Friends,

As I sat down to write this devotion, I got a call from an unknown number. My phone does two things that are very helpful in this situation:

Silence Unknown Callers: If the number is not known to me, my phone sends the call straight to voicemail. If it’s legit, which it almost never is, then I just call them back. I love this setting, because I am not constantly having to deal with scam calls throughout the day. I don’t even notice them anymore unless I happen to be looking at my phone when they call. If you do not have this feature turned on and you have an iPhone, open your setting app, and just start typing in “Silence Unknown Callers” and the setting should pop right up.
Voicemail Dictation: I don’t know why or how this got on my phone, but I love it. My phone automatically types out voicemails, so I can get a gist of what is going on and can quickly decide if I need to call someone back. If the voicemail begins with anything to do with tax relief or extended warranties, then I know it’s a scam and I can delete the voicemail and get on with my life.

So, as I sat down to write this, and my phone sent a call to voicemail, the dictation said it was Deborah with tax relief services, and I knew immediately that it was not real, and deleted it. When these calls started about ten years ago, they often used real people, and sometimes still do, but usually it was a pre-recorded message. They had to hire someone to make that recording, and they would manipulate it and send it out thousands of times. If it resulted in the theft of one person’s identity or credit card information, it probably would have been worth their while. I wonder if the voice actor knew that they were part of the scam, or if they were fed a lie. I like to think once people realized what these messages were, no one would take the job and knowingly work for the scammers, which is why they use artificial intelligence now. It is easy for me to notice that the recordings are not real people, but they are getting more and more sophisticated. The voices themselves are now very convincing, but it is the cadence that sounds unnatural, and a good indicator that the message is not real.

Even when armed with these settings and knowledge, there is always something else to take us by surprise. When my sister was still in college, someone researched her papers and studied her social media, called my grandparents pretending to be her. They convinced my grandparents that they needed to send five thousand dollars to a P.O. Box in New Jersey or she would be arrested. They love her, so they did it. They were sworn to secrecy by the scammer, but they are also terrible confidants, so they spilt the beans to my mother within just a few hours of putting the money in the mail. Believe it or not, the postal service was able to intercept the cash and send it back.

The point to all of this is that you really can’t trust phone calls, texts or e-mails anymore. Here are some things to keep in mind:
Scammers pretend to be trusted people, which means they often pretend to be clergy or other representatives from Churches. We are targets.
It is very easy to mimic someone’s identity. Even if my e-mail is scammer@nigerianprince.org, I can make it appear to you as “Rev. Nicholas Hull”. There is nothing I can do to stop someone else from doing this.
I will NEVER ask you to send me money, gift cards or anything like that. If you ever receive an e-mail from anyone at St. Luke’s asking you for these things and you think it is legitimate, please call the office and confirm.
There is a certain level of confidence I expect from the vestry and the pastoral care team. I may ask for their discretion in certain circumstances. I will not ask any of you to keep my secrets. For example: I will never say, “Things are hard financially around here. Don’t tell anyone, but I need help paying my bills.” If you hear anything like this, reach out to me or any member of the staff or vestry.
If something seems fishy, contact us directly and use an e-mail or phone number you know is correct.
If you are getting e-mails from PayPal or Norton Anti-Virus that you paid them a lot of money, it is a scam. Just delete it.
Never click on suspicious links in e-mails! Remember they will try to compel you to click on a link. It will feel like they are saying, “Hey, you just paid us this very specific large sum of money. Click on this link to dispute.” Don’t do that, and if you do then it could result in your data getting stolen.

All of this sounds like something from a dystopian novel. I never thought I would get a call from an artificial intelligence that sounded like a real human trying to steal my identity. Nor did I ever imagine someone in my congregation getting an e-mail from someone pretending to be me asking for gift cards, but one of these things happens daily.

I have not always handled this is gracious ways. In my previous church, where I first served as rector, my admin would get e-mails from someone pretending to be me asking her to transfer money. I would respond pretending to be my admin insisting that the money wouldn’t be transferred until I submitted my weekly poem. I never did get the scammers to write a poem, but it wasn’t for lack of trying.

I thought this was quite hilarious, but actively working to foil the efforts of malicious people ate away at my soul. Just like responding to nasty comments on social media can feel righteous, even though it probably just encourages future nasty comments, and puts us in a constant fight mentality. A common slogan around this theme is, “Don’t feed the trolls.” Whether it’s pushing back at the fake malicious phone calls we get every day, or calling out stupidity or prejudice on social media, don’t expect to win those fights. Raging against them only encourages them to continue. Don’t feed the trolls.

Don’t get me wrong, we need to position ourselves to stand up to those who try to make us victims, and we need to be able to stand against prejudice of any type, but in this environment, we need to be strategic. On the internet, it takes no effort to find someone worthy of your outrage. Heck, social media will put those comments right in front of you once it figures out that it will grab your attention. There is a machine out there that feeds on outrage, and it does not have humanity’s best interest at heart.

The technology may be new, but the struggle is anything but. Scripture seems to tell story after story of humanity turning its attention to the things that are not real, while turning a blind eye to their relationship with God and with our neighbor. Chasing after false Gods and embracing pagan empires walks hand in hand with neglecting the widows, orphans and resident aliens. Keeping our consciousness on illusion and away from real human relationship is a recipe of devaluing humanity and feeling isolated from God. If you get that call from an unknown number, cast your cares for it into oblivion, and save your outrage and anger for the right moment. There may or may not be a real person behind that terrible comment on Facebook, but your relationship with them is certainly just an illusion. Let it go.

Strong feelings just as outrage or anger can be quite helpful and can even help us. When paired with love, anger can give us the energy to say the hard thing to the very real people we care about in this world. Raging against a stranger on the internet has very little inherent risk. Who cares if that stranger ends up cursing our name? However, telling your parent, child, spouse or friend that they’ve hurt you takes heaps of courage. Those hard conversations are hard, but they are real. Chasing after illusions on the internet and satisfying our need to feel heard is much like praying to a false God. It doesn’t work.

Even when we are enveloped in the distractions of this world, I trust that God sees the real us. We can surround ourselves with facades and illusions, but God still sees right into our souls. Maybe God is even yearning for us to shed the idols that burden us and finally have that real conversation. It’s hard, but I think it’s worth the risk.

Blessings,

Nick