Bible Question:
Hi again, Hank! I'm thinking mainly of what they call "toxic" relationships. Did you ever know someone who was a constant downer; who knew how to push your buttons, and did so regularly; who always seemed to bring a frown rather than a smile; who would not tell a lie, but would continually shade the truth to keep you confused and off-balance? Someone with whom you might have spent hours, days, month, years, hashing out all the ins and outs, trying to untangle the web, only for nought? Someone who is a constant and considerable drain, who costs you sleep, work, and other responsibilities, without any improvement in the relationship? That's the kind of toxic relationship I'm talking about. It's not a clear-cut thing -- a good case could be made for sticking with it. But the very thought fills me with such an immense weariness that I feel I could collapse on the spot. Yet weariness is no excuse, right? "I can do all things through Him who strengthens me" (Phil 4:13) I am in just such a toxic relationship. Or rather, I have just ended it (I think -- I have done it so many times now, I've lost count). When I end it, I feel guilty -- agape love should have been stronger than that, shouldn't it??? But when I'm in it, I feel guilty for letting it sap all the resources, energy, time, etc. that I could be putting to much better use... Needing to be free, Cheryl |
Bible Answer: Cheryl: You're corresponding with no psychologist! I took a course in psychology in college but didn't learn enough about it even to be dangerous :-) In my career as a insurance sales manager, the most agonizing experiences where the times when I had to make the decision to let an employee go. I suppose that in some sense it could be viewed as a "toxic" relationship. In private life, and certainly in my marriage, I've never really had what I would call a toxic relationship, although there have been persons whose company I've avoided like the plague for various reasons. But I believe it is possible to love our fellow human beings and to be willing to help those who are in need as Christ would have us do without allowing ourselves to become so vulnerable to their negative influence on our lives that it drains us mentally and emotionally. This is not a healthy situation, and I do not for a moment believe that Christians are required to subject themselves to it. I could be very wrong, but what you describe sounds very much like co-dependence, and that's something that is not desirable. Living a Christian life, telling others about Jesus, and being the best example that one can of the changed life that Jesus can bring about in a human being -- these things are the goals for which I aim. But I try to avoid to the best of my ability the bad emotional entanglements, the "toxic" relationships, the undesirable "soul ties" that have the capacity to lead me off course and to thwart what efforts I exert to be, in some small measure, an effective Christian. I yield now to other, wiser Christian brothers and sisters of the forum who may well have more light than I to shed on this subject. --Hank |