Cutting off “toxic” people is social media’s go-to mental health advice. But Jesus commands us to seek conversation and reconciliation.
Toxic. Abusive. Oppressive. Unhealthy.
I’d never heard those words used so often as I have in the last four years. At times, it has seemed like everyone I know is deciding to handle conflict with friends, colleagues, and churches by deciding to leave.
Maybe some of this is a generational shift as younger generations embrace the idea of “breaking the cycle,” or perhaps some of it stems from how the COVID-19 pandemic led many of us to reassess our lives. And nowhere has the pattern been clearer than on social media, where people have filmed themselves leaving their jobs, written posts torching the churches they’re exiting, and shared video diaries explaining how a breakup would help them heal.
For many, leaving has become the gold standard of mental health—and staying has become suspect, maybe even delusional.
Leaving and staying, though, are neutral terms. Leaving isn’t inherently good, and staying isn’t inherently bad. We need to better examine the ways in which we’re doing both. Instead of leaving (or staying) by default, we need to learn to pursue healing, accountability, repentance, forgiveness, and endurance.
Let me start with a necessary caveat: If you’re in a church, organization, or relationship that is hurting you, leaving may well be the right choice. It’s impossible to give universal advice here, but I am not suggesting that anyone live under abuse. In a large organization, if a domineering leader isn’t even available to talk, let alone repent if needed, it likely makes sense to leave outright.
My concern here is the more ambiguous situations, the situations where we too often make decisions based on our imagination and assumptions …
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