The Walk Away Disciples

We're featuring my book When to Walk Away: Finding Freedom from Toxic People this week and next, as I'm also preaching on this topic at Cherry Hills Community Church. The sermons (which we'll post on Fridays for all subscribers) offer a general introduction to Jesus' strategy of walking away from toxic people rather than continually engaging them. Here, on the paid side, I'm offering two chapters that needed to be cut from the original book due to its length. If you have not noticed, books tend to be getting shorter and shorter due to costs and attention spans. In this case, the publisher liked the chapters but believed focusing on Jesus was sufficient; readers didn't need another chapter talking about how the disciples did the same. But I was blown away while studying how earnestly Paul, Peter and even John (the apostle of love) taught and practiced the art of walking away. So I'm happy to share that here this week on the blog, as I think these three men make some very excellent and helpful points about how to handle toxic people.

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The apostle Paul was about as zealous as any person has ever been in spreading the message of Jesus, but when he faced stubborn resistance, he did what Jesus did: he walked away.

He didn’t run away at the first sign of resistance. He reasoned and pled with many inquirers. He even seems to put up with toxic people for a while. But usually, when the situation became abusive or clearly pointless, he got out of there.

Let’s just follow Paul’s travelogue, shall we?

In Damascus, Paul’s opponents were so vigilant to kill him that the church had to get creative in order to save his life: “His followers took him by night and lowered him in a basket through an opening in the wall.”^[1] Paul’s opponents were determined and clever in their murderous plans. Paul and his followers were more determined and cleverer in finding ways to keep Paul alive.

Paul’s very next stop was Jerusalem, this time working primarily among Grecian Jews. The Grecian Jews couldn’t win the debate so “they tried to kill him. When the believers learned of this, they took him down to Caesarea and sent him off to Tarsus.”^[2]

Noticing a pattern yet?