Hoax

In the coming days, DO NOT open any message with an attachment called [subject of email message] regardless of who sent it to you. It is a virus that will destroy the whole hard drive of your computer. This virus usually comes from a known person who you have in your contact list.” Anyone with a computer has undoubtedly received a similar email message at some point. Sometimes we believe the message and immediately forward it to all our email contacts. Other times we wonder or go to fact-checking websites to determine if the message is a hoax. But what about the noncomputer parts of our life? How many hoaxes do we face daily? The first hoax ever was whispered by a serpent into Eve’s ear because she hadn’t followed the warning to stay away from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. When she bit into the forbidden fruit, she opened, in a sense, the “attachment” that destroyed her future.

Did she share this “wonderful” news with Adam about becoming as gods and knowing good from evil, sincerely believing she had found something new that God had not allowed them to know? Or did she already realize she had triggered a virus?

When God came for evening worship with Adam and Eve, He had to call for them. He knew, of course, that they had opened the attachment, and their hard drives were infected. Many centuries passed, and each generation has passed on the virus of sin to the next. Daily the “inboxes” of our minds can be filled with viruses if we are not careful. Yet we have the opportunity to heed the warnings and invitations of Jesus: “Thou shalt not. . . .” “Come unto me. . . .” “If I abide in you, and you in me . . .” Or, we can click on Become as Gods.

 Jesus, our Creator, had a virus-removal plan in place. The process to rescue and protect us has been a lengthy one and personally expensive for Him. There is no way to clean out the virus of sin from our lives except for Him to remove our confessed sins through His own blood. His factory reset renews our minds so we can become virus-free. Lord, help us daily to beware of hoaxes and delete those dangerous viruses before they destroy us. Amen.

 Elizabeth Versteegh Odiyar