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“Be Sure Their Phone Will Find You Out”
Categories: Meditations
Since the rise of Internet pornography, much has been made about how easy it is to be a secret sinner these days. That’s true, but in many other ways, keeping sin secret has become much harder. I was reminded of this by a couple of recent news stories.
In the first, a drunken woman’s racist rant was captured for all the world to see by her victim’s smartphone. In the second, another woman became entangled with a man who eventually murdered her because she had earlier allowed him to take compromising photos of her.
Of the two scenarios, the first is much more straightforward. Bad behavior that used to remain private now can go viral. 25 years ago, Susan Westwood would have faced no consequences for her outburst. Today, she lost her job less than 24 hours later, and the stigma of that recording will follow her for the rest of her life.
The take-home is pretty simple. Don’t get drunk. Don’t say mean, hateful things to people. If you do, the odds are that someone will use their smartphone to record you and wreck you. Those chickens will come home to roost in a big way.
Lauren McCluskey’s case is considerably more complex. I have the utmost sympathy for her, her family, and all who knew her. No one deserves to be the victim of sexual extortion and murder. She was not “asking for it”.
At the same time, though, we must not blind ourselves to the lessons we ought to learn from her tragic end. It is always risky and frequently sinful to take intimate photos/video of ourselves, or to allow others to take them of us. I don’t think it’s a sin for a husband and wife to send such things to each other, but all it takes is one nosy co-worker. Then, that unguarded phone or logged-in Facebook account can produce something that will haunt you for decades.
Of course, producing and sharing explicit photos/video outside of marriage is always wrong. It’s also much riskier. Marriage, though it often isn’t, is at least supposed to be for life. More casual relationships aren’t. With those, it doesn’t take a third party to expose you. You can be betrayed by your ex, your hookup partner, the unwilling recipient of your clumsy come-on, or even some stranger on the Internet who talked you into flashing them.
In fact, the momentum of our society makes this likely to occur. As the cynical saying goes, the Internet is for porn. When countless indecent pictures are already public, it seems reasonable to the possessor of an indecent picture of you to make it public too. Nor are worldly people likely to be deterred by the thought of the anguish it will cause you. In fact, they probably consider that part of the fun.
The spiritual consequences of sin always have been severe, but in this area, the physical consequences are quickly catching up. Because one moment of foolishness and evil can ruin us, we must be constantly on our guard. It may well be that the recording we don’t want anyone to see becomes the recording that everyone sees. As Paul points out in Ephesians 5:15-16, the days are evil. We had best walk carefully.
