Because we give ourselves permission to dishonour people who disagree with us on social media, we do so until we annihilate them, until we communicate they have no value at all.
Slander
Michael Maiden
People with a spirit of offense will watch your life with a jaundiced critical view of all you say and do. They’re ready to pounce on the first thing you say or post they disagree with by unleashing personal attacks are unfollowing you. That is toxic, manipulative behaviour. Remind yourself that God loves them too, and refuse the impulse of responding to them in an ungodly way. Never be seduced into changing your core values, just to gain or keep followers.
Francis Frangipane
January 25, 2020
In exercising your spiritual discernment, remember: the word “devil” means “slanderer.” To slander is to do more than to accuse or speak evil of one to another. Literally, the word devil means “one who puts himself or something between two in order to divide them.” Satan’s goal is not just to speak evil but divide us. He seeks to divide spouse from spouse, children from parents, race from race, and church from church, and he will use unresolved issues from the past. The antidote is to restore and then magnify Christ’s love; love covers a multitude of sins.
Jerry Bridges
One of the most difficult defilements of the spirit to deal with is the critical spirit. A critical spirit has its root in pride. Because of the ‘plank’ of pride in our own eye, we are not capable of dealing with the ‘speck’ of need in someone else. We are often like the Pharisee who, completely unconscious of his own need, prayed “God, I thank you that I am not like other men” (Luke 18:11). We are quick to see – and to speak of – the faults of others, but slow to see our own needs. How sweetly we relish the opportunity to speak critically of someone else – even when we are unsure of the facts. We forget that “A man who stirs up dissension among brothers” by criticising one to another is one of the “six things which the Lord hates” (Proverbs 6:16-19)
Robert Leighton
The cure of an evil tongue must be done at the heart. The weights and wheels are there, and the clock strikes according to their motion. A guileful heart makes a guileful tongue and lips. It is the work-house where is the forge of deceits and slanders; and the tongue is only the outer shop where they are vended, and the door of it. Such ware as is made within, such, and no other, can come out.
A.B. Simpson
I would rather play with forked lightning, or take in my hand living wires with their fiery current, than speak a reckless word against any servant of Christ, or idly repeat the slanderous darts which thousands of Christians are hurling on others.
G Campbell Morgan
There is no profounder proof of grace of character than that of being able to suffer wrongfully and yet to manifest a gracious spirit.