Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire

I recently had one of THOSE telephone calls.

You know the kind I mean; in fact, you’ve probably received the same call yourself. A recorded woman’s voice begins in mid-sentence, warning you that you are in trouble with the IRS. She says that a criminal lawsuit has been filed against you, and that if you don’t reply, the “local cops” are on their way to arrest you. She then gives you a phone number to call, which she urges you to do right away. She closes with a pleasant, “Good bye.”

Whenever I get those calls, I just shake my head and hang up. I know the IRS doesn’t make such calls (not that I’ve experienced any real IRS calls myself), and recognize that the mid-sentence start is intentional to create tension in the hearers that they have missed important information. The hearers are more likely to call to find out what they need to know, which makes them more vulnerable to the scammers who sent that recorded message.

I watched a couple YouTube videos recorded by people who actually called the number and pretended to believe the warning. The person answering at that number identified himself as an IRS agent and gave some badge number. (Based on the accent, the IRS must hire only agents in India to answer phones.) The scammer explained that the victim owed thousands of dollars in back taxes and penalties, and that the IRS believed the person intentionally cheated on their taxes. To which the pretend victim expressed horror and asked what he or she could do to avoid going to prison. The scammer connected the caller to his “supervisor” who offered to reduce the amount owed and drop the criminal charges if the caller would go right away to a Target or Walmart store and buy hundreds of dollars of pre-paid debit or gift cards and mail them to a specified address. Of course, the person pretending to be a sucker never actually sends the money or cards, after which the scammer usually starts cussing and threatening before hanging up.

While watching the scammers get scammed is somewhat entertaining and appeals to my sense of justice, what amazes me is the brazen, in-your-face dishonesty of the scammers. Not only are they bold-face lying to people and upsetting them in order to steal their cash, they don’t care how much it hurts the person they scam. When one intended victim explained she had only $800 in the bank, and was a single mom with four kids to feed, the scammer just asked how fast she could send the debit cards. When another intended victim said his mother was dying and needed pain medicine, the scammer asked how close the Walmart was so he could wire them cash. How hardhearted such scammers are!

You would think that such scams would fail, and yet they succeed often enough. Tens of thousands of people have sent and lost millions of dollars. How is it that the victims believed the scammers? Partly because of our mistaken belief that people are basically good. When someone tells us something, we tend to believe them right away. After all, we depend on honest communication for practically everything in our lives, from our parents teaching us life skills, to our school-day education, to safety rules, to work assignments, to loving relationships, to our doctor’s prescriptions, to our religious faith and teachings. Most of what we hear is true, or at worst, mistaken; rarely have we experienced blatant lies, so when someone tells us something and sounds authoritative, our default reaction is to believe them. Why would they lie to us?

Unfortunately, I personally know two people who fell for phone scams. One supposedly won a lottery in England, and only had to send a fee/duty fee/tax which cost them $20,000 and led to threatening phone calls when they stopped sending money. The other fell for a phony online/telephone romance with someone whose purported mansion turned out to be a vacant lot in an industrial park. These are evidence of our need to believe people who sound sincere toward us.

To be honest, even when I hear the scammers’ lies, I find myself still wanting to believe them, though my mind tells me not to. I’ve always wanted to trust people, even when I learned they were lying. When I was in active pastoral ministry, I would  hear couples talk about their relationship problems, believing what they told me, until I realized from the contradictions that at least one of them was lying. People would come into the church from off the street and ask for financial help, sometimes changing their names or stories depending on which time they asked or whom they asked. One man’s mother died at least twice. Another father-son team needed gas money/bus fare to get to Arizona/Texas to see their grandfather/uncle who was dying. I actually met them at the bus station and shook my head when they ran back off the bus because there were no seats/the bus wouldn’t stop near their home before heading to L.A. Then there was the guy I bought groceries for at a store to feed his hungry children, only to have him sneak back in and return the groceries for a refund after I left.

Of course, as Christians, we are called to be honest in our dealings with others. We have the 8th Commandment not to bear false witness against our neighbor – that is, don’t lie to them! Luther explained this commandment in his Small Catechism: “We should fear and love God that we may not deceitfully belie, betray, slander, or defame our neighbor, but defend him, think and speak well of him, and put the best construction on everything.” Thus, not only does this commandment forbid us from saying things that are outright lies, we are also forbidden from saying things that may technically be true, yet by their effect deceive or cause harm to others (unlike the scammers who didn’t care about starving kids or dying mothers, just so they got their money!). We are even commanded to consider ways that what someone tells us may not be a lie; they could be mistaken, or maybe we don’t have enough information to judge their statement as false. Thus, if a kid comes running down the block screaming he is being chased by a T-Rex, it’s possible he’s not lying . . . maybe I should look for myself or duck under cover . . . just in case!

And yet, though we are called to be honest, we know that the world in general is not. Jeremiah 17:9 says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” and Jeremiah 9:5 says, “Everyone deceives his neighbor, and no one speaks the truth; they have taught their tongue to speak lies; they weary themselves committing iniquity.” Psalm 116:11 cries out, “All mankind are liars.” When children break something, we expect them to cover it up with a lie. When courts swear in witnesses, they threaten penalties for perjury, because they can’t count on truthful testimony by the goodness of people’s hearts. And let’s not even start talking about politics!

Why is deceit so prominent? The problem, of course, is sin. Which entered into the world as a result of . . . a lie, told by the devil, whom Jesus called “the father of lies” (John 8:44), when he lied to Eve in the Garden and told her that she would surely not die if she ate the forbidden fruit. By those words, the devil called God a liar, and revealed his own true nature. Unfortunately, the mother of all living (Genesis 3:20) believed his lie and acted upon it – falling victim to the world’s first scammer.

But although the world is full of lies, God is Truth. Romans 3:4 says, “Let God be true, though everyone were a liar . . .” God’s Word is true and righteous; it is the power of salvation for all who believe. It is the sure foundation of life here and in eternity. We can trust it in all matters of faith and life, receiving faith, inspiration, strength, and hope by his Word and by his Spirit who works through the Word to call, save, and sanctify us for our benefit and God’s glory.

Therefore, we can endure a world of liars – and phone scammers – remembering to be cautious and clear-thinking, being “as sheep in the midst of wolves . . .  wise as serpents and gentle as dove” in all our dealings with the world (Matthew 10:16). We can endure the times because we know how they will end, when the Lord fulfills his promises and returns to judge the living and the dead. And when he does, he will judge all liars with the infernal father of lies, and unless they have repented and trusted in Christ for their forgiveness, they too will be thrown into the lake of fire with the devil and all the other wicked creatures (Revelation 20:10 and 21:8).

There’s an old taunt that goes, “Liar, liar, pants on fire!” On fire, indeed!

May the Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you, the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. Amen.

Read: Genesis 3, Revelation 20 and 21