Discernment

I didn't get sucked into this, so far as I recall, because I didn't hear about until it was all over but the shouting. But it seems an immoral unscrupulous woman passed herself off in the blogworld as a single woman expecting a baby who had been diagnosed with tragic disabilities incompatible with life outside the womb. She got a lot of attention for her story, and she blogged with pathos and sentiment, and people kept coming back for more. She got money- donations, advertising, gifts.

And then, when her due date had come and gone and readers were starting to get a bit worried, she claimed to go into labor. And she posted pictures of a doll as her baby, and the portion of the internet world where she had been living and moving and having her being exploded a little bit.

Some intrepid bloggers started investigating deeper. They found that she'd been involved in at least 9 scams so far, including two horrible, cold, calculated episodes where she posed as a pregnant woman willing to give her baby up for adoption to a childless couple. She took all kinds of money from those people. She took their trust. She shattered their lives, and moved blithely on to the next scam.

Some bloggers curled up into their shells like wounded turtles.

And some started making excuses for poor 'Beccah,' mother of Audrey Rose the plastic doll, exploiter of the pain and agony of being barren. We must pray for her, especially now, they said, she needs prayers more than ever. So do her victims. Who are we to judge? They asked. None of us is perfect. True, but so what? I am deeply flawed, but I don't go telling a childless couple that they can have my unborn child but I need help with my rent, and living expenses, and medical bills, and then call them to say my nonexistent baby just died in the womb.

If somebody, somewhere, had made a point of exposing Beccah Beushausen and her scams and frauds some time ago- say, back when she was in college and falsely accused a room-mate, or claimed she had poor grades because her fiance died in a horrible car accident (she had no fiance), then there are at least two childless couples who would not have been put through hell by Beccah.

This latest episode was particularly cruel adn calculating. She got in touch with an old acquaintance from college, a successful blogger who had lost her baby girl to Trisomy 13 the year before. In April. And Beccah told that blogger, "Hey, I also have a diagnosis of Tri-13, and my baby is due this April just like yours..." and she got that woman emotionally involved in helping a 'fellow' sufferer- only to find out she'd emotionally invested herself into a cruel hoax and she had been exploited, her child's death had been exploited, by somebody she thought was a friend. I can't imagine the anguish there.

And yet, there are people criticizing those who are actually working to try to stop Beccah from using, abusing, exploiting, and destroying any other lives in the future.

Some things are true. Some things are false. Some things are biblical, or moral if you prefer. Some are unbiblical. Immoral. Sifting truth and untruth, recognizing when a teaching or practice is unbiblical or not is part of discernment. It is wisdom. NOT to do these things is foolish. God upholds wisdom and condemns being a fool. But our culture believes that performing the biblical act of discernment is... mean. Wrong. Harsh. Judgmental.

For some people about the only thing it's acceptable to be critical and judgmental of is... wait for it.... being judgmental.

Something is really lacking in this idea of things.

It's called discernment, this missing quality.