So this week has been HORRIBLE!
Let me share why.
Last Saturday, my NakedPastor Facebook page was hacked into. As soon as they got access, they set themselves up as admin under my name with another one of my emails and kicked me out. They now own it and run it and post clickbait crap. I’ve reached out to Meta (Facebook), but they aren’t giving me much hope of recovering it.
I had almost 100,000 followers there, and I’m feeling the incredible loss.
I feel a sense of duty to validate and empower all sorts of people with my art. An affirming LGBTQ+ drawing or an encouraging cartoon about the loss of one's community during deconstruction can be the little thing that makes someone's day. Right now, nearly 100,000 people aren't seeing those cartoons or feeling that empowerment and that hurts me.
But I’m feeling something else too. And I’m not sure what it is yet.
So let me poke around and see if I can come up with something.
First of all, I’m feeling immense gratitude for all the support I’ve received from so many people. Tons of people have offered to help, offered to help me get connected to real people inside Meta, and offered all kinds of moral support and encouragement. There have also been people commenting on the clickbait posts warning others not to click any links in case they get hacked too.
Really, I’m moved. So, thank you.
While this was all happening, I was reading Roméo Dallaire’s new book, “The Peace”. He was the Canadian UN peacekeeper who was in Rwanda during the genocide and wrote Shake Hands With the Devil, his account of the atrocity. In this book, he talks about the necessity of making a peaceful world and how we can do it.
But what impacted me most about the book and his story is that humans are capable of great evil. I mean horrific evil.
Look… I’m kind of a naïve guy. I trust people and can’t believe they mean to hurt anyone. Even when a close member of my own birth family bullies me relentlessly, I still hold out hope that they don’t really mean it and will feel sorry one day and everything will be okay. Meanwhile my other loved ones are telling me to get real, open my eyes, trust my gut, and realize that narcissists don’t change.
It’s a hard reality for me to swallow.
Dallaire even claims that “our belief that humans share an innate reluctance to kill prevented us from even considering how effectively authority and coercion can be used to provoke people to murder their neighbours.”
While I was being hacked, I had a gut feeling something was wrong, but I couldn’t believe it. Or wouldn’t. Until it was too late.
It reminded me of how I stayed in abusive situations (read “in abusive relationships with spiritual leaders”) way longer than I should have.
Because I trust some people more than they deserve.
And I am reluctant to believe people want to harm others.
No matter how the perpetrators frame it, they robbed me and it is wrong. Even if they feel justified in doing what they did, what they did was evil.
I’m using this week to grieve the loss, work to try to restore my page, but also to dig deep and press on.
I suggest following me on Instagram. It’s better there anyway.
Please pass this on to your friends and family. And please don't click any links on my Facebook. They are clickbait and scams.
