[Faith-Talk] Toxic people. When to walk away.

Sat Oct 10 18:59:41 UTC 2020

Toxic People-When to walk away

Jesus didn’t let Judas’s toxicity become His. — Gary L. Thomas

when We Can’t Walk Away

by Gary L. Thomas from When to Walk Away

when we can walk away from toxic people, we probably and usually should.
But when financial necessity, work obligations, family relationships, or
even the accomplishment of our God-given mission necessitates that we find
a way to live or work with a toxic person, we can learn much by following
Jesus’ example with Judas.

JESUS AND JUDAS

Though Jesus often walked away and let others walk away, He obviously and
clearly kept one toxic person very close to His side — His betrayer, Judas.
Let’s focus on three key strategies, based on Jesus’ interaction with
Judas, for how we can live with or work alongside toxic people without
going crazy ourselves. 

Jesus Didn’t View His Mission as Stopping Toxic People from Sinning 

Maybe it seems more obvious to you, but it was startling to me when I
realized Jesus knew Judas was a thief and never chose to stop Him. John
clues us in: 

One of [Jesus’] disciples, Judas Iscariot, who was later to betray Him,
objected, ‘Why wasn’t this perfume sold and the money given to the poor? It
was worth a year’s wages.’ He did not say this because he cared about the
poor but because he was a thief; as keeper of the money bag, he used to
help himself to what was put into it. — John 12:4-6

If John knew Judas was a thief, Jesus knew Judas was a thief. In fact,
Jesus knew that Judas was worse than a thief. In John 6:70, Jesus said, 

Have I not chosen you, the Twelve? Yet one of you is a devil!” (He meant
Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, who, though one of the Twelve, was later
to betray Him.)

Jesus knew Judas was toxic. He could have stopped Judas from stealing and
His future betrayal by kicking Him out of their group at any time. 

But He didn’t. Why? Jesus kept the bigger mission in mind. To seek first
God’s Kingdom, He had to raise up a band of disciples. He also had to die
on the cross. He wasn’t waylaid by individual battles of piety with His
disciples, as we are prone to do with people around us. Addressing Judas’s
thievery would be like a neurosurgeon clipping someone’s fingernails. There
were more important issues at hand. And Jesus’ mission was not to stop
everybody from sinning. 

This is actually a freeing word for believers. Your mission is not to
confront every sin you hear or know of, even among your perhaps toxic
family members or coworkers. Of course, if you’re a parent of a child still
living at home, confronting sin is an appropriate part of spiritual
training.

But at extended family gatherings, with hard-hearted friends and certainly
coworkers, our job isn’t to be “sin detectives” who discover how others are
messing up and then unleash havoc by sharing our opinions with those who
don’t want to hear them. 

Jesus could have spent all twenty-four hours of every day trying to
confront every one of His disciples’ sins. “Peter, put away that anger!”
“Thomas, you’re still doubting Me, aren’t you?” “Thaddeus, you’re
people-pleasing again. Nobody likes a suck-up.” 

Instead, He focused on training and equipping reliable people. Focusing on
others’ sin makes you focus on what’s toxic. Focusing on training makes you
focus on what is good and on who is reliable. The latter is a much more
enjoyable and ultimately much more productive life. 

Because our goal is to seek first God’s Kingdom and righteousness, and to
seek out reliable people in the process, we’ve got to let a few things
slide right by us. 

That uncle who brings another woman half his age to Thanksgiving dinner?
Not our problem. The coworker who had too much to drink at the office
party? If we’re not the boss, that’s not our concern. Besides, one sin is
never the issue. Alienation from God, shattered psyches, unhealed and
unaddressed hurts — those are the real issues. 

Feel free to enjoy people and love them without having to serve as their
conscience. 

When asked sincerely, speak the truth. Just know that merely witnessing sin
in your presence doesn’t require you to act as prosecuting attorney, judge,
and jury. 

*

Keep the bigger picture in mind. Instead of upending the holiday gathering
by making sure everyone knows you disapprove of what that child, cousin,
uncle, or parent is doing, find a hungry soul to quietly encourage, bless,
inspire, and challenge. Find the most “reliable” relative and invest in
them. 

Jesus Didn’t Let Judas’s Toxicity Become His 

How much money would you spend to get an hour to ask Jesus all the
questions you’ve ever wanted to ask Him? 

What would it be worth to you to go back to the first century and spend an
entire weekend with Jesus, watching Him perform miracles, listening to His
teachings, participating in private conversations, watching Him pray and
interact with others? 

I’m guessing, if you’re reading a book like this, a whole lot. All of which
makes Judas’s betrayal seem all the more ungrateful. Jesus gave him a front
row seat to the most significant life ever lived, and Judas sold Him out. 

And yet at the Last Supper, when Jesus washed His disciples’ feet, Jesus
made sure that Judas was still present. In a picture the sheer wonder of
which leaves me in awe, Jesus used the two holiest hands that have ever
existed, the two most precious hands in the history of humankind, the hands
pierced for our salvation — Jesus took those exquisite hands and washed the
feet of His toxic betrayer. 

Even in the face of ungratefulness and malice, Jesus kept the door open to
relational reconciliation. He loved Judas to the end, essentially saying, 

“You can’t make Me hate you. Your toxicity won’t become My toxicity.” 

Just as astonishing to me is what happened during the act of betrayal. When
Judas walks up to Jesus to hand Him over to the soldiers, Jesus looks at
Judas and says, 

Do what you came for, friend. — Matthew 26:50

Friend? How about skunk? How about snake? Jesus said “friend” because Jesus
didn’t have a toxic molecule in His body. There was nowhere for toxicity to
take root. God is radically for people. He wants everyone to come to a 

knowledge of the truth (1 Timothy 2:4). As His followers, we also must be
for everyone, even if we oppose what they’re doing. If we must live and
work with toxic people, our call is to make sure their toxicity doesn’t
become ours. We don’t treat them as they treat us. We don’t offer evil in
exchange for evil. We love. We serve. We guard our hearts so that we are
not poisoned by their bad example.

* 

Jesus Spoke Truth to Crazy 

While Jesus invited Judas back into relationship until the very moment of
betrayal, washing his feet and even calling him friend, He never pretended
that what Judas was doing wasn’t toxic. In fact, He warned Judas at the
Last Supper that if he were to go through with his plans, things wouldn’t
end well for him: 

Woe to that man who betrays the Son of Man! It would be better for him if
he had not been born. — Mark 14:21

When Judas kissed Him in Gethsemane, Jesus replied,

Are you betraying the Son of Man with a kiss? — Luke 22:48

When working around toxic people, you don’t have to pretend they’re not
toxic. You don’t have to pretend they are well-meaning but perhaps
misguided. 

The reason this is good news is that it helps preserve our sanity. Toxic
people are experts at twisting things, making us feel crazy for admitting
the truth (what counselors call gaslighting). But as followers of Jesus, we
are committed to the truth because we are committed to Jesus, who said, 

I am the way and the truth and the life. 

— John 14:6, emphasis added

Without truth as a refuge, interacting with crazy people can start to make
you feel crazy. But God is a God of order. 

Craziness is a clear sign of toxicity. 

* 

This will sound like such a cliché, but I’ve found that extra praying
brings some level of sanity to a situation that feels crazy. There’s
something about spending time talking to and listening to the God of truth
that restores sanity when you’re forced to spend time in a place that makes
you feel like you’re losing your mind. 

As we trust that God understands all that is truly going on, and as we
remember that God is the only one capable of bringing everything to
account, we can rest in His understanding, promise, and protection: 

Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and
petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of
God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your
minds in Christ Jesus. — Philippians 4:6-7

Takeaways 

•             Sometimes we can’t walk away but have to learn how to live or
work around toxic people. This will require us to become stronger than
we’ve ever been before.

•             Don’t try to control a controller. Work around them as you
are required to, but don’t let their ups and downs become your ups and
downs. Keep a healthy level of distance between the two of you.

•             Keep first things first. Our job isn’t to stop people from
sinning. Focus on investing in reliable people.

•             Guard against letting someone else’s toxicity tempt you to
respond in a similarly toxic fashion. We can’t control what toxic people do
and say, but we can control what we do and say.

•             Don’t allow someone who is ruining their life to ruin yours
as well. Leave work at work (or family drama at family gatherings).

•             Thank God that we never have to pretend crazy isn’t crazy. We
live by the truth. We don’t have to pretend toxic people aren’t toxic; we
just have to learn a nontoxic way of interacting with them.

Excerpted with permission from When to Walk Away by Gary L. Thomas,
copyright The Center for Evangelical Spirituality.

"Speak in such a way that others love to listen to you.

Listen in such a way that others love to speak to you."

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