A World Full Of Scammers

Something To Think About, Full Mouth, Empty Pockets:

I Just read in the paper and heard on the radio about a scammer who convinced a bunch of really smart people that he was going to give a huge pile of money to his Alma Mater.  It turns out that the whole thing was " pure fantasy . . . [the perpetrator] . . . was no more than a “breathtakingly persuasive liar” who took more than $800,000 from his friends to spend on luxury cars, a vacation in Las Vegas and dinners at Ruth’s Chris Steak House"  (Roanoke Times, 10/14).   The story caught my attention, because I had recently heard about another example of huge promises, great expectations, but no substance just a few days before.  Both stories reminded me of a disaster that a relative of mine narrowly avoided.  It's a fairly common syndrome.  Our world is filled with folk who have great needs and desires.  To one degree or another we are all there.  Even folk who have few personal wants tend to care deeply about institutions and movements that have great needs.  Then there are those who have a "need" to be the hero, the one who will fill the gap and provide the big bucks.  The problem is the benfactors in the three incidents to which I refer, and who knows how many more examples, have no bucks at all.  What they do have is a remarkable ability to lie convincingly.  If we were to set up an assembly of the duped, just from the three incidents in this STTA, it would include very well educated professionals, school administrators, church leaders, business owners, professional fund-raisers, people who know how to balance a checkbook, and even some who run the banks that hold the accounts.  In one of the cases I mention, even the man's wife was taken in. It is not a new scenario. Jesus spoke of a group of people who said, "I am rich. I have everything I want. I don’t need a thing!"  Yet the truth was, they were "wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked" (Revelation 3:17, NLT).   I can easily see the Church of Laodicea offering a matching-fund-challenge to the local Red Cross, while accountants were pulling together the numbers that would force them into bankruptcy. In some perverse way the whole idea goes back to the father of lies.  In the Garden of Eden he came offering what he really couldn't give, and what Eve really didn't need but came to desperately want. In between Genesis and Revelation we see Israel persuaded to trade the glory of God for the shame of idols, the nations of the world worshiping and serving the things created rather than the creator, representatives of the nation of Israel rejecting their King and instead swearing allegiance to Caesar, and those who follow "shameless shepherds who care only for themselves. . . clouds blowing over the land without giving any rain . . . trees in autumn that are doubly dead, for they bear no fruit and have been pulled up by the roots" (Jude 12, NLT). My first temptation when I read the article this morning was to feel smug and look down my nose at those who were taken in, but after I thought a bit, I realize that I'm taken in all the time.  There just isn't a reporter keeping track of my foolish sin.   It's STTA. This is a dangerous world.  You'll find hope here.