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Have you all read my rant on how much I hate chain letters? Good. This one is more or less a continuation of it. The
other day, I got an e-mail from one of my friends. The e-mail said something along the lines of God protecting our troops.
Yeah, that's fine. I hope everyone comes back safe and everyone in Iraq stays just as safe. But then, at the end of the e-mail
(after a picture depicting Christ super-imposed over a picture of the USA and titled, "Pray for the Nation") was
this sentence, "If you Love God...send this to ten people and the person who sent it to you." Oh boy, I thought,
this is pretty terrible. For me to say "I Love God" I must send this to 10 people?! I want to say now that I am
a Christian, but I do not believe that I am required to send any stupid e-mail to any 10 people to prove "I Love God."
That, in my opinion, is ridiculous.
So I deleted that e-mail (with great joy mind you) and went on with my life. A little while later I got another e-mail
from another friend. This one was about two pages long and it had a little prayer for you to read. Well, this is ok I suppose,
nothing to bad here. Then at the end of this e-mail was the sentence, "Pass this message to 8 people and you will receive
a MIRACLE tomorrow." A MIRACLE!!! FOR PASSING ALONG AN E-MAIL!? I really don't think God can be bought out by mass
e-mails. The last thing I can expect from God is a miracle for passing along a stupid chain letter. This is getting ridiculous.
Look, I'm not trying to say if you like these e-mails you are a bad person or that you can't send off whatever you want
or that your beliefs are bad. I don't know what you individually believe, but I know what I believe and that is that God
does NOT require anyone to send any stupid e-mails. If you want to evangelize, try talking to someone. If you want to say,
"Wow, Gods pretty cool," then just tell a person. Please, do not keep sending along this, for lack of a better
word, trash. It's not helping anyone. More then that, it's probably turning people off to Christianity and to religion in
general. "Man, this Christian thing looks pretty good. Makes sense to me. Wait, what's this? I'm supposed to pass
this e-mail on to 10 people to show how much I love God. Forget that, that's dumb."
And another thing, while I'm on the subject of religion: I really don't like when I see things like, "God is on
our side." How pretentious are we that we know whose side God is on? I don't care how you perceive God or even if you
believe in a God, but I don't think any of us have the right to say, "God loves me (us) more then he loves you."
It reminds me of an episode of The Simpson's, "Dead Putting Society." That's the one when Todd Flanders and Bart
have a putting contest. On the day of the game, Homer and family see the Flanders' praying. Homer says, "Hey Flanders,
it's no use praying. I already did the same thing, and we can't both win."
So hey, if you are into sending silly e-mails like the two I talked about, that's cool...just please, don't send them
to me.
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