Christian Worldview Network - Brannon Howse

The first time I remember being conned was during a visit to a local carnival. I played one of the many fun-looking games that lined the carnival�s broadway and did extremely well on my very first try. Little did I know that everybody did well on their first try. As I remember, I earned about 80 points and only needed 100 to win a really nice prize. I figured that I would be able to capture a nice watch for only a few bucks. About $20.00 later I finally realized the game was rigged. I left with no watch and no pride. I did get a cheap and valuable lesson in life.

Being the naive lad I was, I couldn�t understand how the carny could be so dishonest and not be convicted in his conscience for taking my money. I certainly knew right from wrong. Why didn�t he? I just could not understand this kind of behavior.[1]

Everyone hates being deceived and yet most of us have fallen prey to a major deception at one time or another. Some of us, like me, have even been the victims of a professional con. There are few things in life that make us madder than having our good nature and trust violated.

When we first discover we�ve been had, we get angry with the perpetrator, and then we get mad at ourselves for being such suckers. It�s one of life�s most embarrassing situations.

Some years ago, one of my family members fell for an ancient but still effective scam, the �pigeon drop�[2] and lost $9,000.00. As soon as they told me what happened they begged me not to tell anyone. They were hurt, angry and totally embarrassed by it. The sad thing about this type of scam is that it�s almost impossible to catch the perpetrators. They pack up and leave the area once they successfully con their mark. [3]

Maybe we�ve been lucky so far and have avoided being taken. We read about others falling for some scheme and feel somewhat superior thinking that we would never succumb. Well, maybe not, but I�ll bet that most of us are falling for some pretty big cons right now, on a daily basis.

Our culture is building a new foundation. This isn�t new. It has been slowly taking place over decades. It is a foundation built on deception. It is becoming so common and so pervasive that we don�t even react anymore. We expect it, accept it, and discount it down to business as usual.

Let me expand on this idea. My goal is to help you engage your reticular activator.[4] When you do you will become aware of certain things that are going on around you, things currently going unnoticed, things that should alarm you. You can�t beware of something if you are not aware of it, right? We need to step back, refocus, and change the way we look at things. The Bible calls this discernment. It�s really just biblical worldview.

Think about all the mail you receive. I don�t know about you but I get anywhere between 2-4 pounds of mail each day. Yes, I have weighed it. 98% of it goes right into the garbage. Who are these people who write me all the time?

In your daily payload of mail how many of the advertising pieces you receive are based on deception? Probably the majority of them and yet many people go ahead and do business with the very companies that solicited their business using deception. What�s up with this? If you were a victim of the pigeon drop would you want to do more business with the scam artists? You wouldn�t have a very good basis for a trusting relationship would you?

What kind of deception am I referring to here? I speak of the less sinister kind of deception but deception still and therefore wrong. For example, one common direct-mail marketing tactic is to make an appeal or solicit a sale using an envelope that looks like it contains a check. Keep in mind that the marketer must get you to open the envelope. By hook or by crook, you must open the envelope or whatever was spent on the inside material is wasted. Here, the ends do justify the means.

When you do frantically tear open the envelope anticipating a windfall, your hopes are immediately dashed to pieces. You can�t believe you fell for it, again. You opened the envelope. Arghhhhhhh!!!

Our gullibility reminds me of the recurring theme in the Peanuts cartoon strip when Lucy would assist Charlie Brown in kicking a football. She would talk him into letting her hold the football in place for him so he could kick it. Year after year, when Charlie Brown made his kicking run, Lucy would remove the football at the last second and Charlie Brown would end up flat on his back, again. Time after time, Charlie Brown fell for Lucy�s con. And we keep opening the envelopes.

Inside the enticing envelope, there may be no check at all, just an advertisement. Or, it may actually contain a real check but if you dare cash it, you will be obligated to some service, club, magazine subscription, or recurring charge. You better read the small print on the back. The devil is in the details. I cashed one of those $2.35 checks and spent four-years in the Air Force. I did get some nice green clothes though and got to travel some.

Other inviting envelopes contain another type of check. It is not a negotiable check. It is one that can only be used toward an item the soliciting company is selling. It can look like a real check but in reality is just a discount coupon that has no monetary value. Well, at least I saved $5.00 on the hair growing ointment that doesn�t work.

Then, beyond the deceptive envelopes, there are the many contests that we each win every week. My luck has really improved since I got a job. Rarely a week passes that I don�t win something.

I love it when I get a call from some telephone number that does not show up on my caller ID. The cheery, high-volume voice on the other end of the line is just so excited for me because I am a winner in their $50,000,000 give away. Unfortunately, I did not win the $50,000,000. But, I did win a very nice prize and it will only cost me $495.00 to get it. I can�t believe how lucky I am.

Ok, I know by now you may be thinking, �big deal,� these are just advertising gimmicks. There are more important things in life. But, this is precisely the problem; we don�t see the problem for what it is. Deception is deception on any level. We should be angry with anyone who tries to form a relationship with us, business or personal, based on a lie. FYI: Deception=Lie.

Let�s move to another area that affects us every day, the media. We hear the word �spin�[5] a lot nowadays. Journalist regularly put a spin on their stories. This applies to both right and left wing sources. Spin, in my opinion, is withholding part of the truth or adding to it in order to create an impression the whole truth would not support. It�s deception whether tilted to the left or right. It�s a form of lying and lying can have disastrous consequences. Remember the serpent in the Garden of Eden? He put a quite a spin on the story he told Eve. You and I are both still suffering from that one.

In recent years, the media has gone way beyond simply spinning stories. Instead of just reporting the news, they have begun creating the news. Have you ever noticed, for example, that the homeless only become visible and front-page material when a Republican president is in office? For some reason they disappear during Democratic administrations.

I am not saying that homelessness is not a problem. It is. But, the media makes it a more important issue, a more newsworthy issue when it serves their agenda. Bernard Goldberg, in his courageous[6] book Bias, describes how and why the media seeks out and finds the homeless for political purposes.

On a more important note, the media has actually faked, even staged events and then reported them as real news. One of the most egregious acts took place in 1978 when NBC�s Dateline aired manipulated crash test results in order to spin a story. The purpose of the story was to add fuel to the then heated debate over the safety of the Ford Pinto. There was concern as to how the car would respond to a rear end crash.

Film from UCLA research conducted in 1967 was used to highlight the story. The grizzly finale showed a Ford sedan burst into a fireball as it was rear-ended. Why did it explode? There was an incendiary device under the car. NBC failed to mention this little fact. The stated purpose of the UCLA research was not to prove that Fords explode on impact but to study the effect of fire on the passenger compartment. The explosives were necessary to produce the fire. The use of the explosives was clearly revealed in the researcher�s papers released ten years prior to the airing of the film by NBC.

It�s difficult to know what is true and what isn�t in the current media environment. I�ve become a real cynic. When a national network gives the weather report, I still look out the window.

By the way, how is your reticular activator doing? Are things �deceptive� popping into your mind? Are you becoming attuned?

Let�s move on to another area of common and regular concern: government. Do you think the government might ever use deception, other than the income tax system? There is an unlimited amount of examples I can proffer, but I want to brief so I will focus just on Congress for a minute.

I need to generalize here because I don�t want to unfairly indict or impugn all 535 members of Congress. But, the way Congress does business allows for a lot of smoke and mirrors that can be, and is in many cases, manipulated to the member�s advantage and to our disadvantage.

One case in point, is when, because of the complex system of getting a bill through Congress, a member can tell a constituent that he voted �for� a bill and then tell the next person he voted �against� the same bill. This is possible because bills can go through several votes in various forms as it moves toward approval. So, a member may vote �yes� in one instance and �no� in another. Probably 99.8% of us never check to see how our representative really voted when a bill is in its final form, the one that really counts.

Put on your thinking cap. Have you ever known of a temporary tax that was really only temporary? Are you aware (so you can beware) that you are still paying a temporary tax on your phone bill each month? The War Tax Revenue Act of 1914 originally imposed one tax you now pay each month as a �temporary� tax. Did someone forget to stop taxing us?

Here�s another question. When has a government program ever come in anywhere close to budget? Uh, never? Here is one excellent representative example:

In 1985, government officials claimed that Boston's "Big Dig" highway project would cost $2.6 billion and be completed by 1998. The cost ballooned to $14.6 billion and the project is still not finished.

What do we do? We just shrug our shoulders and say to ourselves that it�s just the way the world works. Yeah, but only because we allow it. I understand that various things can cause a budget overrun, but sometimes, probably more often than not, we are sold an idea on totally fabricated figures and out right lies.

George Orwell understood this and makes a fine point in his classic prophetic book, 1984.

Winston Smith, the main character in 1984 worked at the Ministry of Truth the place where official government lies were manufactured and doctored. Smith said concerning his job that �Most of the material that you were dealing with had no connection with anything in the real world.�

He went on, in the book, to talk about the official government report on the manufacture of boots:

�The Ministry of Plenty�s forecast had estimated the output of boots for the quarter at a hundred and forty-five million pairs. The actual output was given as sixty-two millions. Winston, however, in rewriting the forecast, marked the figure down to fifty-seven millions, so as to allow for the usual claim that the quota had been overfilled. In any case, sixty-two million was no nearer the truth than fifty-seven millions, or than a hundred and forty-five millions. Very likely no boots had been produced at all. Likelier still, nobody knew how many had been produced, much less cared. All one knew was that every quarter astronomical numbers of boots were produced on paper, while perhaps half the population of Oceania went barefoot. And so it was with every class of recorded fact, great or small. Everything faded away into a shadow-world in which, finally, even the date of the year had become uncertain.�

I could continue with this topic for quite sometime but sheer volume of facts is not my goal. My goal is simply to raise our awareness of how comfortable we have become with deception at all levels of our society. We�ve become a nation of liars.

Is your reticular activator working now? I urge you to keep it trained on what is before you. As you do, call those who attempt to deceive to account. If your children or grandchildren try to deceive you, discipline them. Don�t do business with companies or people who use deceptive advertising methods. And, in regards to our elected officials, call them to account. Vote those out of office who try to hide the truth or manipulate it to their own political ends. It is time to demand honesty, integrity, and truth.

Most important, let us be honest in our own communications. Proverbs 8:19-22 is a good place for us to conclude:

[1] My degree is in criminal justice and I studied the mindset of criminals. The way that cons (confidence men and women) help assuage their conscience (if they have one) is by accepting the proposition that their mark (victim) is trying to get something for nothing or to beat the system. This is exactly what a con does. Therefore, they reason, they are morally no worse than their marks. Both are trying to cheat but the con just cheats better.

[2] In the pigeon drop scam, swindlers work in pairs or teams. One befriends an unsuspecting consumer, the "pigeon," while the other approaches them with money or valuables he claims to have just found. After some rehearsed conversation, the con artists agree to split the money three ways with you and arrange to meet at a lawyer's office or somewhere else of their choosing. But can they trust you, they ask. To get your share, you'll need to put up some "good faith" money, which they will return to you after the goods are divided. To prove yourself trustworthy, you turn over a large sum of money to them and later go to meet them at the designated spot. Soon after arriving, you realize the pair is long gone -- and so is your money. From website of Missouri Attorney General�s Office. If you would like to see the pigeon drop demonstrated rent a copy of The Sting with Robert Redford. You�ll also see the famous Jamaican Switch con.

[3] It should be pointed out that most confidence schemers never face prosecution because there are no witnesses and the mark usually does voluntarily turn over his or her money. There is no force or coercion used. In addition, the mark is many times to embarrassed to report the crime.

[4] Our reticular activator is a function of our brains. Our reticular activator is at work when we turn on a certain prescribed filter in our brain to alert us to certain specific things. For example, if I ask you to describe everything in front of you, you will begin to look around and pick and describe items in some order your choose. But if I ask you to pick only those things in front of you that are �red,� everything red will pop out above everything else as it is filtered through your reticular activator.

[5] From The Free Dictionary by Farfax, To provide an interpretation of (a statement or event, for example), especially in a way meant to sway public opinion: "a messenger who spins bogus research into a vile theology of hatred" William A. Henry III.

[6] I purposely inserted the adjective �courageous� here because any inside media person, like Goldberg, who dares expose the media, is brave and faces great persecution. It�s kind of like turning state�s evidence against Don Corleone.