Spamhuntress

Really, how long has these chain mails been circulating? I remember them from when I was a child, circulating via snail mail. And now they’ve jumped to e-mail, of course. I assume they’re created by people other than spammers, because they existed way before spammers were ever thought of. But still, each time you send on a chain mail, you irritate your friends and potentially help spammers get otherwise unpublished e-mail addresses (a few hops down the road).

At the first sign of chain mails, you should tell your friends never to send anything like that your way again. And you should educate them about not sending them on themselves. And while I’m on it, don’t bother sending me chain mails. I’ll archive them where they belong and send you a preachy reply if I’m in the mood.

Besides, blessings and threats? I guess I’m just too jaded to believe in such things. Prayer I believe in, chain mail NOT!

Oh, and don’t get me started on the new non-threat variants: That Bill Gates will donate so and so many cents for each person the mail is forwarded to. Or the newest variant I saw: MSN would start charging for MSN and e-mail use November 1 unless you send that e-mail on to 18 contacts. Bullshit!

I just had a phone call from a friend who’d received a particularly nasty chain mail via e-mail. She had no intentions of continuing the chain, but the threats were so nasty, her heart just wouldn’t stop pounding. She called to receive prayer. I first explained a few things for her, similar to these points:

1) Normally, the original sender of the chain mail has no idea that it was ever sent to you.
2) The effects of the chain mail is for the most part due to you reading it. If you don’t read it, it has no hold over you (psychological effect).
3) For particularly nasty threats, if you just can’t shake it, ask a local pastor to break the hold it has over you in the name of Jesus.

I’m not going to speculate on why she was so affected, but the moment I broke the effect in the name of Jesus, her heart stopped pounding, and she felt free of the threats. (And yes, I’ve got six years worth of theology education, I’m as qualified as your local pastor. And I’ve prayed for people for years and see real results).

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 20th, 2005 at 9:38 am and is filed under Preachy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.