When everyone's toxic, no one is okay.

For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street with The Point.

This month in the Atlantic, writer Caitlin Tiffany described a conflict with a friend over which Lord Album was best.

A slammed door signaled the end of their relationship, and then a text to Tiffany's boyfriend described her as toxic.

I had rarely heard the word used offline and then only semi-ironically. And in regard to

people who were objectively terrible, she wrote, I never had to consider whether it was a word

that could be applied to me. Well, the story epitomizes the relational crisis that faces our culture.

Of course, there are plenty of situations that require boundaries, distance, and healthy confrontation,

but our culture-wide turned inward and prioritizing our own sense of self over everything else has escalated

relational conflicts quickly. Next comes an accusation of toxicity, which tends to like specificity

or meaning. Missing on all this are three virtues. Humility and awareness that all is not centered on us,

resilience, the courage to face challenges rather than avoid them, and forgiveness, the expression of

grace for the good of the other. Without those things, there's no way forward. For the Colson Center,

I'm John Stone Street with The Point.