Labeling Everyone “Toxic” Is Hurting the Church (and You)

In her 2022 article “That’s it. You’re dead to me.” Atlantic writer Kaitlyn Tiffany examines the popular use of the term “toxic” and its influence in modern culture, particularly among Gen Z. Skye, Kaitlyn, and Esau discuss the distinctions between normal conflict within a community, grievous sins, and abuse, as well as faithful Christian responses to inevitable relational tension. (Full episode: 676: Classroom Culture Wars & the Spirituality of Secular America with Rachel Martin)

Skye: Suddenly, everything is toxic. And once you label things toxic, you're justified in just totally dismissing it. Especially people, especially people. On Instagram and Pinterest, the mantras are ruthless. "There's no better self-care than cutting off people who are toxic for you. Seven tips for eliminating toxic people from your life. Seven ways to cut a toxic friend out of your life."

There's even a Web MD page. There's even a Web MD page about how to identify a toxic person defined as aggressively unhelpful as anyone whose behavior adds negatively and upsets your life. Toxicity is just anyone who interferes with your life. We've kind of lost the idea that part of human experience is dealing with other people.

Kaitlyn: Mm-hmm.

Skye: Some of whom you might love dearly but have moments of friction with.

Esau: Yeah.

Skye: Which is just normal life. And now, because they're impeding your goals, ambitions, or just your feelings, frankly, you can say, "You're toxic. I'm done. Cut 'em off. Cut 'em off. We're done." There are people in non-power dynamic relationships—peer relationships, dating relationships, marriage relationships, whatever—and they're just in conflict. They're just having a tension, a problem, a disagreement. But it gets labeled as toxic or abusive, which then cuts off the possibility of reconciliation, of understanding, of forgiveness, of mutual care. Because that's not possible. It's just, "This makes me feel bad. Therefore it must be abuse or toxicity, and I can run away from it." All right. Yeah. Esau, pastor, how do you see this toxic language coming into the church in a way which may or may not be harmful?

Esau: One of the things that I loved about when I was a youth leader in New England: the awkward kid could come to youth group. If you didn’t have a social circle anywhere else, you could come into the church and it would accept you. I think we’ve lost some of that sense of living together across difference. And dealing with brokenness, and even social awkwardness as a part of what it means to be in community. Maybe the church can become the place where people aren’t tossed aside when they make mistakes.

Skye: And as it relates to the church, we’ve all had our eyes opened to the enormous amount of abuse that existed for generations—ignored, covered up, brushed under the rug. And yet I wonder if now, having those experiences, people come into a new congregation and the moment they experience discomfort, the moment they experience fallen people and brokenness, they get triggered and label it toxic. Then they walk away. There is a difference between genuine abuse and just broken human communities.

Esau: Yeah. I wouldn’t say abuse—abuse is a whole other conversation. The tricky part is there are at least three categories. There are sins that are annoyances. Then there are grievous sins. And then there’s abuse. In other words, someone could wrong you in a significant way that is not abusive—it just kind of sucks. And so sometimes, even in a church, there are significant disagreements that we have to try to work our way through as a manifestation of God’s ability to reconcile things.

What used to happen is we would just say, "Work through it," no matter how bad it was. We didn’t give people the mental out if they were being abused. We didn’t consider that sometimes the right thing to do is to leave. That trapped people in abusive relationships. Now it’s almost the opposite. We’re so clear: "If you’re in a bad situation, you can leave." But I’m not sure we’ve articulated a good theology of how to work through non-abusive but complicated situations—things that will mark all of our lives as Christians and as human beings.

Skye: Yes. And in this article, it’s not talking about marriages.

Esau: No, it’s not. 

Skye: It’s talking about ordinary workplace relationships, friendships, social engagements. It started with a simple disagreement—I think about a TV show—and someone wrote off the other person: "You’re toxic," and never talked to them again. That kind of stuff is insane.

Esau: I get called toxic in my friend thread because I’m the one LeBron fan. Sometimes I’m worried I’m gonna get kicked out of the friend group. But that’s another conversation.

Skye: Okay. Before we go, Kaitlyn, final word on this. What do Christian voices have to contribute to this dilemma—the writing off of everything and everyone as toxic?

Kaitlyn: It kind of relates to what we were saying earlier about how lonely and disconnected we are. Part of the reason this phenomenon makes sense—why internet-speak bleeds into real life—is because the setting was already primed by our disconnection, our loneliness, our lack of community. If you haven’t been brought up in a rich community, especially full of people you’re not related to or living with, you don’t have experience working through conflict. I even had to learn this as an adult. I was a military kid, moved every one or two years, didn’t have connections to extended family. In college, I realized I’d never been friends with people for four years. You can avoid conflict for a year or two, but by year three or four you either end the relationship or you work something out. I had never considered before that I had to say something hard, because in the past I could just move away.

The church should be a place where we recognize not just the practice of community—potlucks, meals, helping people move—but also something counter-cultural: we don’t choose all our obligations. The liberal idea is that I only take on obligations I choose. But the church believes something kind of insane: I belong to these people, and I discover obligations I didn’t choose. Every Sunday at my church, I’m reminded of this. A baby is baptized, teenagers confirmed, new members welcomed. I didn’t choose to be in community with them. But the gospel asks me to say, "I belong to you," even when I didn’t choose it. There might come a point where the church is abusive or wrong and I do need to leave. But that’s a high bar. Especially in a culture that says, "Cut and run if it gets difficult." The church has the opportunity—though we’ve failed often—to witness to the world that there’s something beautiful here: belonging to each other, discovering obligations not as burdens but as gifts.