Have you read? Billy Graham is into witchcraft! Did you know that Pope John Paul II sold cyanide gas to the Nazis during WWII? Of course, it wasn’t until later that he and Mother Teresa became homosexuals.* How do I know all this? Because of the internet!
It seems harmless to go online and attack a public figure. It certainly feels good to even a score with a bad service provider, a mean boss or a psycho ex by trashing them on a discussion board.
But it’s all sin.
According to the internet, I didn’t lose my $11M business to the banking crisis of 2009. Instead, after 8 successful years, I purposely closed it down to hurt all my customers and my 200+ employees, and to benefit myself, even though it cost me everything I owned. Which makes no sense, but it’s online, so it must be true. Oh, but really, it’s not even a little bit true.
An ex-employee claimed online that I used foul language as I fired him. His post is so full of filth that if you’re able to finish his complaint to its end, you probably aren’t the kind of person who would mind if I did use that sort of language. But I didn’t. (I did fire the pottymouth, though.)
It’s fun to gossip. One Christian colleague, while “prayerfully” spreading rumors about me, acknowledged how far-fetched the online reports are. But as he told my boss, “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.” In other words, “There must be something to it if so many people hate him.” Yes, there is something to it. I’ll get to that in a minute.
A bad online reputation feeds itself. Attorney General Roy Cooper and his friends in the press, looking for a villain in the closing of American Kitchen (for which I worked part-time in sales), read the complaint boards and named me as an owner of the company. That the real ownership of the company is a matter of public record meant nothing to them. Bloggers said I was the owner and that settled it. Never mind that I had been laid off four months before it closed.
The Bible says that a leader in the church “must have a good reputation with those outside (the church), so that he will not fall into reproach and the snare of the devil” (1 Timothy 3:7).
One preacher told me that, while he didn’t think there was any truth to what was said about me, he thought I was disqualified from ministry on the basis of that verse. Never mind that God had called me into ministry. Or that I hadn’t done anything wrong.
I asked the man, “Do you think that in 1 Timothy 3:7, Paul intended no distinction between truth and lies? Especially given that he himself was so often slandered?”
Reputation is reputation, the preacher said. It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. If you have a bad reputation, you’re of no use to God as a pastor.
One big problem: Jesus is a man of considerable reputation Himself. According to the online intelligentsia, He was gay and He was married to Mary Magdalene. Which I know doesn’t compute, but hey, where there’s smoke there’s fire. Sounds like He was up to something, we just don’t know exactly what. Probably He was some sort of scam artist.
Only He wasn’t. He was perfect in every way. But according to the standards of my old pastor friend, because of millions of negative comments made about Him online, Jesus would be unfit for ministry. How crazy is this?
Satan works in every way to damage Christ’s reputation. Today, he uses rumors and complaints on the internet to “disqualify” Christians from serving in ministry. Which only works if we are dumb enough to let him.
So here are some things for you to decide on:
1. If someone trashes you online, it means nothing about your qualification for ministry. The Holy Spirit isn’t stupid. Only a well-deserved bad reputation disqualifies a person by 1 Timothy 3:7.
2. If you have a terrible reputation and you deserve it, and you’ve repented, then you don’t have a biblically bad reputation. You’re as white as snow. Serve the Lord.
3. Having an undeserved bad reputation will serve you well. It keeps holier-than-thou people away from your ministry. And it attracts people who know they need grace. At my church in Raleigh, Brier Creek Fellowship, God has assembled the sweetest, most loving group of believers I've ever known.
4. No matter what they say about you, it’s Christ that your enemies really hate. There’s no better way to know Him than to suffer with Him. Savor his scars, which you also bear.
5. If you’re a Christian, stop your gossiping, which destroys your fellowship with Christ, never mind what it does to your brothers and sisters.
And if the devil tells you (as he used a frantic public servant to tell me), “I can’t believe your church lets you be their pastor,” you might answer, “I can’t either.” My church – which I dearly love – didn’t call me to preach. Christ did. And I will proudly share his scorn through whatever Satan sends my way.
*In case you miss the sarcasm, let me be clear: none of this is true. Billy Graham is not a witch, Pope John Paul II wasn’t a poison gas merchant, and he and Mother Teresa were not sexually conflicted.
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