Christian: Stop Falling for Weaponized Empathy

For all the gullible Christians angrily venting about ICE, your Christian love is not pure. You're functioning as agents of chaos.

Weaponized empathy is everywhere right now. And Christian, you have got to stop being so gullible and falling for it.

Seriously, your naivete might feel warm, nice, friendly, and loving. But that’s not how true Christian love works.

I saw a post by the radical progressive “pastor” Benjamin Cremer that was getting shared a lot on Facebook. The post listed all the “un-Christlike things” he claims that ICE is supposedly doing, such as using “children as bait,” “shooting unarmed protesters,” “teargassing families,” and “terrorizing immigrant communities and people of color.”

Image of the five year old boy that was detained by ICE. False reports quickly spread that he was “arrested,” when in reality he was abandoned by his father and ICE officers cared for him and looked after him.

The whole post went on and on like this, dripping with moral outrage and emotional manipulation. It was a textbook emotional ambush. No argument, no evidence, just big feelings.

What troubles me is that so many Christians were sharing this as though it were wise and insightful. But it’s not—not in the slightest.

The logical holes were so massive you could drive a truck through them. But the author wasn’t making a case for his perspective based on biblical reasoning. His case was based entirely on feelings, and church people fall for that kind of thing all the time.

False teaching almost always bypasses the mind and works directly on the emotions. That’s why scripture warns us to watch out for it. Paul says false teachers “cause divisions and create obstacles” by using “smooth talk and flattery” to “deceive the hearts of the naive” (Rom 16:17-18). That’s exactly what Benjamin Cremer was doing in his post.

He was using emotional manipulation to make error feel like love. It works like a charm on naive people.

A recent viral post by Benjamin Cremer

That’s a big problem in the modern church. Too many people are gullible, and gullible Christians are causing a lot of harm in the church. These people aren’t blue-haired radical leftists we see at ICE protests in Minneapolis. No, they are ordinary Christians who sit next to you in church on Sunday but are led by their emotions. They are the nicest people you’d ever meet. They just don’t have the stomach to face hard realities. They think being “Christlike” is whatever makes them feel good.

But here’s the truth: it isn’t Christlike to be gullible. It isn’t Christlike to believe and share debunked propaganda. It isn’t Christlike to be led by your emotions. It isn’t Christlike to outsource your critical thinking skills to the left-wing activists in the mainstream media.

So why are Christians so gullible? It’s because they’ve been trained to think “love” means whatever it feels like in their happy place. They assume Jesus just wants us to be nice and get along and never do unpleasant things like hold people accountable for their actions. They equate “love” with their feelings. They assume Jesus wants them to go around and feel sorry for people, no matter what they’ve done to bring harm upon themselves, because Jesus is all compassion and zero accountability. And if people are held accountable in ways that cause them pain, then that is not being “Christlike.”

This thinking is wrongheaded. Biblical love isn’t about pointing your emotions in a particular direction. Biblical love is defined by actions and attitudes prescribed in scripture. How you feel about it is secondary.

Look carefully at Paul’s prayer from the beginning of Philippians. He says, “And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ” (Philippians 1:9-11).

First, notice that Paul is praying that their “love may abound more and more.” That’s clear enough. We’re talking about genuine Christian love. But love isn’t merely an emotion. Paul describes the kind of love he has in mind.

Second, he prays that their love will abound “with knowledge and all discernment.” That’s important. Christian love is a thinking love. Christian love needs to be well-informed. Christian love is discerning; it makes proper distinctions and draws clear moral boundaries. But why is that important?

Third, these things matter so “you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless.” In other words, we need knowledge and discernment to anchor our love in what is good and right. Or as Paul says, to “approve what is excellent.” This is true Christian love, the kind of love that is “pure and blameless.”

Therefore, love that lacks discernment is not pure and blameless. In fact, undiscerning “love” is not real love. It is all feelings and no wisdom. That’s the kind of irrational, undiscerning, corrupted “love” we’re seeing these days from gullible Christians. They hear sad stories and believe them immediately. They don’t realize they’re being lied to and propagandized. They don’t think in biblical categories; they think in terms of their emotions. They equate “loving the stranger” with open borders. They assume every illegal immigrant is an innocent victim and we’re supposed to just “love” on them, just like Jesus would. Since they genuinely feel sorry for people and don’t want anyone to suffer, they assume that must be what Jesus would want them to do. After all, God is a God of love, and they assume God’s love is just as emotional as theirs. This is love without discernment, which causes a lot of harm.

Biblical love is love PLUS knowledge PLUS discernment. In other words, love requires discernment. Period. Discernment is the rope that keeps people tethered to reality. Without it, love becomes a weapon that evil people use against you. Undiscerning love makes people very easy to manipulate. All you need is a sob story to make people feel sad, and Christians will take up their cause.

Without discernment, love gets twisted into a sentimental monstrosity. For the gullible and undiscerning, this kind of pseudo “love” claims the moral high ground. It does have some rhetorical advantages, which is why so many people fall for it. It sounds biblical enough to convince undiscerning people it must be right. But it’s not. These are not arguments or facts. They are ear-tickling slogans, nothing more.

Just as discerning love is pure and blameless, undiscerning love is impure and blameworthy. Obviously, the unhinged rioters and agitators bear the blame for their actions. But their nice, Christian enablers who feel big feelings of “love” bear some of the blame too. To claim the mantle of Christlikeness in the service of lawlessness is evil, even if the one doing it thinks they are just showing Christian love. Their undiscerning love is just a front for the wickedness they are enabling. So, the blame belongs to those Christians who are so desperate to feel compassionate that they’ll believe anything, question nothing, and call it love.

Christians, we are morally responsible for how we love. We don’t just get to feel sorry for an illegal immigrant and “stand up” for them and call it love. That’s not love, no matter how strongly you feel it. Love does not spread leftist propaganda, “love rejoices with the truth” (1 Cor 13:6).

So, for all the gullible Christians who are angrily venting about ICE, your Christian love is not pure. It is not blameless. You are functioning as agents of chaos. You bear the blame for your irrational outrage, even if you present it as love and care and compassion.

So, I’ll say it again. Being gullible is a sin. Being undiscerning is a morally culpable act. Allowing anti-Christian and anti-American radicals to manipulate you through weaponized empathy is a sin. It is wrong to carelessly wield the name of Christ, making false accusations against law enforcement and making excuses for criminals.

Your emotions and subjective ideas of Christlikeness don’t dictate reality. Truth does. And truth requires discernment, not just feelings. We don’t get to emote all over the place and call it love.

So Christians, stop being gullible. Start being discerning. That’s what real love requires.

This essay was originally published at the Center for Baptist Leadership.

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Update: this essay prompted some discussion on Facebook which ironically ended up illustrating my point. Notice how this commenter bypasses discernment and moves straight to “Jesus calls us to love.” But her idea of love lacks knowledge and discernment. It’s just warm, happy feelings for “the foreigner, the hurting, and those who are scared.” Notice how she assumes the people being loved are victims. What if the foreigner is a violent murderer or rapist? Should we not also love our neighbors by protecting them from those who would do them harm?