The Journey 124

Friday, May 4

Read: Genesis 27

Identity Theft : The latest headache for people and the law enforcement agencies here in US is “Identity Theft”. I am sure you all might have received sometimes a so called mail from your friends which read like this “ Hey yesterday while I was in London, I lost my passport and my travel documents. Now I am stuck here in London. So please help me by sending about 1000 dollars so that I can travel back home”.  This is one of the ways by which thieves who hacked your friends email id is sending this mail to get some easy money. Identity theft is the use of your personal information such as your name, your PIN number, your passwords, your telephone number, and more by strangers. Another name of identity theft is identity fraud. In other words, identity theft is any fraudulent use of your personal data to do any criminal and fraudulent acts. What the identity thieves  do is use your credit accounts or other security accounts to purchase something under your name. By using your identity, the thieves can obtain a good product or service and will leave you huge debts that you have to pay. From the data base information from identity theft. Com, approximately 15 million United States residents have their identities used fraudulently each year with financial losses totaling upwards of $50 billion. Close to 100 million additional Americans have their personal identifying information placed at risk of identity theft each year when records maintained in government and corporate databases are lost or stolen. These alarming statistics demonstrate identity theft may be the most frequent, costly and pervasive crime in the United States.  Identity theft is done by people who wants to make easy money. But I would want to go into this concept a little deeper. Identity theft is all about taking the role, privileges in a fraudulent manner of another person, purely with a selfish motive to create harm in that person life and also to seek financial and materialistic gain. Whether you believe it or not, today this happens in the context of ones family too. I think one form of Identity theft was there in the Bible. Jacob was the first person to do the sin and the crime of identity theft. How does identity theft affect the functioning of family?

This week we are meditating on the theme “ Transformation in the family” based on the family of Isaac and Rebecca from Genesis 27. Here is a family where every member is not serious about the role and the responsibility that they have to play. What a strange experience where in one own family one of the  siblings is using crooked ways to steal what belongs to his brother. That is how Jacob is manipulated by his own mother to plot against his father and brother. [ Genesis 27: 1-30] That is how Jacob dresses like Esau, where his mother covers him goats skin so that he can be like Esau. Identity theft at the behest of ones own mother. Jacob get the blessing but later as we read the following chapters in Genesis we find that Jacob became a fugitive and he is later cheated by Laban. A person who thought who could cheat others, finally falls a prey to his own dubious and selfish schemes. Finally Jacob realizes that the benefits that one gets through identity theft is more than he bargained for and the price that he has to pay is too heavy. Today in the context of our family there are lots of similar cases of identity thefts going on.  Family members are more and more embroiled in cases involving division and usurpation of properties, financial aspects of division of ancestral properties and so on. People today tend to show scant respects to family relationships and family ties. Everything in life is now about money and how we can be better off than ones own siblings. If ones sibling is doing well, it does not go well with other sibling and his family. What a strange life that people live today. If transformation in our family has to take place let us understand that each one of us have a definite role and responsibility given by God to us. The progress and future of our family including its stability both financial and all other aspect is in the hands of God and we need to trust in God, who is the author of our family life. Let us be contented in what we have as a family rather than focusing on what my sibling and his family have. That is where meaning in our family life happens.

Are you a victim or a perpetrator of  “ Identity Theft”?