Christian Spam

When God leads you to the edge of the cliff, trust Him fully and let go, only 1 of 2 things will happen, either He'll catch you when you fall, or He'll teach you how to fly! 'The power of one sentence! God is going to shift things around for you today and let things work in your favor. If you believe, send it. If you don't believe, delete it. God closes doors no man can open & God opens doors no man can close. If you need God to open some doors for you...send this to ten people. Have a blessed day and remember to be a blessing...

I’m sure everyone still gets emails like this from well-meaning friends and family. I still get them from people who know I don’t believe. I think it’s for one of five reasons.
1. They forgot that I’m not a believer
2. They think that I’m lying about not believing
3. They think that if they keep sending emails like this that it will convince me
4. They want to find out my reaction to the ‘bullshit email of the week’
5. They only had nine believers email addresses and needed ten to be blessed

Whatever the reason for my inclusion, it’s interesting that the majority of chain letters seem to be targeted at Christians. They always seem to focus on god, Christ, angels, prayers or being blessed. I’m guessing that part of it is that people who believe one supernatural thing will generally be open to believe another. Reading ‘Why People Believe Weird Things’ may give me some extra insight.

Even the political chain letters sent this year normally have a Christian tone. It’s always about how Christian a particular candidate is or isn’t. Whether it’s about their stance on abortion or general FUD, the letters usually end the same by telling the reader how a ‘true christian’ should vote.

This is all in addition to all the Nigerian scams that almost always tell me that I’m blessed, are addressed to ‘Dearest in the Lord’ or the latest that whose subject line read ‘Use it for the work of God’. Are the scammers taking this strategy because Christians are more gullible or because referencing god makes them seem more trustworthy? It’s hard to believe that anyone would fall for these emails but apparently it happens.

Most people that know me know my stance on supernatural bullshit and will forward me emails for entertainment rather than to send me a message. After being a pain in the ass long enough they’ve learned to check snopes.com themselves because they know I’ll do it if they send me an email titled ‘I didn’t believe it myself but this is true…’. However there are still some that forward the same bs chain letters that you have to send to ten people within ten minutes in order to have bill gates send them a map to a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.

It’s funny how god doesn’t just answer prayers any more, now he pays attention to who’s forwarding emails, how many people they send them to and how quickly. It’s nice to know that god’s keeping up with technology. I’ve responded to plenty of these emails with a nicely written ‘really?’ but it never seems to make a difference. Trying to tell somebody that they aren’t going to have good luck in four days because of an email is almost as difficult as trying to explain why a biblical god just doesn’t make sense. The most common response would basically be Pascal’s email wager.

And don’t forget: Send a link to this post to ten people within ten minutes in order to save an angel from getting eaten by satan.