The evil evangelist

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Yesterday, I wrote a piece about looking for evil. I wasn’t sure when I started where I was going with it (sort of like now) but it ended up as a commentary on negativity.

I have a low tolerance for people who seek evil—people who look for the bad in a situation. As I wrote, there are victims, pessimists, and defeatists. Negativity can be a mental, physical and spiritual drain when people around you are actively looking for—waiting for—the next bad thing in life to take a hold of them.

If you are on social media, there is likely another form of negativity bombarding your life on a regular basis—the evil evangelist.

Perhaps you have read his (or her) posts?

The evil evangelist (EE) is a cynical person who sees the world through the clouded eyes of hatred. He or she will likely be very vocal about politics and religion and is not open to discussion on either. The EE demonizes the views of others and posts anti-religious messages, political diatribes, memes, and gratuitous assertions usually linked to a hate blog. A hate blog is any website that devotes most of its bandwidth to attacking people as a way to express an opinion.

All of this is bait to get you into a discussion. If you use discernment the evil evangelist will share a few insights about himself with you through his posts:

• The EE believes he is smarter than everyone else—but is usually not successful in life
• The EE believes himself to be a victim
• The EE is typically a defeatist
• The EE usually, but not always, hates religion—especially Christianity
• The EE is typically in a perpetual state of crisis
• The EE tends to struggle with envy

A recent New Yorker article noted that people who browse social media—looking at the lives, news, and updates of others—instead of engaging in healthy conversations are prone to envy. As I wrote a while back, envy is a particularly evil trait.

Jealousy can motivate a person to see the success of others and desire to improve his or her own life. Taken too far, jealousy can destroy relationships and cause people to dwell on a sense of lack or loss in their own lives instead. Coveting is an extreme jealousy where a person begins to desire to have something that belongs to someone else. Envy is a combination of the two where the person begins to dwell on their lack, accept the lack as a norm (defeatism) and wish that the other person also lacked it.

The evil evangelist is an unhappy person and they want you to be unhappy too. To accomplish this, they will stop at nothing to drag you into their world.

You have been given your life by God and you are blessed. As Christians, we are supposed to stand in the darkness and shine a light for others. Pray for everyone who crosses your path but pray also for discernment to recognize evil when it sends you a friend request.