You see their evilness. You see how sneaky, manipulative, cunning, dastardly and downright dumb they are in almost everything they do.

However, you’re the only one who sees it. Somehow their despicable behavior goes unnoticed by everyone around them. How is this possible?  How can so many people be blind to what you see as blatantly obvious?

We have all been in this situation at some point in our lives, you may be living it right now. It’s frustrating, annoying and can lead to anger.

Here’s what you want to do:

1. Expose them for who they are – Seriously, you may have considered paying for a billboard, television commercial or a Facebook ad that would reach the masses spreading the truth.  You know you’ve thought about it.

2. Confront them about their behavior – You’ve played out every scenario of ‘letting them have it.’  You’ve thought about everything you would say, how you would say it and key points you would mention.  All while they sit and listen to your grievances.

3. You need a wearable eye-roll gif – You want to visibly and dramatically roll your eyes for all to see when someone encourages their obvious atrocious or phony behavior.

 
Here’s what we don’t need to do:

1. Don’t gossip about them – We’ve all made the mistake of trying to tell mutual friends how atrocious someone is. That type of behavior starts on the playground and makes its way to the water coolers of adulthood.  Don’t be a part of it. If someone asks your opinion of the evil-doer, don’t take the bait.  Just move on and stay away from the temptation of letting them know all you know.

2. Don’t behave passive aggressively – We’ve all seen the cryptic Facebook statuses, strange or ranting comments on Facebook, unusual ‘like’ activity or shares – and you know that someone is trying to get back at one of their friends.  It’s time for adults on Facebook to act like adults.  No need for that kind of activity. Check your motives before you post.

3. Don’t internalize the anger – You can’t let your anger and hatred of the person’s actions ruin your life.  Let it go.  Don’t dwell on it.  If you must be friends with them on social media because of some sort of obligation, hide their stuff so you don’t see it. If you have to be around them all the time or at special occasions, be polite and move on to someone else. It’s hard to remove people from your life completely (I know, I’ve tried) sometimes it’s just better to deal with it, laugh at their craziness and pray that God will change the situation.

Which leads me to the following …

Here’s what we have to do:

1. Expose your inner hatred about their behavior – I’m not saying write a blog post detailing why you hate their behavior. Remember we should never use open forums to air our dirty laundry.  What we should do is expose our thoughts, feelings, hatred and anger to God.  We have to pray for Him to remove the sinful temptation of enacting vengeance from our own hearts.

2. Secret behavior isn’t secret – He knows what they’re doing.  Either their behavior will eventually be exposed in this lifetime or the next.  He knows, even though everybody else on the planet doesn’t.  He knows. (Just keep saying that to yourself.)

3. Pray for the evil-doer – I just mentioned we must pray for God to change our hearts and remove our sinful reactions but we often overlook something God may be wanting us to do – That’s pray for this person(s) that’s been placed on your radar. It can be difficult.  We must do this with a spirit of service not maliciousness.

Let me break that down:

Which prayer is better:

Dear Father, Please expose ___________ to their friends and family.  Let others see how awful they are and how fake they can be.  Remove the blinders from all of their followers’ eyes. Seriously, let others be as smart as I am.

OR

Father, Please convict ____________ of their behavior.  Show me how to pray for them.  Help me meet their needs if their are any Lord.  I place my feelings and emotions before you and pray that you’ll teach me how to move forward in love and patience as I deal with them on a daily basis.

I can tell you which one I want to pray and it ain’t the second one. (See I told you I’m a sinner.  And yes, I know ain’t, ain’t a word.) 

Righteous anger:

All of the above is negated if the evil-doer is harming people or leading others down a false path away from Christ and His clear message in the Gospel.

Don’t feel like you can’t speak up if something needs to be said.  In fact God knows we can get angry and still be faithful to Him and maintain fellowship.

David displayed righteous anger in Psalm 139:19-22. Nehemiah gets mad at the unjust treatment of the poor among the Israelites in Neh. 5-6. Christ of course displayed righteous anger in the temple with the money-changers, against sin and against the Pharisees.

The point of righteous anger is to maintain the righteous indignation without blemish or sin.  We can’t, we must not, respond in sin. We work to resolve the issue in a manner that reflects Christ.  We must examine motives before we respond and calculate our actions based on God’s will.

 

Wolves

Wolves in sheep’s clothing will always be around.  We must be careful in our own walk not become one, don’t fall for one and don’t become angry at one.  Just let God handle it.  He’s better at it, than we are.

Screen Shot 2015-03-10 at 11.16.35 AM

 

Inspiration for this post:

The other day a friend posted this meme on Instagram:

Screen Shot 2015-03-10 at 11.18.23 AM