“She’s gaslighting me.”
“He’s a narcissist.”
I regularly hear couples lob these accusations at one another as they sit across from me in my office. We live in a therapeutic culture, where psychologized language has permeated the way we talk about relationships. Categories and lingo once limited to clinical settings have become everyday vocabulary for explaining conflict.
Last year, Samuel James wrote an excellent post titled If You Ask AI for Marriage Advice, It’ll Probably Tell You to Get Divorced. The article is as good as its title suggests. In it, James shares a striking graph that tracks 15 years of relationship advice on Reddit.
The trend is sobering. Advice encouraging couples to “give space and time” or to “communicate” has steadily declined while advice urging people to end their relationship has risen sharply. Shockingly, by 2025, 50% of relationship advice on Reddit was to end the relationship.
The problem extends beyond marriage advice. I regularly work with parents whose adult children have cut them off entirely. In fact, this practice has become so common that it now has a name: “no contact.” The current estimates, based on several studies, suggest that around 10% of adults have gone no contact with their mothers and nearly 20% with their fathers. One large study from Cornell University found that 27% of adult children have no contact with at least one family member.
“Going no contact” is not limited to family relationships. It extends to friendships. Recently, I cared for bewildered friends who had been cut off by a woman they had warmly welcomed into their lives—so much so that she had become like family to them. Her explanation for cutting them off was that her psychologist advised her that it was unwise to have friendships that felt as close as family.
To be clear, there is some biblical justification for setting hard boundaries in certain relationships. Jesus warns us “Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you” (Matt. 7:6). Especially in matters of church discipline, he instructs that when someone refuses to repent even after repeated appeals, we are to, “let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector” (Matt. 18:17). Likewise, Paul asks, “what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness?” (2 Cor. 6:14). There are times when establishing boundaries is wise and there may even be rare situations in which “going no contact” (when pursued in a biblically faithful way) becomes necessary.
But we should not confuse this with the cultural impulse to ghost, block, or cut people off at the first sign of difficulty. That impulse has swung far too far. Often it cloaks self-righteousness or cowardice. Christians are called to be peacemakers. Paul tells us that God “gave us the ministry of reconciliation” (2 Cor. 5:18). Scripture calls us to put on compassionate hearts, “bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive” (Col. 3:13). When Peter once asked Jesus how often he should forgive his brother who sins against him, he proposed what must have seemed an extraordinarily generous limit, “As many as seven times?” (Matt. 18:21). Jesus answered, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times” (Matt. 18:22)
We do not live in a “seventy-seven times” culture. We often cut relational bait faster than a fisherman whose line is caught on seaweed.
Are there situations in which relational boundaries are wise? Certainly. Does forgiveness need to be accompanied by true repentance and a rebuilding of trust before a relationship can be restored to what it once was? For sure.
But when boundaries are set, they should be set only after sincere efforts toward reconciliation. Reconciliation does not merely involve the other person acknowledging their sin; it also requires us to examine our own hearts and own our part in the conflict. In my experience, “going no contact” rarely involves someone first taking the log out of their own eye before attempting to remove the speck from their brother’s eye (Matt. 7:3-5). And severing contact should come only after following Christ’s careful multi-step process of seeking reconciliation with a person who sins (Matt. 18:15-20).
One of the sweetest aspects of pastoral ministry is witnessing the beautiful work of reconciliation. It is a joy to watch Christians step into painful conflicts with humility and courage, allowing a conciliator to help guide them toward ownership, repentance, and forgiveness. Our culture is increasingly unfamiliar with such a gift.
May our Christian witness in this cancel-culture world be marked by a deep commitment to forgiveness and reconciliation—even when it costs us. The heart of the Christian ought to reflect the heart of Christ, who has “broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility” (Eph. 2:14). By his grace and through his power, may our lives also become instruments that break down walls for his glory.
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Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash