Online pop psychology has a simple solution for every relationship problem. Love and prudence call us to something more complicated and better.
Everyone on social media is imposing their limits. Everyone is eliminating toxicity from their life. Everyone is prioritizing their own healing journey and giving up one-sided relationships. Everyone is disarming the narcissist, protecting their space, eliminating that number, no contact. Or at least that’s how it feels.
There is a self-help mode., overwhelmingly generated and reinforced online, which I call the “leave them” school of thought. It solves all problems with an elegant, unified simplicity that physicists can only dream of: Just let them. Whether it’s your mom not respecting your parenting rules, your boyfriend who said something hurtful, or your friend who criticized you twice in a row, you know what you should do: leave them. Cut them.
Online conversations about “discarding” are rarely about the church, but the church (universal, if not always a specific local congregation) is a highly susceptible target for dismissal. The universal church is full of sinners, and particular churches bring together otherwise disparate people in the work of governing a community and discussing deeply sensitive and important issues; They often comprise a complex emotional landscape where everyday frustrations mix with stories of abuses of power (or worse). It would be surprising if the “leave them” school of emotional hygiene had No He headed to the church.
It’s not hard to see why this school of advice has gained traction. On the one hand, it adapts very well to the Internet, where we encounter each other’s interpersonal problems from far away. Without being deeply rooted in the real-life context of the problem…
