My Life As A Troll

Poolesville Presbyterian Church

05.01.2016; Rev. Dr. David Williams

Scripture Lesson: John 14: 23-29

LISTEN TO SERMON AUDIO HERE:

Trolls are strange, strange creatures.

I’m not, of course, talking about the mythical beings that live under bridges in the old fairy tales.  I’m not talking about the giant monsters that inhabit the brilliant Scandinavian film Trollhunter, which I can commend to your viewing.

I’m talking about that creature of the internet age, the bane of the comments section, the Troll.  Trolls exist to attack, to arrive on a page and make rude and obnoxious comments about whatever it is you might be saying.   A study by Canadian psychologists confirmed that most trolls are basement dwelling sociopaths, ranking high on the four scales used to assess sociopathic behavior.

Which is kind of hard to hear, given that I was a troll myself for a while.

It was the dawn of the internet age, back when I did all of my blogging on a platform called xanga, and everything was wild and exciting.   It was a wild hurly burly, everyone getting into it with everyone else, a free-for-all of ideas, the virtual equivalent of a Wild West bar fight.  

I had trolls, often more than one.  Some were Christians who thought I was too progressive.  Others were Christians who thought I was too conservative.  Some were atheists who wanted to get into arguments about religion.  They’d lob giant essays packed with obsenity at me.  I’d lob giant essays filled with snark and wit and very large words at them.

It was fun.

But one day, as I engaged in a pointless back and forth with a group of radical antitheists on their website, I realized I’d become a troll myself.  I was just there for the fight, for the energy of it, for the thrill of battle.  I was scoring points, giving no ground, bobbing and weaving and stinging.

There was no purpose to it.  “Why am I doing this?” I asked myself.   I could see no reason, other than that relentless going after one another seems to be something our culture encourage us to do.

Because ours is a culture of competition and opposition.

Our task, when faced with an opponent, is to destroy them.  To take them down.  To obliterate them.  The goal is to find every weakness, or to fabricate weaknesses.  We see ourselves as prosecuting a battle, in which we must win and they must lose.  We’ll bend the truth about them, we’ll pull out the stops to prove their wrongness, we’ll do everything and anything required to tear them down and prove how weak and worthless they are.  If we they offer evidence they might have a point, we’ll ignore it.

But there’s a problem, if you’re a disciple of Jesus, of endlessly going after your enemies.  The prosecutorial mindset, the mindset of the troll and the flame war?  It has a precedent in the Biblical narrative.  It has an embodiment.  Ancient Judaism gave a name to the angel whose job it was to discover everything that was wrong about someone, to undercut them, to tear them apart.  That angel’s title was Ha Satan, meaning The Prosecutor or The Accuser.

Whenever I find myself coming up with reasons to hate, subvert, or attack another soul, I remember that.  But I also remember the words of Jesus as they rise up from John’s Gospel today.

It’s a potent little saying, delivered by Jesus as he speaks about his imminent departure to his gathered friends. They’re feeling the coming loss, as Jesus talks obscurely about his coming departure.

As part of that conversation, he gives them a command, and presents them with a promise.

Here is what it means if you obey me, Jesus says.  This is what it means to be my disciple.  And it’s a little bit aggressive.  He’s ordering us ­­using command language, after all­­ to love one another. And yeah, I know, we don’t like anyone telling us what to do. But if we’ve committed to the path of Christ, this is a foundational requirement. If you’ve signed up for this Jesus thing, if you’ve said: I’m committed to the Way, then you’re committing yourself to his service.

All he asks of us is that we love one another, and that we share that love. It should be a joy, and on many days, it is. On those days when it is not, when you’ve not had enough coffee or you’re just feeling grumpy and annoyed? Then it is your duty, to be done whether you feel like it or not. It’s duty. You do it, because you’ve said you would.

And then there is a promise. Jesus promises their disciples that as they work their way through life, he won’t be with them­­ but another will be.

That other is described by various bibles in various ways. It’s the “helper.” It’s the “Comforter.” In John 14 today, we heard it described as the “Advocate.” Advocate is the best word, really, because it comes closest to the the language first used in this Gospel. It’s a term used to describe the Holy Spirit, God’s presence as it moves in and with us and through us.

The word John used to tell the world what Jesus had said was the word parakletos. In the Greek, para means together with, right by your side, close in. It’s a prefix of support, of care, of help, right there at your time of need.

Think, for example, of the word paramedic.  They’re first there, right there, giving you the care you need to make sure you make it through that vital first few minutes.

Then there’s the second half of the word: kaleo. It means to make a call or judgment, and taken together, the whole word means the one who knows you intimately, and from that intimate understanding is willing to speak on your behalf. They are your supporter, they stand with you, and they do so out of love.

It isn’t that they don’t know the stuff you’ve done wrong.  It’s that those parts of you are not their task.  Their goal is to light you up, to find your goodness and magnify it.  They stir your creativity, celebrate your thoughtfulness, encourage your patience.

That’s the grace of the Spirit, as it’s given to us. But it’s not a gift given to us for ourselves alone. It governs and defines our duty towards others. As we invite that Spirit into us, we take it on as our purpose.

Meaning, we’re called to care for and serve and advocate for others, just as God cares for and serves and advocates for us.

This truth is and has always been what sets the Christian path as a countercultural corrective to the oppositional and self-seeking trollery of

Let that be so, for you and for me, AMEN