Rick Warren, senior pastor of Saddleback Church in California and one of the country’s most prominent evangelical leaders, announced on Aug. 6 that more than 200 Facebook pages have popped up claiming to be raising money in memory of Warren’s son, Matthew.
All of them are scams.
The only presence Warren has on Facebook is here. The rest were apparently launched to, as Warren writes on Facebook, to “make money on my son’s death.” Warren, whose son took his own life last spring, says that 179 of those pages have since been shut down. But that means some are still out there—and more scam pages could surface.
It’s a sad story, but a familiar one. It seems like whenever a high-profile tragedy strikes, there will be those who will try to make money from other people’s misery. I saw it firsthand during the fires here in Colorado Springs both this and last summer: As the city watched and worried over the flames tearing through parts of the community, destroying nearly 1,000 homes in all, most folks were so willing, even eager, to lend a hand. But both times, looters came in and robbed some of the empty houses the fires spared.
When I read those stories of looting (and worried about my own empty house), it struck me being nearly inhuman. It’s hard to believe that there would be people who would be so parasitic as to lie in wait for someone’s suffering and then capitalize on it in such a manner. Yet there it is.
And getting back to Warren’s sad story, I can’t help but think about how the ubiquity of the Internet aids and abets such scammers.
The Internet is a great tool for not-so-great characters. Celebrities and leaders around the world have been plagued with hackers and scammers and all manner of mischief-makers online—and Christian leaders are certainly not immune. According to Christianity Today, fellow megachurch pastor Joel Osteen was victimized by a fake website, Twitter account and press releases claiming that he had renounced his Christian faith. (The perpetrator, Justin Tribble, said he didn’t want to hurt Osteen, but “get through and have a dialogue.”) Many others have had fake sites or social media accounts set up in their names, confusing followers. This summer, Warren’s Twitter account was hacked.
But it’s just not leaders who are impacted. Many of us have been victimized too. Just a month ago, one of my own email accounts was temporarily taken over by a spam-sending bot, tormenting all my contacts with unwanted and inappropriate messages.
No serious harm was done. But it was still annoying and embarrassing. Just the idea that someone or something was sending links and messages out under my name felt incredibly invasive. It felt like who I was had been, in a way, hijacked.
So that’s one of the curses of the blessing we call the Internet.
In many ways, the incredible power and connectivity we all wield through our computers and tablets and smartphones is an incredibly awesome (in several senses of the word) thing. We can connect with friends we’ve not seen for 20 years. We can access more information and entertainment in an afternoon than some of our ancestors could in a lifetime. And, through Facebook and Twitter and other sites, we’re able to reach people who would’ve been unreachable before.
A person like Warren would’ve been a distant figure to most of us 30 years ago. And if we were lucky enough to hear a sermon of his—on radio or television or even in person—it would’ve been a one-way street. He would talk, we would listen. But now we’re able to read some of his thoughts on Facebook and Twitter, and we can respond right back. We can send our sympathies for his loss, and at least let him know that we’re thinking about him. As if he was a good friend. Indeed, he, and others, can feel much more real through such avenues.
That is, if, of course, the people we’re reaching out to are actually the people we think we’re reaching out to.
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