… read this blog post and forward it to 15
people, unspecified bad
things will happen to you. The Paragraph Farmer looks at
chain prayer email.
If you don't …
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"It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it." GKC
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The nuns of the Sisters of the Poor Child Jesus (Wiped out by the Renewal Holocaust) told me that chain letters were evil.
Who said they didn’t know anything?
I always delete those letters.
The latest one is “I love this Man” and has a picture of Christ sitting up on the Cross, back scarred and bleeding.
I just delete it. Jesus knows how much I love Him (or my lack of love – you know what I mean). And I’m sure He knows that I am not saying that I don’t love Him when I delete an email that is emotionally blackmailing and manipulative, not to mention the “forward this to get an answer to your prayer” thing. (Guess what? All prayers are answered. Sometimes the answer is NO.)
Mostly, I dislike the manipulative nature of the emails. Some of them actually insinuate that if I delete instead of forwarding it to 7, 10, 12, 15, 17 people it means I don’t love God enough.
It’s like a wierd Christian Peter Pan thing. Only instead of “Clap harder so Tinkerbell doesn’t die!” it’s “Forward to more people quickly or you’ll make the Baby Jesus cry!”
Pfui. It’s not even a prayer, just a bunch of wishes and exhortations. It doesn’t ask God to do anything.
Such chain emails, for prayers, good luck, prosperity, etc. are circulated in my office practically every day. Someone sends a chain letter around then about five or six people circulate the same message, it does nothing but clog up our inboxes. I delete them immediately, they are often stupid and just plain silly. The workplace managers allow employees to abuse the office email system and don’t ban such messages. That doesn’t make much sense.
That post saved my day.
I woke up sneezing, came perilously close to stepping in something the dog shouldn’t have left at the top of the stairs – if you know what I mean – and almost set my sleeve on fire making a cup of tea. Then you directed me to that miraculous post and my day has been transformed. Amazing!!! Now, do you think I should send it to 15 people in 17 minutes or 17 people in 15 minutes?
(Seriously, that made my day – any skewering of chain email that manages to use the Manahattan Transfer and Jonathan Livingston Seagull deserves a major award!)
My father told me to stop sending him those things. Consider myself duly chastened.
There always used to be novenas to St. Jude published in the newpaper and now they’re e-mailed. The instructions are that St. Jude will get you what you want, but you have to agree to take out an ad or pass it to X of your friends. We nicknamed it “the novena to St. Jude the Extortionist”. 😉
I get this same email off and on and it annoys me greatly. I have a return email composed and saved that emphasizes that Ste. Therese was not New Age and including some prayers (theologically, a bit meatier and much more Eucharistic) that I found on a Carmelite site and that really were written by her. She is my patron saint from my confirmation, and it bugs me that people make up spiritual nonsense in her name, instead of asking for her intercession.
“I have a return email composed and saved that emphasizes that Ste. Therese was not New Age and including some prayers”
=> This is a good idea!