Day 245: Miley Cyrus and Facebook...Leveling the Playing Field

If you are a facebook user than you have been seeing a picture of Miley Cyrus (Hannah Montana) pulling her shirt up while standing in her skivees. Now just settle down here for a minute...ALL Facebook users have probably seen this. If her shirt went up any higher….well, it would violate Facebook policy on pictures. Next to this picture however is a little phrase that says, “SICK! I lost all respect for Miley Cyrus when I saw this picture. Click here.” Now a person can look at this one of two ways. If you know absolutely anything about email and the internet right away a red flag should go up. You don’t see anyone commenting about this just above her picture. Usually when you “like” something you can comment on it. No one comments on it. This would indicate it is “Spam” no different the Mr. Moharbajib wanting to give you $30,000,000.00 from his great Nigerian cousin, Phil. There is the other stance that a person is so naïve with no cyber smarts that they click on it thinking she got hit in the face with a snow ball or something. How a person could read anything more from a shirt almost all the way off a girl in her unmentionables is beyond me. This is not the first scam on Facebook to do this.

To me what is revealing are the number of pastors, church leaders, etc. clicking on this thing. How can one tell they are clicking on this you might ask? Simple…once you click on it, it shows up on their wall indicating they clicked on it. Now this really opens things up for discussion. Again, in my opinion unless you are living under a rock and are truly naive to what this possibly could be…you got to ask the question…what were you hoping to see? Every Sunday you hear church leaders talking about the need to guard yourself even on the computer. I think it is actually great such scams are on, Facebook because it gives those in leadership and those preaching non-grace based messages a dosage of their own medicine. Now because this person clicked on it, Facebook is now saying so and so "liked" it and it shows on their wall while people who are friends of theirs on facebook from their church are left saying, “OH MY…Did so and so really click on that?” Now what? Does so and so need to enter a two year rehabilitation program because scripture says…”out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks…or finger clicks (I added that part).” Do some preachers who clicked on this that come down so hard on those struggling with temptations; should they experience the same amount of grace they extend to others? Seems like a biblical principle to me.

So…what happens if you click on this? The person may be hoping for a pornographic image but, if you keep clicking according to the, Data Protection Center “Unfortunately continuing is a mistake, as you will be lead directly to a CPALead survey, which earns the scammers money every time one of their dumb questionnaires is answered.

The scammers only need a few people to complete their survey to make it financially worthwhile to build rogue applications like this – that’s why there are so many of them. If only Facebook took a tougher line about the applications it allowed on its network.”

I prefer to give the people that click on these a bit of grace. They have been seen publicly clicking on something inappropriate and probably feel pretty silly. However, we have all done something dumb in our lives. Let me just say this, if you are preaching a graceless message where you remove people from ministry because they clicked on something bad one time and were willing to tell you about it…you ought to change your tune and show some grace. The reason being is that what will happen to you if you fall for a scam like this and those from your church see you did it? Personally, if you are a hard nose looking to pull people from ministry in your church over goofy things like this…if you get caught clicking through on something like this than I think you should be pulled as well. Where is the grace in that? Matthew 7:2 explains “For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” If you are a jerk…guess what? If you are full of grace….guess what?