A
scoundrel and villain, who goes about with a corrupt mouth, who winks with his
eye, signals with his feet, and motions with his fingers, who plots evil with
deceit in his heart—he always stirs up dissension. Therefore disaster will
overtake him in an instant; he will suddenly be destroyed—without remedy.
(Proverbs 6:12-15)
As I begin considering today’s
passage, I feel naïve, sheltered, protected. I find it hard to believe that
such people exist. I’m sure that they must, but I want to think it’s outside of
my own circle of experience. That’s because in my mind, I picture these people
as greasy, melodramatic, comic-opera style villains. There’s part of me, just
as it is part of a lot of other people, that has this notion that serial
killers somehow look like serial killers. Ted Bundy looked like “the boy next
door.”
I have met people who post things in
social media like someone putting bait into the water and tow it slowly behind
their “boat.” They’re hoping someone will take the bait and comment so that
they can abuse the commenter. And one of the first things these people who
troll for commenters do is accuse the commenter of being a troll. I know others
who can’t wait to post the most recent pictures of “Walmart customers,” or the
videos in which person after person is hurt (or could have been hurt) in ways
that they think “funny.”
“Lighten up, it’s just a joke,” right?
Of course, then there are the more
serious Internet predators, the ones who steal an identity either as a prank,
or with more harmful intent, who pretend to be someone they are not, who
introduce malware – or even just claim to have introduced malware to manipulate.
There are people who claim to be from the IRS who threaten to have you arrested
if you don’t use your credit card to send them money. Others walk door-to-door,
claiming to represent the Public Utility Commission and offering to verify that
you’re getting your electricity at the lowest cost possible…if they can just
look at your bill.
The things these sorts have in common
is that they prey on naivete, and they profit
(if only emotionally) at the expense of others. They are out there. Now,
let’s deal in some hard truth. They’re also in here, and the best thing we can
do to our internal villains is to make sure that they encounter disaster at our
hands rather than someone else’s.
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