Slanderer Repellant

In Old English it's deofol. In Now English it's devil.

The Saxons called it diuval, and the Greeks possibly started it with their διάβολος (diabolos), meaning "the slanderer."

Several years ago at Brigham Young University – Idaho, I took a Media Law & Ethics class. For reasons unknown, the most memorable lesson from that class, for me, was the one about the difference between libel and slander. They both basically mean "to defame someone," but libel does it through writing, and slander does it through speaking.

I think the Now English word still holds true to its original Greek definition, and that the following statement is correct:

"If the devil is the slanderer, thus being a defamer, and he is everybody's adversary, then his mission is to try to defame everybody, implicating that everybody's got some 'fame' to begin with."

The "fame" that everybody's got… I really do believe that everybody in the world has something very special about them. Everybody's got a special light somewhere inside.

Granted, that may sound cheesier than the biggest cauldron of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese ever brewed, but I said what I meant and meant what I said.

How does a singular person get to be defamed by the slanderer? It happens when a bad little birdie whispers "you're not good-looking enough" into your ear and you buy it. It happens when you get the stinking inkling that you're a doomed and rotten person just because you make mistakes. It happens when something warps your judgment into deeming it nobler and far more dignified to not forgive someone, than to forgive.

The slanderer slanders in sly and tiny ways. It certainly takes effort on our part to keep our lights bright and our slanderer repellant fresh on our skins, but it can be done. I am definitely not constantly free of all slanderer sludge, but I can recommend the following repellant brands that I've put to the test:

-Being honest and maintaining integrity

-Being kind in deed and in thought to others and to yourself

-Striving patiently to keep self-improvement a priority

-Making and working towards righteous goals

In my life, I've discovered that my prime success tool is remembering I'm a child of God, that there's a way I can communicate with Him and stay close to Him, and that He loves me and longs to offer His help whenever I need it.

The devilish defamer is everybody's adversary, and his mission is to drag down as many of us as he can. But guess what. As many of us who have διάβολος for an arch nemesis, also have God—who is our Heavenly Father—for a greatest ally. Each of us is God's child, in a majorly real sense. And God, who adores us, and whose power infinitely and eternally trumps the enemy's power, stands up for His children who choose to stand by His side.