By Me/Self Image Magazine
The Warfare Issue/November 2026
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If you put yourself out there on the internet long enough, the comment section eventually comes for you.
Lately, across my TikTok, YouTube, and Facebook pages, the attacks have been relentless. If I’m being completely honest, it hurt. When strangers are coming for you in the comments day after day, your natural human instinct is to snap back. You want to defend yourself. You want to match their energy and fight fire with fire. And at first, I did.
But then I stumbled across a TikTok video from a creator named Craft To Christ, and it completely shifted my perspective.
She is a Christian ex-witch who walked away from the occult to follow Jesus. In her video, she was responding to a follower who asked what she thought about a practicing witch who had spent over a year obsessively making hate videos targeting Christian ex-witches. Instead of getting angry or firing back, her response stopped me in my tracks.
She didn’t lash out. Instead, she pointed out that if someone is that bothered by your faith—if they can’t just laugh and scroll past, but instead spend over a year obsessing over your content—it’s because God is actively pursuing them. Even wilder? She shared that other practicing witches had actually found her page through those hate videos, heard the gospel, and left witchcraft behind. Her response to the woman attacking her wasn’t vengeance; it was to pray that she would be released from that hateful spirit.
Listening to her, it hit me like a ton of bricks.
When we are being attacked, our first thought is almost always to attack back. We rarely stop to ask: What is actually happening here spiritually?
Now, let me be very clear: I am not saying you should become a doormat. I am not saying you should accept poor treatment, allow people to abuse you, or keep toxic situations and people in your life. Boundaries are necessary. Moving on from toxic environments is healthy.
What I am saying is that when hostility comes flying at us out of nowhere, we need to recognize what is really going on behind the scenes. When people attack you unprovoked, it is usually because they see something within you that makes them uncomfortable—or even a little jealous. It’s not that they want to be you, necessarily, but they are recognizing a peace, a light, or an anchor inside of you that they don’t have within themselves. More often than not, what they are reacting to is your faith.
In the Gospel of Matthew (5:44) and the Gospel of Luke (6:27–28), Jesus instructs us to love our enemies, do good to those who hate us, and pray for those who mistreat and persecute us.
We hear that teaching all the time, especially if we’ve grown up in the church. Put it on a coffee mug, nod along on Sunday morning, and move on. But have you ever stopped to think about why God tells us to do that?
I used to have this subconscious assumption that if I knew something, everybody else knew it too. Because I know the love of Christ, part of my brain just assumed everyone else understood it on some level and was just choosing to act right or act wrong.
That isn’t true.
The reality is that we are only on this earth for a very short period of time. People die every single day without ever being saved—without ever truly knowing or experiencing the love of Christ. The people leaving nasty comments, the people lashing out in anger, the people trying to tear down what you’re building—they aren’t acting like Christians because they are lost. They don’t know Him. And we cannot expect lost people to act like found people.
When someone is fixated on tearing you down because of who you are or what you believe, there is a very real chance that God is working something deep in their heart, and your life is just the friction point. You are a piece of a much bigger puzzle that God is putting together for their salvation.
If we snap back in the flesh, we ruin the witness. We prove to them that we are no different than the rest of the world. Choosing to love our enemies and pray for those who come against us isn’t a weak, passive suggestion; it is a weapon of spiritual warfare. When we stop, refuse to take the bait, stand firm in who we are in Christ, and genuinely pray for the person attacking us—praying for their healing and for their heart to change—we get out of God’s way and let Him do the heavy lifting. The love that Christ has given us isn’t meant to be hoarded; it is the exact same love we are required to pour out onto people who don’t deserve it, because none of us deserved it either.
There is another layer to this that really humbled me.
I’ve been a Christian my whole life. And it is a funny, humbling thing when someone who is newer to the faith teaches you a lesson you should have already known.
When you’ve been around the church forever, it is dangerously easy to become desensitized. Think about how time works as we age. When we were kids, a single summer felt like it lasted forever. Days were long because everything was brand new. Our brains were firing on all cylinders, absorbing every detail, every color, every experience for the first time. As we get older, the years start flying by because our brains put familiar things on autopilot. It’s not new anymore, so it gets pushed to the background.
The exact same thing happens in our walk with God if we aren’t careful.
When someone is a new Christian—especially someone who has been rescued out of deep darkness like the occult—they are like a newborn baby opening their eyes for the first time. Nothing is on autopilot. They aren’t desensitized to the grace of God. They are vaak-awake, on fire for Christ, and absorbing the truth of Scripture with a rawness that lifelong believers sometimes lose.
Listening to Craft To Christ talk about her testimony and how she views spiritual attacks made me realize how close her heart is to God. Sometimes, those of us who have been on this journey the longest need to stop acting like new believers don’t know anything, sit down, and actually listen to them. Seeing the gospel through the eyes of someone who just walked out of the dark forces your brain off autopilot. It wakes you up. It reminds you why your journey with Christ matters so much in the first place.
So, the next time you open your phone—or walk into a room—and feel the heat of unwarranted hate coming your way, pause before you swing back.
Remember who you are in Christ. Protect your peace, set your boundaries, and don’t let toxicity move into your house—but don’t harden your heart, either. Remember that Jesus tells us to pray for those who come against us for a reason. That person coming after you might just be in the middle of losing a wrestling match with God. Stand firm, let them talk, and pray them through it.
