1 clear FACT of Internet BULLYING (Trolling) that a 2000-year-old book tells us
Initially, this particular blog was written in early 2019 as a letter to my church.
For accountability, I took it upon myself to keep my church updated about my deeper journey into the Christian faith.
I wrote letters encompassing personal anecdotes and revelations, showing the Bible’s often intimidating, challenging, and convicting words as 100% true.
This included the odd epiphany where I would see the Bible’s written Truth come to life in contemporary time.
This letter comprised an observation I made when applying the Bible’s wisdom regarding the human condition, to the contemporary situation of TROLLING–otherwise known as internet bullying.
Most people would make the discerning comment that when a person trolls online, they’re able to do so because they feel protected behind a computer screen.
When looking at this activity from a Biblical perspective, I found something far more concerning.
‘Trolling’ is a revelation of the ugliness that exists within a person. It’s all their pain and their response to that pain moulded into a blurb of hate.
The reason I say “it’s concerning” is because it isn’t the protection of a computer screen that’s the root issue here.
‘Trolls’ are able to fashion this cruelty, because it’s already there in their hearts.
A computer acts as a portal to this hidden realm within a person, where the Bible is proven perfectly correct about the human condition…
1 clear FACT of Internet BULLYING (Trolling) that a 2000-year-old book tells us
Some notes I made when bringing the Bible into my observations of ‘trolling’
Dear family and friends, believers and pre-believers,
I’ve arrived at the time that I’ve talked about with many of you in my ongoing journey with God.
I’m coming to the moment when I’ll be publishing my first book The Paradise Induction.
In case you don’t know, this is a fictionalised account of the real-life struggle I experienced when I emigrated from London to the Caribbean.
The novel is now finished at around 125,000 words, which is approximately 400 pages.
The book details the first two months of my time in the Caribbean back in March 2010.
For many people, it’s been a surprise what they’ve read so far. Chapters are available here…
What many might not know is this is a book that I chose to write because I believed God wanted me to.
This is a hard confession to put into public, because what’s gone into this book does scare me a little.
Without divulging much, I was led to be transparent and vulnerable about things that I never planned on disclosing.
On top of being slightly apprehensive about the content, fear entered into me about the nature of exposing my innermost thoughts to the public.
The possible consequence of making noise in the caves of internet trolls, who are relentless in their harsh, disparaging, cutting words did threaten my courage.
If you don’t know about internet trolls, they’re named such because they hide behind their computers, but spew the ugliest verbiage in ‘comments’ sections’ on just about anything you can comment on.
They will attempt to steal all sense of worth from you, kill you, and destroy you without a second thought.
How can they say and do the things that literally order people to commit suicide? I thought, as I entertained potential brutality against my novel.
To any sound mind, such behaviour seems abhorrent.
Why do they do it?
What drives them?
Who are these people?
Well, I’ve been experiencing further understanding over one of the less discussed verses of the Bible that judges the wickedness of the human heart.
“But the things that come out of a person’s mouth come from the heart, and these defile them. For out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what defile a person…”
Matthew 15: 18 – 20
Not to sound pessimistic or morbid, but it did interest me why God’s Word would call the human heart wicked.
Following this train of thought, Jesus famously said:
“No one is good–except God alone.”
Luke 18:19
Throughout the Bible, God often tells us that there’s a great deal of wickedness in us. I recall assuming that God was exaggerating for emphasis.
“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?
Jeremiah 17:9
“Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.”
Galatians 5: 19 – 21
All of this talk is simply a hyperbolic literary device, I thought.
It’s a tool to impress upon us how much we need God to pursue a path of good. That’s what it is.
Well, after going through a neurological detox—a scientific way of expressing intentionality with God’s renewing of the mind process—I learned very firmly that what God says about wickedness is exactly that. No exaggeration. No hyperbolic literary device.
The detox process was designed to eliminate a toxic thought that’s been consistent for a long period of time.
I selected a destructive thought that had been with me since I was six years old.
In facing this toxic thought, I realised two key things.
The first was recognising how much I condemned myself.
The second was realising how much ‘unpleasantness’ there is/was in my heart from the toxic thought.
It exposed the path of selfishness in all its prideful glory and it became very apparent how ‘wicked’ I am.
As I’ve read Scripture, in the past I’d taken lines like, “by lusting in the mind you’ve have committed adultery in the heart,” and “hatred of a brother is equivalent to murder,“ as exaggeration.
I began to realise that these extreme verses had multiple meanings.
It did mean that the very thought of hatred is like murder.
It also meant that the thought itself could lead to murder.
But perhaps more common, it meant that in thought and speech, words can kill.
This is not to condemn myself. We all have to understand that there’s a dark side in all of us and it stems from the notion of selfishness.
However, this illumination of my own disposition allowed me to see God’s Word literally and thereby understand the internet trolling seen today.
When you meet an internet troll, it isn’t as if they behave in person the way they do online. Well, most wouldn’t.
They use the same masks common to human interaction to present an image that’s gratifying to their individual wants and needs.
Nevertheless, when they are behind that computer, it’s as if the filter or mask comes off and everything they’re really thinking, pours out.
The protection of not being seen catalyses the darkness of their words to even more precise stabbing weapons – the wickedness of the human heart unleashed in full spectacle.
Just like how technology allows us to create the ‘perfect’ digital image of ourselves for the world to love us more, it also allows for the intentionality, purpose, and time for crafting a ‘perfect’ spiteful comment on a blog post.
Those fingers on the keyboard get a moment’s clarity before they type unlike face-to-face conversation. Therefore, such wickedness is meditated on with cunning and intelligence before being released upon the world.
Next time we see a spiteful comment on a blog, we must consider that the person had to type it up and go through a series of wilful clicks before that comment went live.
It cannot be argued that it’s a spare of the moment thing or done for comic relief.
It’s the human heart’s true nature on display.
When contemplating this, it’s not far-fetched to parallel a ‘troll’s’ actions with the Scripture that expresses that words can kill:
“Death and life are in the power of the tongue,”
Proverbs 18:21
So when God says that the human heart is filled with wickedness, He isn’t exaggerating at all.
We’re seeing the human heart in the open, because people have computers to conceal their identity, but some will choose not to hide, proud of the death-riddled words they have to spew.
Concluding, the unpleasant fact about ‘trolling’ that I’m getting at is that it’s people’s true colours, and the Bible knew.
With the provision of a computer barrier to hide individuals from repercussions, they are completely free to speak ‘their truth’ in all its brokenness.
There’s no fear in a ‘troll,’ because there’s no foreseeable penalty. It means we see everything they have in their heart, spilled out with no filter.
We get to see their love of power, fear, their desperate need to please others, their greed, their irritability and anger, their stress, bitterness, laziness, envy, cringing lust, their desire to gossip, and their exaltation of ‘self.’
It still surprises me when I see certain comments.
What kind of person would write that? I say to myself.
Why would they say that?
But as us more-reserved, introverted types gaze at the ‘comments’ section’ of an article or blog, wondering how and why people would spout such odium, we have to remember that God already told us that we—humans—are like this.
It’s the human heart unleashed. The masks gone. The performance gone. Pure selfishness, unhinged. Pure self-preservation and survival gone wild.
The very literal meaning of “life and death are on the tongue” has come to fruition as many teenagers commit suicide from internet bullying.
Wondering about who these mysterious perpetrators are, or who would say such dreadful things, we need only look around us, and if we’re even more honest, in the mirror.
We’re all capable of nasty rants with cutting words. Internet trolls simply do it online.
This is intimidating to say the least, but God has given us help with our hearts. His name is Jesus.
Thank you for indulging this letter and please comment below. But no trolls please.
Love and blessings,
Stephen L France
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