At the coming of the New Year, the trend of “New year, New Me” posts scatter social media all with the same message of “This year, I am removing toxic people from my life”. That word toxic grabs attention. Toxic is used as a last effort to make the point that whatever the subject is should be described as the most poisonous and heinous thing in your life. This is where the problem ensues.

What ‘toxic’ means for believers (of the Bible, that is):

First, no person is toxic. Every single person ever is the perfect in the image of God (Gen. 1:27) and he would have no one any other way (Ps. 139:13-14). However, toxicity resides in each one of us, and that is called sin (Rom. 3:23). It is deadly, selfish, lonely, dark and evil and it dooms us to an eternity separated from the One the deepest part of our souls cry out to for saving (Rom. 6:23a, Ps. 42:7).

With that being said, there are lost people who have not been washed clean by the grace obtained through belief in the death and resurrection of Christ. We do not call them toxic because they are not, they are just captives of sin.

To call someone toxic is to devalue the soul, the infinitely loved creation of Almighty God. Even further, to "cut them out" is to leave them to the sin they are a slave to and to withhold from them this precious grace and love God lavished on us through Jesus. There is no greater way ever to express hate than to withhold the saving gospel of Jesus Christ. NONE. (1 John 3:14-15, 4:19-20)

For non-believers:

This applies to you, too. Regardless of the truths above, there are simple human decency codes that we forget to put into action. Such as, we never truly know what someone is going through, or where they have been. We can never fully comprehend why people act the way that they do. The only thing we can do as human beings is to support one another. Find out how to love people in a way they know how to receive it and GO LOVE THEM. “Cutting out the toxics” is not going to make your year better, it will make your circle smaller. But think about life a year from now, if you can look back and say “I loved them even when they did not deserve it, and even when it was hard, and look at where I am now”. You will be a stronger, better person because of it.

Refraining from cutting off people will give you a healthier mindset. By labeling every bad trait in a person as “toxic”, we never give those people room to grow. No matter what they do, they will always be toxic in our eyes. We can combat this as a culture with intentionally looking for the good qualities in people and pointing them out. In doing this, we are creating healthier environments and easing a lot of unneeded tension in the New Year.