Throughout my ministry, I have made it a practice to meet with professional counselors. I am grateful for wise brothers skilled in Scripture and relational matters to whom I can turn when I need direction. One such instance was when I needed guidance for dealing with a situation that was eating me up emotionally. At one point, my older, wiser friend said, “George, you must realize that this person is toxic for you.” While I was initially startled by the language, the label helped me deal with the situation in a healthier and more loving way. What follows is my attempt to take what I have learned about dealing with toxic relationships from wise counsel and Scripture and relate it to you.
It seems to me that a person may be considered toxic when, despite your best efforts to love them, they drain you of emotional life. The healthier person in such a relationship tends to make more and more efforts to provoke the other to reciprocate his or her love, only to be constantly spurned or only occasionally rewarded with a pleasant response. The healthier person can become consumed with thoughts of how to jumpstart the other’s love or make them healthy. Eventually, the healthy person can devolve to the point of thinking that he or she cannot be fulfilled until the other person responds appropriately. If nothing interrupts the cycle, they become co-dependent on each other’s misery and destructiveness.
Even if a person could be considered toxic, we are never free not to love. So the question I have been helped to ask is, “How do I love a toxic person redemptively?” Considering the relationship between David and Saul has been a helpful guide in that quest. All the important ideas to which that my counselor friend has led me can be illustrated in David and Saul’s toxic relationship. They can even be found in one text: Psalm 57.
Validation
The first thing each of us needs is to know truth. We need to know if what we are feeling is true or false. Just because we feel like we are being wronged does not mean we are. One reason the Bible prescribes that we take another person with us to meet with someone we feel has mistreated us is to establish whether our perspective is correct (Mt. 18:15, 16). It could be that the third party says, “Hey, Joe, after listening to both sides, it is clear that you are the one whose perspective is wrong, not the other guy!”
On the other hand, it is possible that a third party will validate that your hurt feelings should hurt. It is like a physician who says, “Yes, your arm should be hurting—it is not psychosomatic—because you broke your humerus!” Maybe David thought early on after he heard the first spear from Saul whiz past his ear, “Is it just me, or does Saul hate me?” In Psalm 57, we hear God’s validation of David’s suspicion: “He sends from heaven and saves me, rebuking those who hotly pursue me; God sends his love and faithfulness” (vs. 3). God was not indulgent with David; he nailed him when he was wrong (see 2 Samuel 12:1-14, for instance). But here, by defending David against his enemies, he confirmed that David was being wronged. What we need is what David always got from God, sometimes directly by revelation but usually through biblical counselors, regarding relationships: truth.
In my case, when I laid out to my friends all that was happening in a particular relationship, they all validated that I should be feeling pain. Not only that, some pressed me to embrace the pain more realistically. As one said, “What you have lost here in this relationship is more painful than physical death because the sweetness of the relationship is gone, but the person is still alive.” That conflicting reality was a painful one I had to embrace and consciously and prayerfully allow myself to grieve. In other words, truth about a toxic relationship can be an additional, painful, shocking, and new revelation, not mere validation of what you suspected.
But when it comes from Christ through his Word and from those who know and live Christ’s Word, it will be true. And Jesus assured that his purpose in revealing truth to us is ultimately to set us free (Jn. 8:31, 32, 36). To change the metaphor, we could say that toxic people enslave and kill, while true people liberate and enliven.
Hope
The second perspective necessary for loving a toxic person redemptively is hope. Hope of course is the assurance that God will heal us and all things in the future eschaton (Ro. 8:18-25). Psalm 57 is full of hope. David knew that God had a purpose for him personally and it would be accomplished (vs. 2). How was he so sure? Because God is faithful (vs. 10), God is loving (vs. 10), and God is all powerful (vss. 5, 11). That trivium of attributes combines to produce unshakable hope in suffering.
Paul assures us that not only is there hope for the Christian in the midst of suffering, but also that suffering reinforces our conviction of future hope (Ro. 5:1-4). Furthermore, he explains that the reason suffering increases our hope is that in the experience of it, we can become more keenly aware of God’s love “poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit” (Ro. 5:5). Anyone who has kept their eyes on Christ while suffering will attest that there is a sense of God’s nearness and love more palpable than at any other time in life. More than one person has told me that the experience of God’s love was so powerful in the middle of their suffering that they almost lamented that the suffering had passed. Another friend once put it this way: “The pressure I feel in my suffering must be the tightening embrace of my Father.”
But the Scriptures assure us that God gives iterative confirmations of hope in this life, too. There are periods of relief. David was confident that the “disaster” with Saul would pass (Ps. 57:1). Elsewhere he said, “For his anger lasts only for a moment, but his favor lasts a lifetime, weeping may remain for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning” (Ps. 30:5). Similarly, Isaiah assured his people, “When a farmer plows for planting does he plow continually? Does he keep on breaking up and harrowing the soil?” (Is. 28:24). The point is that God gives periodic relief even in toxic relationships which may be incurable in this life, and those periods must be cherished as foretastes of eternal hope.
A family member once called to ask me a theological question, which is a rare occurrence in my family. It was an encouraging question from someone whose salvation I doubted. She had been severely wounded by the rejection of another family member who also claims to be a Christian. She asked me, “Will heaven cure this relationship? Will heaven erase this animosity, or will we have to live with this pain forever?” When I assured her that heaven will put everything back together, she said with great relief, “Okay then, I can hang on and wait for that.”
This is one of the many reasons the gospel of Jesus Christ is good news. If we (sinners that we are) can be reconciled to a holy God, then surely he can heal every other form of relational pain. So what do we do in the meantime? Again, Paul practically directs: “Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction and faithful in prayer” (Ro. 12:12).
Perspective
By the Spirit’s guidance, David was able to distinguish between Saul’s actions and Saul’s person. That is, he recognized that Saul, whom he called “the Lord’s anointed,” did evil when an evil spirit came on him (1 Sa. 18:10, 11). While Saul acted in evil ways, he was not evil personified; only the devil is. That is why David held out hope that Saul could change if he repented. David knew that Saul could do good if he submitted to the power of God’s Spirit rather than give in to evil spirits. At times, there was a glimmer of such hope, but it proved only to be the seed that fell on thorny ground and lived only temporarily (1 Sa. 24:16-22). If we allow ourselves to believe that someone is the devil rather than a person that just acts at the devil’s behest, we will quit praying for him or her, and we will quit reaching toward them redemptively.
Boundaries
Having said that, in order to remain healthy that we may be of redemptive help to our toxic friends (and that we may continue blessing the healthier ones around us, too), it is important nonetheless to maintain boundaries. David kept a mountain between Saul and himself when Saul was trying to kill him (1 Sa. 23:26). And even after Saul apparently repented and expressed humble gratitude for David’s mercy, David and his men did not go back to Saul’s home but rather to the “stronghold” (1 Sa. 24:22). David feared that Saul could give in to evil again and pursue his harm, and sure enough, Saul did.
God himself puts limits on hell’s destructiveness. He does not allow hell to exercise all of the evil it has potential for. Therefore, when we put limits on another’s ability to do harm to others or ourselves, we are only imitating God’s mercy. C.S. Lewis captured that fact in his brief poem, “Divine Justice,” which appears in Pilgrim’s Regress:
God in His mercy made
The fixed pains of Hell.
That misery might be stayed,
God in His mercy made
Eternal bounds and bade
Its waves no further swell.
God in His mercy made
The fixed pains of Hell.
In the course of our conversations, my friend reminded me that in C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce, a book about the chasm between heaven and hell, he imagines a conversation between himself and George MacDonald. Lewis asks why the “gray people” (hell’s citizens who were allowed to visit heaven) were not allowed to stay in heaven. MacDonald answers, “You would not give hell the right to veto heaven would you?” By limiting someone’s ability to do evil, we are upholding heaven’s standards. If someone chooses to imbibe his or her own toxicity, let them, but do not give them veto power over heaven by allowing their poison to affect you.
Repentance
Regardless of how we set boundaries (always with the help of biblical counsel), we must remain in a posture of repentance ourselves. Just as our toxic friends are subject to evil’s influence, so are we. David’s friends helped him evaluate the motives of his heart. And David acknowledged that he had “prepared” his heart before the Lord (Ps. 57:7, “prepared may be a better translation than “steadfast,” as the ESV has it). At major junctures of my emotional pilgrimage in life, I have been faced with the same difficult question Jesus posed to the man by the pool in John 5, “Do you want to get well?” In my heart of hearts, I have always found that question challenging, because there is a part of me that would always prefer to be the martyr. Depressed people can enjoy the attention and privilege they receive. Abused people can enjoy wallowing in their pity. And victims of toxicity can enjoy always having a prayer request that makes people feel sorry for them.
I have worked with several unequally yoked couples whose marriage was rocked when the unbelieving spouse came to Christ. One couple even divorced because the believer ultimately did not like the change. She preferred the pity she received from having an unsaved husband. The Lord has been merciful in pushing me to repentance when I would have preferred to stay in my self-pity. And he has to keep pushing me to repentance when I would prefer that a toxic person not repent, lest I lose a reason for people to feel sorry for me.
Freedom to Love
What is most striking about David’s psalm is the exuberance of his praise, even while he is describing the hot pursuit of his enemies. David is able to live in freedom, joy, worship and love, because he has hidden himself in God’s protective boundaries, which allows him to focus on the abundance and faithfulness of God’s love rather than on the evil of his enemies. And as David’s interactions with Saul demonstrate, such refuge becomes a stronghold out of which we can attack with love. It is not a dark cave of self-pity.
Our goal is for the “light of our good deeds to shine before men so that they will glorify our Father” (Mt. 5:16). That will mean that our “righteousness must exceed” that of righteous pretenders who only love those who love them back. Boundaries, limits, and forthright dealings with toxic people must ultimately be for the sake of loving them boldly. That is the kind of excessive righteousness that can only be explained by the love of a heavenly Father within us—one who demonstrated his love by sending his Son for us while we were still his enemies (Ro. 5:8).