Scripture: Romans 12:9-21
Sermon Series: Dealing with Toxic People – Sermon 09
When I was a kid, the scariest monsters were Frankenstein, the Wolfman and Dracula (pictures). So, why would a children’s education program, Sesame Street, (picture) have a vampire as a main character, Count Von Count (picture). Why choose a vampire to teach children how to count?
It’s because of the folklore about vampires. According to folklore, and you’ll want to know this the next time you run into a vampire, one of the ways to get away from a vampire was to take advantage of their arithmomania. Arithmomania is an obsession with counting.
According to the tradition, if you’re running from a vampire, you’re supposed to carry salt so that you can start dropping gobs of salt. Arithmomania causes the vampire to stop and count every granule of salt so that you can escape. Sesame Street did their homework, so they chose a vampire to teach kids how to count, Count Von Count.
Vampires aren’t real but here’s what is real – relational vampires who suck the life out of you. We know them as Toxic People.
This morning we’re concluding our study of Dealing with Toxic People. We’ll return to our study of 2 Samuel in April which is the original “Games of Thrones” with a lot of living with toxic people.
Just in case you need a refresher, WebMD defines a toxic person as anyone whose behavior adds negativity to your life. It might be stress, unpleasantness, difficulty, or conflict. Maybe it’s manipulation or verbal abuse or they repeatedly violate your boundaries. Being around them is exhausting. They suck the life out of you.
Scripture talks about toxic people. 1 Corinthians 15:33 warns, “Do not be misled: ‘Bad company corrupts good character.’” Proverbs 4:16-17 says, “For they cannot sleep unless they have done wrong; they are robbed of sleep unless they have made someone stumble. For they eat the bread of wickedness and drink the wine of violence.”
Yet Jesus tells us to love our neighbor as ourselves (Matthew 22:39). He expands that in Matthew 25, commanding us to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the prisoner, and welcome the stranger as though we’re doing it to Jesus Himself. Jesus died to offer salvation to all sinners, toxic people included. Loving people is a way we introduce or reinforce the life-saving gospel truth in their lives, as well as to have Jesus’ blessing on our own lives.
Pop psychology urges us to cut toxic people out of our lives. Is that right? Is that how Christ-followers are to respond? How did Jesus handle them? What would Jesus say…to a toxic person?
If you look for toxic people in Jesus’ life, you might think of Herod, or Pilate, or the religious leaders. But if you do a deep dive on Jesus’ disciples, you’d find that all of them are toxic to some level. Peter was a control freak. James and John were rage-aholics. The most horrifying one is Judas. Yet, Jesus chose Judas to be one of the twelve. He’s a constant companion over the three years of Jesus’ ministry. He’s almost as close as you can get. But he steals for the three years, embezzling funds that were to support Jesus and the disciples and to feed the poor. He lies and is deceitful. Finally, he sells Jesus out for 30 pieces of silver, the cost of a slave. He’s the ultimate backstabber. His very name has come to mean betrayer. He’s toxic as you can get.
All of us have toxic people in our lives. All of us, because we’re sinners, are toxic to some level. As we tie this series up, what can we learn? What would Jesus say…to a toxic person? If you’re taking notes…
1. Beware of the enticement of hate and bitterness.
Remember the Lay’s Potato Chips (picture) commercial, “No one can eat just one.” It’s the way hate and bitterness are. It grows and grows. Bitterness blows out the candle of joy and leaves the soul in darkness. The constant barrage of dealing with a toxic person is frustrating, sowing seeds of bitterness. It may be intentional or unintentional. They may not mean to hurt you, but you were hurt.
The soil of bitterness is a heart that harbors hostility and does not deal with hurt the biblical way. When someone becomes bitter, the bitterness takes root in the heart and grows deeper. As Hebrews 12:15 warns us, “See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God; that no “root of bitterness” springs up and causes trouble, and by it many become defiled.” The “bitter root” refers to a source of evil or wickedness. A root is small and slow in its growth, but, if it carries poison, it’s malignant and dangerous. Bitterness must be rooted out. The result of tolerating it is that “many” will be defiled, yourself and those you care about. It festers and before we know it, we’re like an old poem that goes like this:
“The whole world is festering with unhappy souls.
The French hate the Germans.
The Germans hate the Poles.
Italians hate Yugoslavs.
South Africans hate the Dutch.
And I don’t like anybody very much.”
It’s easy to say that we should love our enemies. It’s much harder orienting our lives toward this goal. In a recent article in The Hedgehog Review, Alan Jacobs (picture) writes of the pleasures of hate that tugs at Americans: “Many Americans, again as far as I can tell, don’t want to create an environment in which a broad range of perspectives are freely articulated and peacefully debated. They don’t want to be hopeful about the possibilities of America…What many people want, what they earnestly and passionately desire, is to hate their enemies.”
An early church commentator connects love for enemies to holiness and warns of the self-damage hatred causes: “Hate is a spirit of darkness, and wherever it settles in, it besmirches the beauty of holiness…[If you hate your enemy] you have harmed yourself in your soul more than you have harmed him in his body. And perhaps you do not harm him at all by hating him, but you wound yourself without a doubt.”
Usually, it’s the exasperation of dealing with someone toxic that causes us to get irritated, then angry and ultimately bitter. Their toxicity becomes ours as we drown in anger and bitterness. It’s enticing yet deadly for us.
Arnold Jones was highly regarded in his community. He became the object of attack by a handful of people. One of them edited the local newspaper. Week after week, the paper printed lies, half-truths, and innuendoes against him and his family. Finally, he decided to sue, and he won his case.
But his son said at his funeral years later, “He won the court battle. But because he was a Christian, it always bothered him that he couldn’t forgive those people in his heart. I think that’s what finally killed him.” While it may be humanly justified, hatred toward the toxic person always hurts you.
2. Examine your own heart first.
Romans 12:3, “For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned” (Romans 12:3). 2 Corinthians 13:5 echoes this: “Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you fail to meet the test!”
Ours is a world that blames others yet fails to look in the mirror. When it comes to someone toxic, often it’s not them – it’s us, or we at least have some responsibility. It’s why we must be honest and examine our own hearts.
Scripture continually encourages us to examine ourselves. The walls of the Temple of Apollo were inscribed with the words: “Know thyself.” We must know ourselves. Our depraved hearts overflow with self-deception, self-delusion, self-excuse. By God’s Word and Spirit, we can get outside ourselves to sift our inner world of motive and our own souls.
Each of us ought to take our temperature at intervals to see if our spiritual blood is normal. Self-inspection must lead to self-rectification. Sin and failures are not to be brooded over and lamented but to be conquered. Self-examination must not end in penitence and confession. It must go on to amendment and a godly change of life.
Alexander Whyte (picture) was a wonderful Scottish preacher of the late 1800’s. Some traveling evangelists came to Edinburgh to hold a mission and began criticizing the pastors in the city. A man who was present came to see Whyte the next day and said: “I went to hear the evangelists last night and do you know what they said? They said that Wilson was not a converted man.”
Alexander Whyte leapt from his chair in anger. “The rascals,” he said.
The man continued. “That wasn’t all they said. They said you were not a converted man either.” His friend thought that Whyte would be even more angry at that accusation, but he was wrong. Whyte stopped, all the fire went out of him, sinking into his chair, he put his face in his hands. For a moment he didn’t speak. Then, looking up, he said to his visitor: “Leave me, friend, leave me. I must examine my heart.”
It’s easy to sit in church each week never stopping to examine our hearts. Maybe we’re the toxic one? We must stop, get quiet before the Lord when there’s a breakdown in a relationship: I must examine my heart. Is it I, Lord?
3. Persevere to grow in grace.
Stephen Covey (picture) said, “Between what happens to us and how we react to what happens is a space. In that space lies our freedom and power to choose.” There are some Christians who think that God is supposed to protect them from all difficulties. They’ll say, “I just don’t understand why I’m going through these trials. I’m reading my Bible. I’m trying to obey the Lord. Why is He allowing this to happen to me?” Their expectation is that following the Lord is to exempt them from trials.
I don’t know what Bible they’re reading because from cover to cover the Bible makes it clear that godly people often suffer intense trials. Job was the most righteous man on the earth in his day but look at what he suffered. David was a man after God’s own heart, and yet spent the better part of his twenties running for his life from crazy King Saul. Daniel was a faithful, godly prophet, who witnessed boldly about God to pagan kings, and yet as an old man, he’s thrown into the lions’ den. And there are many other examples in the Bible of godly people who suffered terribly.
A benefit of being attacked by toxic people is that God can use them to scour our souls and cultivate spiritual growth in our own lives. 7th century writer and mystic, John Climacus (picture) writes of the three stages through which we must pass as we learn to handle toxic behavior.
The first stage is of blessed patience. This means to accept dishonor with anguish of soul. In this stage, we hate what’s happening to us. It rips us apart. We may lose sleep, but we accept it as necessary and our service to God. We don’t let toxic people hinder us. It hurts us but doesn’t stop us.
The second stage is to be free from pain in the middle of these things. After we go through stage, one, usually facing toxic attacks on multiple occasions, our spiritual muscles will be strengthened. We won’t feel the pain so intensely or at all. We recognize that toxic people will be toxic, and we choose not to let it bother us. We’re not surprised, or even emotionally impacted. This requires being free, not just from toxic people’s opinions, but also from the opinions of others, who may believe the toxic person’s attacks. This stage is a higher level of spiritual maturity that takes perseverance. To get there we must travel through molten episodes of toxic attacks.
The third stage is being able to think of dishonor as praise. Climacus makes stage three sound elusive. Most of us will bounce between stages one and two. However, with a strong sense of mission, we can withstand opposition and see it as success. As Climacus summarizes, “Let the first (those in the first stage) rejoice and the second be strong, but blessed be the third, for he exults in the Lord.”
God uses trials to grow us spiritually. James writes, “My brothers and sisters, consider it nothing but joy when you fall into all sorts of trials, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect effect, so that you will be perfect and complete, not deficient in anything” (James 1:2-4). Oswald Chambers (picture) said, “The best measure of a spiritual life is not its ecstasies but its obedience.”
How can we be joyful in difficulties? It’s because we know that God is testing our faith and using the trials to bring us to maturity. We can rejoice not at the painful experience but at the opportunity for growth. Trials make us better or bitter.
4. Trust the God of hope.
“Rejoice in hope” (Romans 12:12). In his book, Turn My Mourning into Dancing, Henri Nouwen (pictures) told of a solder captured as a prisoner of war. His captors transported him far from his homeland. He felt isolated from country, family, and anything familiar. His loneliness grew as he continued not to hear anything from home. He could not even know if his family was alive or how his country was faring. He lost a sense of anything to live for. But suddenly, unexpectedly, he got a letter. It was smudged, torn at the edges from months of travel. But it said, “We are waiting for you to come home. All is fine here. Don’t worry.” Everything instantly changed. He did the same difficult labor on the same meager rations, but now he knew someone waited for his release and homecoming. Hope changed his life.
Cardiologist McNair Wilson wrote in his autobiography: “Hope is the medicine I use more than any other. Hope can cure nearly anything.”
If Satan can kill your hope, he’s won. God has promised that “His grace is sufficient” (2 Corinthians 12:9). Sometimes God will change your situation. All the time though He will give you the grace to endure. It was enough for Job and for Paul. It’s enough for you. Enduring Christians have an impact that they will probably never know they had on this side of eternity.
How do we persevere? I don’t think there’s any better answer to that question than the one given by the great painter Renoir (picture). In his old age the painter suffered from arthritis, which twisted and cramped his hand. Henri Matisse (picture), his artist friend, watched sadly while Renoir, grasping a brush with only his fingertips, continued to paint, even though each movement caused stabbing pain. Matise asked Renoir why he persisted in painting at the expense of such torture. Renoir replied, “The pain passes, but the beauty remains.” And that’s true of us spiritually as we persevere.
5. Be Jesus when you don’t want to be Jesus.
Jesus kept a very toxic person close to Him, His betrayer Judas. How do He do it?
Jesus didn’t view His mission as stopping toxic people. From the beginning Jesus knew Judas was a thief and never chose to stop him. In fact, Jesus knew that Judas is worse than that. He knew Judas would betray Him, but He kept the bigger mission in mind.
To seek first God’s kingdom Jesus had to develop a band of disciples. He had to die on the cross. He wasn’t distracted by petty battles with His disciples, as we’re prone to do with those around us. Addressing Judas’ stealing would be like a neurosurgeon clipping someone’s fingernails. There are more important issues. This is so freeing. Our mission is not to confront every sin of a toxic family member, coworker or friend.
Jesus didn’t let Judas toxicity become His toxicity. Jesus gave Judas the front row seat to the most significant life ever lived. But Judas still betrayed him and sold him out. It makes Judas’ betrayal more horrible.
At the last supper when Jesus washed His disciples’ feet, Jesus made sure that Judas was present. In a picture of sheer wonder, Jesus used the holiest hands that ever existed, the most precious hands in the history of mankind, the hands pierced for our salvation and Jesus used those hands and wash the feet of His betrayer.
Even in the face of ungratefulness and malice, He kept the door open to reconciliation. He loved Judas essentially saying, “You can’t make me hate you. Your toxicity won’t become mine.” God is radically for people. As His followers, we also must be for everyone, even if we oppose what they’re doing. If we must live or work with toxic people, we must make sure that they’re toxicity doesn’t become ours.
Jesus spoke the truth to crazy. Jesus invited Judas back into a relationship at the very moment of betrayal. He called Judas a friend when he betrayed him with a kiss. If you’re around toxic people, you don’t need to pretend that they’re not toxic. This is good news as it helps preserve our sanity.
Toxic people are experts at twisting things, making us feel crazy for admitting the truth. As followers of Jesus, we’re committed to the truth, because we are committed to Jesus. Without the truth as a refuge, interacting with crazy people can start to make you feel crazy.
You’ll find praying helps bring some level of sanity to a situation where you feel like you’re unbalanced. There’s something about spending time with the Lord and in in His Word that restores sanity if you’re forced to spend time with those who make you feel like you’re losing your grip.
There’s a powerful short story written about Peter. Jesus had been crucified, resurrected and ascended back into heaven. In this short story, Peter has a dream, and, in this dream, he has a vision of Jesus hanging on the cross. Jesus is talking to Peter and in this dream, this is what Jesus says to Peter. “Peter, go to the man who pierced my side with the spear and tell him that you have a better way to my heart. Go to the man who put the crown of thorns on my head and tell him that I have a crown of life for him. Go to the man who lashed my back and tell him that I said that by those stripes, they are healed. Go to the man who hammered the nails into my hands and feet and tell him that my love is a hammer that can break the hardest heart.”
Jesus not only taught this, He lived it. He loved his enemies. He showed kindness to all kinds of people. He spent time with hookers, thieves, drunkards. He spent time with the cultural rejects. When Jesus lives in you, you’ll have a desire to relate to people the same way, the ones that humanly speaking may make your skin crawl. You don’t do these things to become a Christian, you do them because you are a Christian.
What does it mean to be Jesus? After the Civil War was over, the wounds were still raw. One Sunday morning in 1865, a black man entered a fashionable church in Richmond, Virginia. When Communion was served, he walked down the aisle and knelt at the altar. A rustle of resentment swept the congregation. How dare he! After all, believers in that church used the common cup. Suddenly a distinguished layman stood up, stepped forward to the altar, and knelt beside the black man. His name – Robert E. Lee (picture). With Lee setting the example, the rest of the congregation soon followed his lead. But what if he’d been a member of the ACLU? What if he’d been a gangbanger or a member of Black Lives Matter? What if it was a hooker? What if it was a drag queen or someone transgender?
Many from those groups are toxic, yet we must welcome them because it’s what Jesus would do. Some of you have adult children living lifestyles opposite of your faith. One of my close friends has a son who’s struggled with addiction and to support his habit, became a male prostitute. That could happen to any of us. Remember that every person who lives in a way that we may abhor is someone’s child and more important, Jesus died for them. That’s what it means to Be Jesus when maybe you don’t want to be Jesus.
6. Know when to walk away…as a last resort.
This is the part you won’t see on Facebook memes or on Instagram or in the weeds of Reddit’s advice forums—leaving always has a cost: the future you might have had together, the friendship that could have been. It always has some level of pain. The fact that it will hurt someone is not necessarily a reason not to do something. Just know that leaving always has a cost.
In his book, When to Walk Away, Gary Thomas (picture) writes, “Since Jesus came from heaven to walk among us, Christians tend to think that walking away from anyone, or letting anyone walk away from the truth, is a failure on our part. But Jesus walked away or let others walk away…a lot” Thomas counts forty-one such instances of Jesus walking away.
Consider, for example, our Lord’s interactions with Pharisees, who were the “Internet Trolls” of Jesus’ day. They operated out of bad faith and sought to manipulate, trap, and shame Jesus at every turn. How did he respond? Jesus said to his disciples, “Every plant which My heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted. Let them alone. They are blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind leads the blind, both will fall into a ditch” (Matthew 15:13-14).
Then, Jesus taught His disciples, “If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, leave that home or town and shake the dust off your feet” (Matthew 10:14). Jesus isn’t saying to discontinue our gospel witness if a person doesn’t immediately respond. He is saying that if a person exhibits bad-will and wishes to disrupt the mission, we can “move on.”
Toxic people feed off of Christian goodwill. They relish the opportunity to goad Christians into extended “conversation” centering on the rightness of a given Christian’s words or actions. They feed off a Christian’s love for God and will derail that believer’s mission. They’re empowered by Christian sensitivity, using it to spread their own misdirected or malicious agenda.
Like Jesus, we must learn to walk away so we won’t be sidetracked from our mission. A 10-minute social media interaction with a toxic person can take days to recover from, mentally and emotionally. A month’s worth of face-to-face interaction with a toxic person can hurt our mental focus for quite a bit of time. God doesn’t want us to pour our good intentions into toxic people. If a person is an roadblock in the way of who God wants me to be and what God wants me to do, I have God’s permission to walk away.
Conclusion
There are no easy answers on how to deal with toxic people. Let me end with some practical steps of dealing with a toxic person.
Pray for the Toxic Person. Never underestimate the power of prayer. Scripture tells us prayer is mighty and can move mountains. Jesus has the power to transform the heart and life of anyone. Pray for that transformation. Pray they heed the call of Christ to be loving, kind, merciful, and true.
Be kind to the Toxic Person. Show them kindness. Galatians 5:22 lists kindness among the fruits of the Spirit. Those who have the love of Christ in their hearts will show this trait. For that toxic person in your life, by God’s grace, always be kind.
Love the Toxic Person extravagantly. In Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, He told people to forget the old ways of personal vengeance. Instead, Jesus encouraged wild, extravagant love, the kind of love He later exemplified by dying on the cross for us. Extravagant love does many things. It can open people’s eyes and make them wonder why you’re doing this. It can introduce them to Christ and make them feel shame about their own, perhaps unkind and unloving actions — shame that perhaps leads to repentance.
Forgive the Toxic Person. Jesus died on the cross to pay the debt of our sins so we could have eternal life. He did this because of the vast and inexplicable love that He has for us. We’re to model that as best as possible, including when it’s not easy. That’s called grace.
Forgiveness is love cloaked in liberation — we hand off the pain we experienced at the hands (or lips) of another to the Lord, who takes it from there. The gift of forgiveness can transform our lives and remind us how blessed we are that God forgives us for our sins that are toxic to Him.
So, how are you doing at Being Jesus to the toxic people in your life? Is God pleased with your interactions? Do you put feet to your feelings? Is your love for others an “action sort of love?” We’ll never be able to do it in our own strength. It’s why we need the gospel in our own lives.
You can’t live like Jesus unless you know Jesus personally as your Lord and Savior. You might be able to put on some politeness or niceness. But what we’re talking about is supernatural. For the Christ-follower, the Holy Spirit gives us the strength and lives through us to be Jesus even to toxic people that on our own we’d despise. To be like Jesus begins with knowing Him personally.