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Get Real! Toxic Positivity Is Not a Fruit of the Spirit

Get Real! Toxic Positivity Is Not a Fruit of the Spirit

Last updated on: November 17, 2025 at 3:51 am by Gregory T. Smith

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Get Real! Toxic Positivity Is Not a Fruit of the Spirit 2025-11-06T22:30:22-08:00 Gregory T. Smith

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Toxic positivity in Christian spaces silences honest emotions. Real faith makes room for grief, lament, and presence—without the fake smile.

“Don’t worry, be happy” isn’t a Christian attitude. And struggle isn’t a sin. (Image generated using OpenAI’s DALL·E by the author.)

Somewhere between Halloween and Christmas, we pack away the werewolves and vampires and start donning different kinds of masks. As we approach the Holidays, we’re expected to exchange the skeleton grins for something even more frightening—fake smiles telling the lie that everything’s fine. We shift from spooky season to sparkle season, from “boo” to “blessed,” and it’s easy to feel like we’re supposed to be holly-jolly whether we want to or not.

But what happens when you’re not fine?

What happens when the holidays roll in like a freight train, and you’re hanging on by a thread? Everyone around you seems festive, but you’re going through tough times. Maybe you’re grieving, deconstructing your faith, experiencing financial trouble, battling sickness, or just plain scared in this political climate. You’re really struggling, and someone tells you to “rejoice always” or reminds you that “God works all things together for good”?

That’s the moment when other people’s positivity can be positively toxic. It’s time to get real with our feelings and stop pretending everything’s okay.

What Is Toxic Positivity?

Toxic positivity is the belief that we should always maintain a positive attitude—even in the face of suffering. It’s cheerfulness at all costs, a forced optimism that dismisses, invalidates, or bypasses real sentiments.

Just like Halloween partygoers, toxic positivity often wears a spiritual disguise. It looks godly, borrowing from scripture to reinforce its veneer of happiness. Often, you hear verses like:

“I can do all things through him who strengthens me.”—Philippians 4:13
“We know that all things work together for good for those who love God.”—Romans 8:28
“Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances.”—1 Thessalonians 5:16–18

Used with discernment, these verses can bring comfort and inspiration. Pulled out of context and hurled at a suffering person as a form of rebuke or glib cheer-up, and these scriptures can become toxic. Grief and trauma are real. Genuine faith recognizes the need to express difficult emotions as well as positive ones. The Bible should not be used to silence hurting people, avoiding their pain with platitudes. Instead, holy words ought to help people to get real about their feelings.

Spiritual Bypassing

One of the worst forms of toxic positivity is spiritual bypassing—a term coined by psychologist John Welwood. The author of Toward a Psychology of Awakening, Welwood warns against this use of “spiritual ideas and practices that avoid the real work of dealing with emotional pain, trauma, or psychological wounds.

Besides the use of scripture, many Christians use trite phrases to bypass their own emotions, or the feelings of others. No doubt, you’ve heard one believer say to another…

“Everything happens for a reason.”
“God never gives you more than you can handle.”
“Just leg go and let God.”
“Don’t speak that negativity over your life.”
“If you just have enough faith, you’ll be healed.”
“It could be worse.”
“You just need to pray more.”
“God’s got this!”
“You’re too blessed to be stressed!”
“Claim the victory!”

These phrases sound spiritual, but they bypass honest faith—the kind that includes weeping, wrestling, questioning, and even despair. They bypass the need to go deeper in introspection. They substitute the hard work of dealing with your emotions and prioritize control and comfort over compassion and presence.

The Psalms as Trauma Literature

At Vancouver School of Theology, the Rev. Dr. Lynn E. Mills teaches a course called “Reading the Psalms as Trauma Literature.” This course deals with the very real emotions of suffering people, reflected in the sometimes-painful poetry of the psalms**. Dr. Mills describes these scriptures “as an honest cry from humanity, often in oppressed and persecuted circumstances.”** She looks at scriptures of human pain and imprecatory psalms that plead for divine vengeance against enemies and oppressors. She discusses “how to connect the suffering in the psalm with modern stories of suffering and trauma.” When we understand the psalms as trauma literature, we can appreciate emotions like:

“How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?”—Psalm 13:1
“You have put me in the depths of the Pit… darkness is my closest friend.”—Psalm 88:6, 18
“I am weary with my moaning; every night I flood my bed with tears.”—Psalm 6:6
“By the rivers of Babylon—there we sat down and there we wept…Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rock!”—Psalm 137:1, 9

The psalms (among other scriptures help us to understand that our emotions aren’t wrong. Our feelings are God-given, and there’s a time and place to express them—no matter how difficult they may be.

When Bible Verses Become Silencers

Let’s be clear: the problem isn’t Scripture. The problem is how we use it. Quoting Romans 8:28 to someone in the middle of fresh grief isn’t faith—it’s fear. We reach for the verse because we are uncomfortable. It becomes a way to comfort ourselves instead of them, to close the emotional door instead of opening it.

If you’ve ever been on the receiving end of toxic positivity like this, you know the feeling: spiritual gaslighting. You’re not just grieving—you’re made to feel guilty for grieving.

For Those in Pain: You Don’t Have to Be Okay

If you’re hurting, hear this clearly: You don’t have to fake it to belong. Grief is not a failure of faith. Tears are not weakness. Lament is not disobedience. If you need a biblical permission slip, here it is:

“The Lord is near to the brokenhearted,
and saves the crushed in spirit.”
—Psalm 34:18

Let people quote Philippians 4:13 all they want. You can still say, “I’m not okay.” You can still light the Advent candles with tears in your eyes. And you can still belong to Christ without pretending to be cheerful.

For Those Walking Alongside

Whether you’re a pastor, deacon, parent, spouse, friend, sibling, or any other spiritual caretaker—this is for you. When someone you love is suffering, don’t rush to fix it. Don’t drown them in cheerful theology. Pause before offering words. Ask yourself: “Is this for their relief—or my own?”

Here are some better phrases:

“That sounds incredibly hard.”
“You don’t have to go through this alone.”
“Would it be okay if I just sat with you?”

The ministry of presence is powerful. When words fail, presence remains.

And please, resist the urge to baptize toxic positivity with a Bible verse. Job’s friends were doing just fine—until they opened their mouths.

The Joy That Doesn’t Pretend

Again, it isn’t necessarily the verse that signals toxic positivity. It’s how the verse is used. When people quote Paul’s “Rejoice always,” and by that they mean, “Just cheer up!” that’s toxic positivity. We must remember that he wasn’t sipping cocoa by a fireplace. He was in prison. That kind of joy isn’t manufactured. It doesn’t come from pushing grief aside. It coexists with sorrow.

“Don’t worry, be happy” isn’t a Christian attitude. And struggle isn’t a sin. One person using the scripture may be engaging in spiritual bypassing. Another person, treating the Bible and (more importantly) the hurting human before them with care, may employ the same verse to mean, “Take heart—I am with you.” Joy in Christ is not a denial of suffering. It’s the presence of hope within it.

Let’s Take Off the Masks

This holiday season, let’s resist the urge to wear masks that hide our hurt. Let’s stop performing for each other—or for God.

Let’s get real and remember that toxic positivity is not a fruit of the Spirit. But love, kindness, gentleness, and self-control are. And sometimes the most Spirit-filled thing you can do is hold someone’s hand, let them cry, and not say a word.

So, here’s to honest joy and holy grief. Here’s to church pews filled with the broken-hearted and the barely-holding-on. Here’s to taking off the mask and being real—together.

For related reading, check out my other articles:

General Christian

About Gregory T. Smith

I live in the beautiful Fraser Valley of British Columbia and work in northern Washington State as a behavioral health specialist with people experiencing homelessness and those who are overly involved in the criminal justice system. Before that, I spent over a quarter-century as lead pastor of several Virginia churches. My newspaper column, “Spirit and Truth” ran in Virginia newspapers for fifteen years. I am one of fourteen contributing authors of the Patheos/Quoir Publishing book “Sitting in the Shade of another Tree: What We Learn by Listening to Other Faiths.” I hold a degree in Religious Studies from Virginia Commonwealth University, and also studied at Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond. My wife Christina and I have seven children between us, and we are still collecting grandchildren. You can read more about the author here.

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