do.

I live in a reality show. It's fine. I can handle it. It's not about me. And when I did that, this piece just came over because I thought, God is about to do something and I have no idea what it is. Which is usually when he does his best work when we're not sure where this thing is going. That's right.

And she just looked at me and she said, okay, and the lady on stage introduced me. And I looked at her and she said, go. I said, okay, here I go. Open my Bible, did my speech. And then when Jay said, just like he said, Act 17 came up and I saw the movement in the back of the hall. and I thought I can either quit out of respect for him or even more respect for the people here and for the Lord, I can finish my speech because it's all about God. You were in a bind there at least, I mean, Missy, you were in a bind because you had scripture and the press.

And if you can't abandon the scripture, yeah, that's what I was going to say. As a fly on the wall, my thought was in that moment, because she took it a little differently, She was like, I didn't want people to think I was making the president wait. But I took it like, well, he could have just said, hey, I'm here. Get her off the stage. I mean, I could see Trump saying that. Or then start YMCA. Because as soon as I said, thank you, that's when the music started.

But he patiently waited. It wasn't but 60 seconds, but still. And he listened. And out of respect for the word of God and my wife, and I thought that was awesome. Which, again, that goes back to my earlier point. that's why I think he's a man who listens. He's got his issues, but he's a man who will listen. I think in that moment you saw that, and what you said was very important,

and that was evidenced by the other people. I do want to say this, because we've got a guest coming on that we're super excited about. You know, Jase, I felt like you have when Lisa was speaking at the big march for life in Washington, and I'm just there watching, looking up, and there's 150,000-plus people. out here and she has that three to five minutes that Missy had. I just, I was in tears just in just godly pride because I was like, this is my wife addressing this audience in a historic moment.

And I mean, it does something to you. You're just like, it makes you really proud. I was going to say to that that when he walked in and I knew what was happening, again, a peace and a confidence came over me because I was like, and I think I said,

now hold on, I said something like, And you said, hang on, because it was, the room turned into hustle and bustle. A little bit of, yeah, and I said, hold on, you don't want to miss this. Pay attention, you don't want to miss this. And because I was like getting to the exact time and place. You said, this is the most important part. Yeah.

But I asked Cole later, I said, this is my even killed child. And I said, what did you think when you knew Trump had walked in and you saw your mom on stage in the middle of a speech? what did you do? And Cole said, I immediately started sweating. So I haven't asked my other kids what they thought, but I was like, even for Cole, it was a moment of what is my mom about to do, you know. Look, I want to say this. I know we're introducing our guests. But so Trump gets up there and he says, I was on the 15th tee playing with three of the world's greatest golfers.

I'm having a great round. I was fixed to finish. and then it hit me. We have the bedrock of America in a group at Maralago, and he said, I had to come speak to the moms. You're the bedrock of the country. They're always crazy. And then people lost their minds.

It's standing on tables, chairs. That was the transition. The man knows the moment. All right, we got a very special guest coming up. I see her popping in on the screen here. We come back from this break. We'll introduce our guest. Awesome.

Welcome back to Unashamed, and we have our esteemed guest. I would, now here's what I'm going to say. Y'all can agree or disagree. It's my favorite Blaze host. Wow. Out of all the Blaze hosts, you are the best, Allie Beth. We love having you on us. You're going to do better than Phil.

Better than Phil? Better than Phil. Better than us. Yes. She's the best on Blaze. I won't tell them, but thank you. Well, I'm so happy to be here. Thank you all so much.

I think once you're on our podcast for more than three times, you're no longer a guest. She's a contributor. Am I a co-host? Yeah, you're a contributor. You're an official, unashamed contributor. Oh, okay. I'll take it. And we had your dad on.

I remember the red wagon, the little red wagon. The little red wagon. Yes, that's right. I don't know how many, like, dad-daughter combos y'all have had on the show. You're the first and only. Yeah. And your dad and I are friends now. You know, we text at least probably every other month.

I know. I love that. And Al, you came on our marriage special, too, which was really amazing. We did. It was somewhere in the middle of nowhere in Texas. That's all I remember. I remember driving out in the middle of nowhere. I thought, are we doing a podcast out here?

I felt like I was going to a bar. We wanted you to feel at home. Well, you know what led me to think about that? Because I thought, because I read the first chapter of her book, and I thought, I have to stop right here. So you only read one chapter. Well, there's a story behind that. And it's a good story. And I think my wife is.

I bet this sounds like an excuse coming up. I'm ready. And I thought, boy, now her dad wrote a book, The Little Red Wagon. What was the name of it? The stories from the little red wagon. Life lessons. And now his daughter has toxic empathy. And my vocabulary has never been what it should be.

All of our lessons. That's why we're trying to get Zach. to trigger him. I see some kind of demonic being stirring this 55-gallon drum. And I was like, boy, we got the little red wagon. Which is very easy to read. Yeah. And so the only reason I only read one chapter is because I thought that was so good,

I'm going to have to read that again. Before I continue. If you had only named it C-Spot Run. Yeah. You know, that'll be my next. one. I'll do that version of toxic empathy. Only one syllable words next time. So to finish my long story that's way too long, the reason I only read one chapter, because I thought I got to meditate on this, because I thought it was awesome. And then you saw the book and said, oh, I'm going to take

this with me to Nashville. So that's what she read the entire book, because it was with her in Nashville and we only had one copy. So, Ali, Beth, I heard you on the Megan Kelly podcast. talking about this. And so I think, Jay, we were in the car traveling to Nashville one time, and we heard you on her podcast. And I was like, this sounds amazing and exactly what we, as Christians, it's almost like a tool set that we need. And so I'm so glad that you sent us the book because I was going to order it anyway. But thank you. And it is amazing. Well, thank you. I appreciate it. I like to think, you know, contrary to what Chase said, I like to think that it actually is easy to read. They are heavy subjects, but I wanted to break it down. We talk about abortion,

we talk about gender, we talk about all the big ones, social justice, immigration, the definition of marriage. And I wanted it to be, like you said, tools that people could put in their tool belts, not only as they are thinking through their own Christian worldview and what the Bible has to say about these issues, but also to equip them to talk about these very sensitive, personal, in some cases, identity-centric issues with those in their lives who might disagree with them. So that's what this book is for. Well, the revelation I had on that, all jokes aside, was that I've always felt like us as Christians had an articulation problem in these issues. But I never realized that some of that problem is created by the people representing these issues, by these little statements that sound,

great. You know, when I first heard the phrase planned parenthood, I thought, oh, that's a great concept. You need to plan on being a parent. Well, I later found out that was nothing. It's nothing about what I thought it was. And they tend to do that, and you point that out in the book over and over. There's little phrases. Euphemisms, yeah. Yeah, that come up, that appeal to you empathizing with humanity. Even birth control. I would love for you to explain that in a little soundbite about how we even came up with that phrase, how that took off birth control. Yeah, so that term birth control was actually a PR choice, a public relations choice, by people like Margaret Singer. Most people, if they know the name Margaret Singer, they know her as

the founder of Planned Parenthood. She believed lots of evil things, as you can imagine. She was someone who spearheaded eugenics in the United States, which of course means selectively breeding people that she would say are worthy to be bred. So worthy to reproduce, she would say that people who count as imbeciles or people of certain skin colors or different backgrounds or poor socioeconomic status that those people just shouldn't reproduce. And so she created this contraceptive, or she helped create a contraceptive that would stop people from being able to reproduce and not just anyone, but in particular people who were on the lower rungs of society. And because abortion and eugenics really weren't well received in the United States, especially after the travesty of the Holocaust,

she had to change the name. Not only changed the name of Planned Parenthood, it actually was the Birth Control League. She had to change the name of that, but she also had to change the name of contraceptive and how she talked about these medications that were to stop women from getting pregnant. And so birth control, I guess, was kind of more palatable to the public at the time who really didn't understand what these pills actually do. No, and you did such a good job of painting that picture because throughout the entire book, in a range of topics, which hit all these. Let me ask you this, just as a definition of terms,

because early in the book, you talk about empathy itself. Yeah. The book title is Toxic Empathy, How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion. And we kind of jumped right into the abortion part of it. Talk about how empathy is a good thing, but then how that's been twisted into your narrative of becoming toxic empathy. What does that look like? Yes. So I would say that empathy in itself is actually neutral.

It's neither good nor bad. Empathy means to feel. what someone feels. So it's not just feeling badly for someone. It's not even just having compassion for someone. Compassion if you break it down with suffering. So you're suffering with someone. But empathy is to feel how someone else feels. Now, that can lead towards something that's good, like love, like kindness, like selflessness or generosity, or it can lead you in a toxic direction. So I give an example of how empathy can lead you in a good selfless direction. I tell a story of being in the airport. I was traveling by myself and I saw a mom who was with her toddler and she was trying to get her carry on

and break down her stroller and also hold on to her baby and get down to her seat. And I just saw in her face the panic and the stress that was so familiar to me because I had been there before. It was just a couple weeks earlier that I was doing the exact same thing with my toddler. And now before kids, I'm not sure I would have noticed this woman. Maybe I would have had some awful selfish thoughts, like, oh my goodness, I'm so tired of crying babies on an airplane. But now I never have those thoughts because the crying babies have been mine and I have been there. And so I knew exactly what she needed in that moment because I could feel how she felt. It wasn't just sympathy. It wasn't only compassion. I actually felt what she felt. And so I immediately knew that I needed to

carry her bag onto the plane and someone had done that for me. And I remember when someone did that for me, when I was traveling alone with my child, she said, I'm a mom. I've been there. And so there is power in being able to put yourself in someone's shoes because you've shared an experience with them or because you can imagine sharing an experience with them. But empathy can lead you in the other direction, what I would call a toxic direction, when it causes you to do a few things, when it causes you to validate something that is not true, when it encourages you to affirm sin, and then when it encourages you to support policies that are destructive, either to that person or to the people around them. And there are examples of this. Of course, that's what the chapters

are dedicated to. We see toxic empathy when it comes to abortion, when it comes to gender, when it comes to the definition of marriage, even immigration and social justice, although that's kind of the different category. And so that's what this is about, how a toxic form of empathy has led us to affirm sin and to support policies that sound compassionate, but in the end, are actually really bad for the people that were trying to help and everyone around them. And it's quick to, it's quick to, or it's easy to weaponize empathy as well. I read a book years ago, Allie, failure of nerve, leadership of the age of a quick fix, which is like one of my like core books and the author of, I think his name, Dr. Friedman, he makes his point about empathy

being a word that actually wasn't even in the English language. And I'm probably going to butcher this, but I think it was like 1929 or 20, it's in the 20s. Yeah. And his point was that this is a word that was introduced into the English language. And it should not be conflated with the word sympathy. And he pretty much the whole thrust of the book, which I would say also, calling of the American Mind is another book that's kind of written with the same idea that we've used empathy as a way to sabotage leadership and to sabotage advancement and to sabotage healthy organizations. And so when I read that book, for me, it's very provocative. The title's provocative, right? But toxic empathy.

But even to to critique the word empathy because it is held as such high esteem in American culture, yeah, we can't even critique it. But when I read Freedman's work, I was like, and I went through the whole process of his book. I was like, wow, this is actually, I've seen this happen in my own family and my own like systems. You know, it's pretty incredible. Yeah, and people might not know this. I don't think that I've talked about this publicly, but Zach actually recommended that book to me. Back when this book was just an idea, I hadn't even started writing it yet.

I was talking to Zach. I think maybe the last time that I was on in person with you guys, and he recommended this book, and I bought it, and it was actually very formative and helpful in writing this because I also really hadn't heard people critique empathy, but I started noticing how people were using empathy kind of like as a mallet to hurt their enemies or people on the other side of the political aisle back in 2020. Everything was lead with empathy, vote with empathy, base your policy. on empathy when that's a horrible, horrible idea. Because there are people on both sides of every

issue that demand our empathy that have really sad stories that could say my feelings, my experience, my stated identity, demand that you affirm this, that you support this policy. And if you don't, well, then you hate me. And if that's how you're leading, then you're going to be really confused. You're going to make really bad emotions-based decisions. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't care about people's stories and how they feel and listen to them. But at the end of the day, and this is kind of like the thrust of my book, Christians are not called primarily to empathy. We are called to the truth and love. And love, as is defined by the God who is love, 1 John 4-8, never rejoices in wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 1 Corinthians 136.

So if we love someone, that is going to be inextricably intertwined with what is true, telling someone the truth about abortion, the truth about gender, the truth about sexuality, whatever it is in a gentle but bold way is actually the most loving thing we can do, not affirming them when they're believing a lie. You talked about out of the red flags, which we mentioned euphemisms, which Jay's mentioned, emotional language. which is another thing you just described. The arguments become so emotional, so fast, that we throw out truth, that we throw out facts, that we throw out the things that are there important for us to look at. And then exploitative politics,

which, of course, is such a driving force in the topics that you chose to talk about, which are the big ones, right? Yeah. We started talking about abortion, so let me talk a little bit more about that and the idea of birth control as Missy brought up. You talk about in the book of the perspective.

everything that's talked about in the political side is all about from a woman's perspective. But you mentioned the perspective of a child, which is what we're talking about here, which gets ignored right in the conversation, especially at the national level. So talk a little bit about that, what it's like to view the perspective of a baby and being involved in this story. Yeah, that is a hallmark, a character trait of toxic empathy. I say that it blinds you to reality and morality. And how it does that is that it hoists up only one particular victim and it ignores the people on the other side of the moral equation. And so I started every chapter actually with a story that is really from the progressive perspective. So that by the end of that story, you might think, wow, maybe I am pro-choice or maybe I am pro-gender ideology, whatever it is, just to kind of show the reader this is what it looks like and this is how your heartstrings are pulled on.

So in that abortion chapter, I start with a real story that was originally reported by NPR of a woman named Samantha, very poor. She already had several children. She finds out she's pregnant at the 20-week ultrasound. This baby is diagnosed with a life limiting fetal anomaly, and she wants an abortion in Texas. You cannot abort your child just because he or she has special needs. And so NPR tells this story as if this is a tragedy for the mother, that she had to go through. through with pregnancy. She had to go through with labor and delivery. She had to hold this baby in her arms. She had to pay for this funeral. She had to ignore the needs of her other children while she was

in labor so that at the end of it, the reader is supposed to think, wow, these pro-life laws are awful. They're so draconian. I can't imagine going through this or how could they put this poor woman through this kind of thing. But as Christians, because we're responsible to the truth and because we care about image bears of God, we care about Samantha, but we also care about her little baby Halo. We have to think harder. We have to say, but what about the baby? That's really the question in every conversation about abortion. But what about the baby? And so I give a very graphic, detailed description of what would have happened if abortion had been legal in Texas, if she had been able to abort her child at 20 plus weeks. They would have injected her heart with the same chemical combination that is used to

kill death row murderers. And so they would have given that baby the death penalty until she had a heart attack, died inside the wound. They would have had to dismember her with four steps before removing her. They would have discarded her like toxic waste. And I could even get into more gruesome details. But that's what abortion is at that stage of pregnancy. It's always brutal. But the bigger the baby gets, the more painful it is, the more difficult it is, the harder it is for the mother. And instead, this baby was born whole. She was given a name. She was held by her mother and father. She was told that she was loved. Of course, that's the better alternative. Poisoning this child, murdering this child, throwing her away like garbage, is not actually the more

compassionate and loving alternative. And so that's kind of what that chapter is dedicated to, making sure that we are looking at the people on the other side of the moral equation, the people that the media try really hard to hide. Which is why knowledge is so important for people to know that. Because if you only go off the euphemisms and just the emotional part of only looking at it from that one perspective, you're never going to understand that. You made another point in the abortion chapter, which really resonated to Lisa and I, because Lisa is post-abortive.

And so she has lived with that. And she shares that with audiences. And we connect with people everywhere. and you make the point, seemingly it's put out there that this will never affect you emotionally and you'll never carry the baggage of this. That is simply not true. And we see it over and over and over again. So once again, something that seems like an easy argument is not because once you put the

truth into it and the results of it, of course, it impacts people in a powerful way. So I thought you did a really good job of laying that out. I want to jump in for a second. Because when you were talking about empathy and how people are, we're encouraged to lead with empathy. It made me think of the famous quote recently of Kamala Harris saying in her Jamaican accent, have you no empathy mine? And I thought, you know, the funny part of that is that, you know, she was having an accent. But the horrible part of it is what you're saying is that, oh, nope, that should end the discussion of truth. When I say empathy, you're supposed to bow and say,

oh, I'm so sorry. I should have more empathy. There's no truth in that. There's no truth in that. Well, the goal of leadership, if you think about it, I mean, well, the word empathy when I hear it, I think about, I've always heard it propose like this, that it's putting yourself in somebody else's shoes. And so I imagine like this hole that somebody falls into and they're stuck in the hole. And if I had empathy and I'm a leader, then I'm going to walk by this deep, you know, 12 foot hole that they're stuck in. I'm going to see them at the bottom. Am I'm going to, if I'm going to have empathy, I need to get into the hole with them. and hold them and make them feel better and comfort them, right? And that is very kind, but at the same time,

now we're both in the hole and we're looking up like, oh, no, but we can hold each other. Yeah, good point. Leadership is, and Friedman makes this point, it's actually the role of leadership is to maximize one's threshold for pain. And so sometimes it's pushing people through the pain. if you're leading somebody on a football team, you're not coddling them. You're like, push it. Yeah, you may throw up from running sprints.

But guess what? When we get into the game next time, you guys are going to, you're not going to be suck and win. And so it's not to get in the hole. It's to drop the ladder down, to go find help, to bring up, you know, to pull somebody out. And that's, I think that's the big difference of like empathy when you divorce it from truth and you just get in their shoes.

Well, then you're not really, you're not able to help. out of anything and we need help each other out. Definitely. When it comes to abortion, too, the way that this kind of manifests itself, especially during the election, is that we saw, this is another hallmark, I would say, maybe of progressive propaganda, but it definitely overlaps with toxic empathy is the conflation of abortion and miscarriage, pretending like we don't know these things. And so you would see these horrible stories of the, these women who had miscarriages and the, you know, the propaganda says that these pro-life laws don't allow women to get miscarriage care, which is just not true.

You could go story by story and actually debunk that. That's just not the case. That's not what happened in these terrible stories. But as soon as you say, hey, I got a fact check this for you or I got to tell you why this is not true, you get the retort. We'll just show some empathy. And the assumption is that empathy means to, just affirm someone's story or to affirm someone's experience or to get in the hole with them and say that's sad and end it there. But that is not the obligation that we have. And another

analogy that I think of, like if your child comes down to your room at night and says there's a monster in the corner of my room, you could, in empathy, say, yeah, that is really scary. That 100% is a monster. I'm so sorry. I'm really scared too. Okay, you could do that. Your five-year-old is not going to get better, though. Or you could go upstairs and you could turn the light on. And you could say, no, that's just a pile of clothes. That's not a monster. Which is the more loving thing to do. One may be less empathetic, but the latter is certainly more loving because it is truthful. Before we, I want to talk a little bit about, because we can't obviously cover all of me. Won't folks to get the book. Abortion is health care is one of the lives. Trans women. or women was the second lie that you addressed. Love is love, which deals with homosexuality, is the third. And I want to talk about this.

No human is illegal because I love the way, and you did this Alibet in such a good way in all the chapters, because you personally said, look, I have empathy for these different stories that you began with. And you talked about that struggle. And so it's the same when it comes to immigration, because all of us have empathy for people wanting a better life for themselves and their families and to be in America. But talk a little bit about that. How, because to me, that's such a big one right now in terms of where we are, what just

happened in election and kind of how that, what's happened, how that's been hijacked, and turned into toxic empathy. Yeah. So this was a chapter that surprised me. I would say that I focus on the first three subjects that I wrote about in the book a lot more because those are creation order issues. and so I just talk about them a lot more. I do talk about immigration, but I was surprised by my own research.

I was surprised about how passionate I got as I was writing this. There are certainly people on both sides of this issue that have difficult stories that demand our empathy. We start with a woman named Maribel, who immigrated here with her family from Mexico. She ended up being deported under Donald Trump, according to USA Today, separated from her family. As a mother, like her story makes me really sad that she was. separated from her children. That's very often what happens in deportation, whether it's Donald Trump or any other president who does the deporting. And so, of course, USA Today in the media, they only highlight those stories. And those are the stories that come to mind when we think about deportation

or when we think about enforcing border laws, those sad stories. But the media very often doesn't highlight the other side of illegal immigration. So it was mostly conservative media, that covered the horrific murder of Lake and Riley. Kate Steinley, 2015, she was 32 years old, walking down a pier with her dad on a Sunday afternoon, shot in the back by an illegal immigrant who had been deported five times, jailed for violent crimes, but was being shielded by San Francisco's sanctuary city policies. Her dad held her in his arms. She said, help me, daddy, and then she breathed her last breath and died. Molly Tibbitts, there are so many stories just like this. And the difference between a crime committed by an illegal immigrant and a crime

committed by a citizen is that every crime committed by an illegal immigrant is actually preventable. And so when we have people on both sides of the issue that may demand our empathy, the question we have to ask is, but what is right? It can't just be who has the saddest story or how many sad stories do we have on both sides of an issue, but what is actually true and what is right. And so we go through the statistics and some of the numbers of really the cost, the human cost, economic cost of illegal immigration. But then we also look at it from a principle than a biblical perspective, that God created nations, he created borders, he created laws, he created the ideas of government. The government was instituted by God to punish evil and to reward good. That's Romans 13.

Cultures were God's idea. God is a God of order. We see that from the very beginning, he places us in a garden, not in a jungle. We see that he has a process of doing things. He has protections for his people. Everywhere, a wall is depicted literally or metaphorically throughout scripture is a signal of goodness, is a signal of protection, of provision of safety for God's people. And so I think that we see really strong examples of the importance of a nation's sovereignty in scripture. And at the end of the day, no matter how many sad stories are on either side, I think it is righteous of a government to protect its borders and to put the well-being of its citizens first, whether that's the United States or Zimbabwe or India. I think every

government has that right and responsibility. Amen. No, that's really good. And you even talked about some of the European countries that have basically gone through the same process and are going through it now. And talk a little bit about that. That hasn't worked out so well in these European countries in terms of just saying, we have no borders so everybody can come in. Yes. Western civilization is dealing with a lot of Western guilt, this belief that because of colonialism of the past, that in order to basically pay reparations for that, they have to have open borders and kind of be recolonized themselves. I saw a stat the other day that there are more Indian immigrants who own land in London than

native-born Brits. And I'm not against legal immigration. But of course, there are going to be different outcomes and consequences to allowing the demographics of your country to change very dramatically in a short period of time. Some of that is legal immigration, but a lot of that is illegal immigration or allowing legal immigration to be way too easy to the detriment of your own country. Of course, everyone should have a right and responsibility to accept people into their country that love their country and who share their values and who want to assimilate and abide by the ideals that have made

each nation great. Unfortunately, in Europe, and this is so politically incorrect to talk about, but whether you're looking at Norway or Sweden or England, what we see is that sexual assault has skyrocketed, including the sexual assault of children. And it is, the vast majority of those cases are perpetrated by the immigrant residents there, namely from Pakistan, from Afghanistan, from Iran. These are mostly Middle Eastern men who are coming not as refugees or asylum seekers, but they just want to be there. Many of them are also from Africa. And of course, that's not saying that all immigrants are committing crimes or that all people from those places are criminals. But that's the fact. And actually, we have people of all different kinds of

backgrounds like Ayan Hersi Ali. She is a black woman, a former Muslim herself, who has written about this, these roving rapist gangs, Middle Eastern men who walk throughout the streets of places like Britain and they find young girls to rape. This is not an isolated instance, this is a huge systemic problem in places like Sweden and Germany. And so this is, I think, one of the gravest and most unjust consequences of toxic empathy. Oh, you're exactly right. And you're right. It's so underreported because it doesn't fit the narrative of the other side of the argument. I just read an article, I think it was 70% of sexual assaults now on German trains are by illegal immigrants. And so again, these are just facts that are coming out.

out as you're reading about them. One thing that I thought really stood out to me in that chapter was when you talked about how past presidents and vice presidents and even senators were all on the same page about illegal immigration. Everyone was against it. It's not true. We love immigration. Come through legally, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Until 2015 when Trump said, I'm going to build the wall. And I told, Jason and I were talking about this last night. And I said, this is, you know, my theory for a while. now, but the left has wanted to sustain this power for so long, and they saw this magnanimous celebrity come in. They thought, there's just no way that we're going to be able to counteract him. He's going to win. So we have to make him the devil. And they started little by little, you know, with the racism, with the wall, everything that came out of Trump's mouth. We had to question because, you know, he's not a perfect man.

He's done things in his life. And as Christians, it's like, I really wish he wouldn't have done that, you know. And so it makes us feel maybe guilty that we are supporting a man that really lines up in his policies with what you're talking about, order and protection for all of God's people. And so I just thought, this is how this is happening. this is why it's become so divisive and so toxic is because of really one man coming and saying, no, we're not doing this anymore and drawing the line. And we had to choose a side. And it took a few years. But we did it. It was a mandate. And I'm hoping that all of this nonsense is just going to fall away, although they're going to try really, really hard not to let that happen. But it just seems

so common sense now that these laws are there for a reason and for order and for protection? Yeah, that's absolutely right. And it really, as you mentioned, it wasn't very long ago that people like Barack Obama and Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton were all saying, we've got to do something about illegal immigration. We've got to crack down on what's happening at the border. It was Bill Clinton who deported more illegal immigrants than any other president. Barack Obama in just four years of his presidency actually deported more illegal immigrants than Donald Trump did in his four years. And Joe Biden actually wasn't that far behind. The problem, of course, with the Biden administration is that they totally opened up the border.

But strangely enough, he did deport. I think it was over a million illegal immigrants. And so it's very odd. I think that you're exactly right. They've got to find something to make it look like Donald Trump is this evil, fascist guy, when I guess that means that they were evil fascist, Hitler's just a few years ago, too. It is kind of crazy. Yeah.

So tell us, we just have a little bit of time left, but tell us, you know, kind of what you hope folks can get from the book. My personal takeaway was, it's up to us to speak truth and love. We can do this from a biblical perspective. You did it. And we can still be Christ-like to people and love people and yet be truthful because trying to help them out of that hole to Zach's illustration. So what do you hope folks get from the book and also tell us, tell our audience where they can find it?

Yes, my hope is that the next time you encounter this kind of emotional manipulation that tells you, if you don't use this person's preferred pronouns, then they're going to commit suicide or you're an awful person. The next time you hear, if you don't believe in redefining marriage, you're a bigot because you don't want this person to be happy or whatever lie it is that you're confronted with, especially if it is a catastrophic event like COVID or something like George Floyd happens again, God forbid. I want Christians to be prepared because there is going to be a lot of propaganda coming up, especially on this immigration issue. When the Trump administration starts to deport people,

the only thing you are going to hear is how this is not Christ-like. This is not Christian. This is not compassionate. You cannot be a real Christian. and they will find the saddest stories that they possibly can to try to get you to be against deportations in general or against any kind of law enforcement when it comes to immigration. And the Christian, because our instinct is compassion, as it should be, our instinct is to love, our instinct is to feel.

That's okay. But I want us to stop. I want us to take a beat. I want us to check our emotions and to say, but what is actually true? true. What is factually true? What is scientifically true in some cases? What is biblically true? And to be slower to respond, not allow our outrage or our outrage or our compassion to be dictated by social media trends. But I also want this book to equip Christians. They read it. They've got the facts. They've got the background, the history of things like abortion. They feel fully equipped to have

that conversation, but to be able to speak the truth and love in a way that is persuasive. Yes, this book is a guidebook, but it was also meant to persuade Christians. I wanted to make the case to Christians that the progressive perspective on these issues are bad or harmful or wrong. Here's why, and here's how you can tell other people why. So that's the point of the book, and I love hearing from people that it's helped them in that way. praise God, and I just hope it continues to do so. You can get it wherever books are sold. I know it's at Barnes & Noble. I think it should be at Hobby Lobby, but of course you can get it on Amazon and go to toxicempathy.com. You'll find all the places where it's sold.

I said you are our favorite blaze hosts. You're one of our more articulate Christian spokesman, and we appreciate what you do. It's not just the book. Check her out on Relatable as well. Toxic Empathy. Thank you for your boldness. too. Thank you for your courage. Well, y'all too. And thank you so much. I'm so glad to have people like you in this fight. It makes

me feel a lot better. Same with us. All right. We'll see you next time, Malley. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for listening to the Unashamed podcast. Help us out by rating us on iTunes. And don't miss an episode by subscribing on YouTube and be sure to click that little bell to get notified

about new episodes. And for even more content that you won't get anywhere else, subscribe to Blaze TV at blazTV.com slash unashamed.