People lurk in darkness all around, just waiting for that call from the reciprocal darkness of the internet that says it is safe now to come forth and carry out their most evil intentions. With the advent of the social media, things like, human trafficking, drug dealing, terrorism, espionage, wire fraud, identity theft, and a whole host of other crimes have skyrocketed as people have come to see ways that they can anonymously do their most dastardly deeds and perhaps get away with it.

But there remains an even more subtle and insidious abuse of social media that more people (even so-called Christians) are guilty of than perhaps any other cyber-crime or online maliciousness that goes on in cyberspace. It is part and parcel to the very prophetic words of the apostle Paul when he wrote the following to Timothy:

“But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power; Avoid such men as these” (2 Timothy 3:1-5)

Just as Paul was shown by the Holy Spirit, we are now truly living in very difficult times, and things are getting worse. While Paul probably never received a vision of social media, he lists twenty-one things that characterize what social media, like nothing else, has given people the platform to be and to openly express. Surely, as I mention them individually, you can almost immediately think of instances in your social media experience that you or someone you know was guilty of many of these traits.