‘Satan will exploit any opportunity to steal our joy, kill our certainty and destroy our faith,’ says Jenny Sanders, as she compares the devil’s schemes to the devastating actions of cyber terrorists.
If you’ve ever received one of those emails telling you that you’ve won a heap of money, or scooped a big prize which just requires some bank details to verify your claim, you may fluctuate between sympathy or scorn for the vulnerable French woman who was recently conned out of $850,000 (£700,000).
For eighteen months, one woman genuinely believed she was in an online relationship with actor Brad Pitt.
For eighteen months, one woman genuinely believed she was in an online relationship with actor Brad Pitt. Despite her daughter urging her to not be naive, 53 year-old Anne was duped by deep fake pictures and the emotional impact of hearing, ‘words that you never heard from your own husband.’
Recently divorced and a novice to social media, Anne was a prime target for scammers who took all of her settlement money. Thinking she was paying for his cancer treatment – ‘Brad’s’ money being supposedly tied up in his own divorce from Angelina Jolie – Anne was pacified by assurances that he’d sent exclusive pictures from his hospital bed that she wouldn’t find online, and by a fake news report that mentioned her obliquely.
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Anyone familiar with the machinations of social media would recognise the screaming red flags in this fictional yarn a mile away, while reluctantly admiring (and trembling) at the manipulation of AI to masquerade as reality, and the audacity of the scammers. This was a gold star example of catfishing.
While condolences are undoubtedly due, others have made Anne the butt of unkind jokes, scoffing at her misplaced trustfulness and her weakness for AI-generated affection. Her realisation came when she saw news footage of the actual Mr Pitt with his girlfriend, Ines de Ramon, in June last year. Broken, humiliated and living out of a few boxes at a friend’s house, it’s hard to see how Anne will recover from this without intervention.
Before we feel too smug, perhaps we should ask ourselves how often we have been duped ourselves.
Before we feel too smug, perhaps we should ask ourselves how often we have been duped ourselves. Not, I truly hope, by online scammers but by enemy tactics which seek to deceive, trip us up in our faith or knock us out of our spiritual race completely.
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The Bible says that our arch-enemy, Satan stalks around us, ‘like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour’ (1 Peter 5:8). Like scammers, lions on the hunt prowl with terrifying focus. Probing for signs of weakness they wait for the opportune moment to pounce and tear into they prey. That’s why Peter exhorts us to ‘Be alert and of sober mind.’
None of us is immune from the schemes of the evil one whose intent Jesus exposed: ‘to steal and kill and destroy’ (John 10:10).
Satan will exploit any opportunity to steal our joy, kill our certainty and destroy our faith. He is constantly busy, twisting God’s truths, compromising his standards or subtly injecting lies about God’s goodness into our lives wherever and however he can. He exists to drag us down.
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We are made in the image of God – the pinnacle of creation – and, having forfeited his own divine relationship, Satan seeks to derail ours too and so besmirch that image and rob us of peace with God, and the abundant life Jesus promised us.
It’s said that a half-truth is more powerful than an outright lie, and Satan uses that effectively. It’s easy to be caught up in popular opinion, the ethos of television programmes, the clamour of polarised social media opinions, of the soundbites and reports taken out of context or without regard for what’s happened in the past.
There are times when we have undoubtedly been scammed in a spiritual sense. Taking Peter’s advice to heart, we would be wise to stay alert in every area of our lives lest we be robbed, literally or spiritually.
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