Poisoning relationships
is a two-way street.
Watch our Truth in Two to find out why (full text below).
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Pictures: Josh Collingwood, Snappy Goat
FULL TEXT
I grew up in a home of violence. My father was an abusive, adulterous, alcoholic. I have lived through another side of misogyny, defined as the hatred of women. I was a child living and breathing the toxic fumes of hostility. Knowing what I know about hatred of the other gender, by both experience and research, I must also say, toxicity is not a one-way street.
The way the word “toxicity” is used in our culture seems only to apply to men. The phrase “male toxicity” has been a phrase used to point out awful male behavior. As I said, I lived with such toxicity. However, the word itself comes from the Greek which meant “bow,” as in “bow and arrow.” The application of the word morphed into “poison arrow,” these arrows were then used as weapons. Fast forward to the 20th century and we find the famous “skull and crossbones” universally used as the symbol for something that is toxic, poisonous, with death as a possible outcome.
According to Scripture, anyone can be toxic. Psalm 58 proclaims telling lies is the poison of a snake. Romans 3 explains the words of an unrighteous person lead to death. And don’t forget James 3:8 which proclaims, “No human being can tame the tongue, it is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.” Toxic, poisonous attitudes, words, and actions can be true of anyone, man or woman. The problem with the phrase “male toxicity” is that the phrase is incomplete. We should rather say, “human toxicity,” because the poison can come from any one of us. Take it from someone who has experienced toxicity in his childhood and has seen the same poison in any number of human interactions throughout his life. For Truth in Two, this is Dr. Mark Eckel, president of the Comenius Institute, personally seeking truth and exposing untruth, wherever it’s found.