Manipulators are Pretenders

"Manipulators pretend to be on your side while working against you."

They often have flying monkeys that believe everything they say and begin treating the target in destructive ways in allegiance to the manipulator.

Usually the flying monkeys have no real information about the target. Their evaluation of a person is based on the view the manipulator has planted in their minds. Always the information has smatterings of truth in it, but mostly added verbiage to make the target look bad.

The Bible calls this gossip, when someone believes what one or two people say without out any real evidence, merely because they choose to be accepted by the manipulator.

How do we keep from being a "flying monkey"? It is simple, never treat someone with contempt or develop a mean spirit toward them because of what others say.

If we think it is important to know the truth about someone, go to the targeted person to hear their side of things. In most cases though, we can simply choose not to believe the gossip and continue relationships with the target until we see for ourselves who they are as a person. If we make the choice to refuse to believe the gossip, then we might also consider removing the gossiper from our lives.

Manipulators need flying monkeys to carry out their mean spirited tactics for them. If they can get the flying monkeys to treat the target with contempt, they have managed to harm someone without ever being detected, while gathering an army to continually torment their target.

Bottom line: When we remove the manipulator from our life, we must also eliminate, the flying monkeys. The manipulator will never listen and once the flying monkeys have a wrong belief about us, they will hold on to it to keep the manipulator in their life.
It is a form of clique, if we do not measure up, based on the lies of the manipulator, then we will be battered regularly by cold stares, indifference and mocking in subtle ways to hurt us.

Love these people from afar, pray for them and keep your distance, they will never listen until the Lord breaks their heart over their sin.

Psalm 15:17 "17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; A broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise."

2 Timothy 3:1-9
“Difficult Times Will Come”
3 But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come.
2 For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy,
3 unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good,
4 treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God,
5 holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power; Avoid such men as these.
6 For among them are those who enter into households and captivate weak women weighed down with sins, led on by various impulses,
7 always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.
8 Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose the truth, men of depraved mind, rejected in regard to the faith.
9 But they will not make further progress; for their folly will be obvious to all, just as Jannes’s and Jambres’s folly was also."

Verse 5 in this passage tells us to avoid these people. We don't hate them, we care enough to remove ourselves so that our frustration with their antics does not turn into hate. They want us to hate them so we will sin in words and actions, it makes them feel justified. Removing ourselves helps us avoid becoming just like them.

1 Corinthians 15:33
"33 Do not be deceived: “Bad company corrupts good morals.”