Freedom to Love.  What is most striking about David’s psalm is the ebullience 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).

Boundaries:  Having said that, it is important nonetheless to maintain boundaries which will allow us to remain healthy in order to be of redemptive help to our toxic friends, not to mention maintaining our ability to bless the healthier ones around us too.  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 called “Divine Justice” that 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.  

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 will 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 not only that there is hope for the Christian in the midst of suffering, but also that suffering reinforces our conviction of a 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 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 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?” (Ps. 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.

Recently a family member called to ask me a theological question. That 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 can be reconciled to the Father then he can heal every 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).

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 that 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 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. But here he confirmed that David was being wronged by defending him against his enemies. 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 those who know it and live, 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.

Here is my very homespun understanding of a “toxic” relationship. 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. 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 should 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 of the important ideas that my counselor friend has led me to can be illustrated in that toxic relationship. They can even be found in one text, Psalm 57.