One day, God-With-Us and his groupies pulled into a small town and stopped at On Higher Grounds, a local church-run coffee shop where community leaders gathered each day to sit alone and stare at their screens. God-With-Us took James and John inside for a chai latte. When they came out, he found his other groupies bickering with some of the regular patrons.

He asked what started the squabble and a man stepped forward, saying, “Teacher, that young man there is my son. He has an attitude of bigotry which robs him of all civilized speech.”

The young man in question was sitting at an outdoor table, sipping a doppio and typing furiously on his laptop. Outwardly, he was as quiet, well-groomed, and respectable as any other customer, but online, he was nasty and vindictive and no one could silence him.

“Anytime a hot-button issue is mentioned,” continued the father, “he becomes belligerent and rigid in his beliefs, spewing forth divisive and hateful rhetoric. I asked your groupies to talk some sense into him, but they could not.”

They had tried, but the bigot had jumped on them and outwitted them, leaving them exposed and humiliated. Seeing an opportunity, the patrons had begun criticizing the groupies who had in turn defended themselves.

“O faithless and twisted generation,” said God-With-Us. “Bring me the boy.”

The instant the young man saw God-With-Us, he shook with rage and ground his teeth. “What do you want?” he asked. “Have you come to preach tolerance and political correctness?”

God-With-Us asked the young man his screen name.

“@Legion,” he said, “for we troll many.” He then launched into a tirade of profane and offensive comments, but God-With-Us told him to shut up and he obeyed.

“How long has this been happening?” God-With-Us asked the young man’s father.

“From childhood,” he answered. “It often results in vicious arguments, fistfights, and even death threats. Can you help us?”

“All things are possible for those who believe,” said God-With-Us.

“I believe,” the father cried out. “Help my unbelief!”

Then, God-With-Us commanded the bigot, saying, “Listen, you loud-mouthed and close-minded attitude. Come out of the boy and never enter him again.”

The young man fell down and begged God-With-Us not to delete any of his online comments. At that moment, a large cart of bacon was being delivered to the coffee shop. So with God-With-Us’ permission, all of the divisive and hateful rhetoric came out of the young man’s laptop and entered into the bacon, about two thousand slices. Then, the cart rolled down a steep hill and into an intersection where it was plowed over by a semi.

When the patrons standing there saw the young man speaking calmly and rationally, they were seized with great fear, saying, “What kind of person can get an internet troll to see reason?” Shouting and foaming at the mouth, they commanded God-With-Us and his groupies to leave their town and never come back.

As they were leaving, the young man who had been freed from bigotry asked to join them, but God-With-Us said, “Return to your laptop and share what God has done for you.”

After they had been cast out of the town, his groupies asked him, “Teacher, why couldn’t we change the bigot’s beliefs?”

God-With-Us answered them, “Because you did not believe he could change.”

– Ryan Shane Lopez