With the realization that this is an absurdly futile endeavor, I intend to relentlessly destroy the claims presented in the following chain letter (with utmost respect and many thanks to the ever-patient girl who sent it to me):
Read only if you have time for God
Let me tell you, make sure you read all the way to the bottom. I almost deleted this email but I was blessed when I got to the end
God, when I received this e-mail, I thought…
I don’t have time for this… And, this is really inappropriate during work.
Then, I realized that this kind of thinking is…. Exactly, what has caused a lot of the problems in our world today.
We try to keep God in church on Sunday morning…
Maybe, Sunday night…
And, the unlikely event of a midweek service.
We do like to have Him around during sickness….
And, of course, at funerals.
However, we don’t have time, or room, for Him during work or play…
Because.. That’s the part of our lives we think… We can, and should, handle on our own.
May God forgive me for ever thinking…
That… There is a time or place where..
HE is not to be FIRST in my life.
We should always have time to remember all HE has done for us.
If, You aren’t ashamed to do this…
Please follow the directions.
Jesus said, ‘If you are ashamed of me, I will be ashamed of you before my Father.’
Not ashamed?
Pass this on ONLY IF YOU MEAN IT!!
Yes, I do Love God.
HE is my source of existence and Savior.
He keeps me functioning each and every day. Without Him, I will be nothing. But, with Christ, HE strengthens me. (Phil 4:13)
This is the simplest test.
If You Love God… And, are not ashamed of all the marvelous things HE has done for you…
Send this to ten people and the person who sent it to you!
Now do you have the time to pass it on?
Make sure that you scroll through to the end.
Easy vs. Hard
Why is it so hard to tell the truth but Yet so easy to tell a lie?
Why are we so sleepy in church but Right when the sermon is over we suddenly wake up?
Why is it so easy to delete a Godly e-mail, but yet we forward all of the nasty ones?
Of all the free gifts we may receive, Prayer is the very best one….
There are no costs, but wonderful rewards… GOD BLESS!
Notes: Isn’t it funny how simple it is for people to trash God and then wonder why the world’s going to hell.
Isn’t it funny how someone can say ‘I believe in God’ but still follow Satan (who, by the way, also ‘believes’ in God).
Isn’t it funny how you can send a thousand jokes through e-mail and they spread like wildfire, but when you start sending messages regarding the Lord, people think twice about sharing?
Isn’t it funny how when you go to forward this message, you will not send it to many on your address list because you’re not sure what they believe, or what they will think of you for sending it to them
Isn’t it funny how I can be more worried about what other people think of me than what God thinks of me.
I pray, for everyone who sends this to their entire address book, they will be blessed by God in a way special for them.
And send it back to the person who sent it, to let them know that indeed it was sent out to many more.
Now, aside from the numerous punctuation mistakes, poor organizational structure, and evidently absurd metaphysical claims about the nature of god, this is a fairly well-crafted chain letter. It maintains a familiarly cheesy chain mail format and tone; the real email has lots of little cartoons and pictures, so its recipients don’t get bored; it will probably end up with a virus attached to it and ruin a bunch of people’s computers. What I really want to look at, though, is the all-too-common claims presented in this email. I will go through it (as Obama’s said so many times) line-by-line. What fun!
“Read only if you have time for God.”
…and the absurdity is off and running. How does one “have time for” an eternal, supernatural being? The line evokes an image of God sitting by the phone on a Friday night. “Medamn it,” God says; “down on Earth, so-and-so doesn’t even have time to call me. What a bastard; I oughtta zap him with a bolt of lightning.” (Note: I hereby make the unfounded metaphysical claim that God uses profanity. So there!)
Admittedly, that’s a weak claim. In the Christian doctrine (and probably many others), one must actively pray to/interact with/acknowledge the presence of God during one’s lifetime, so one technically should “have time for” God. The more problematic implication is that God somehow endorsed this email; that by reading this email, you are in effect giving time to God. This is a problematic implication indeed. How do we know that reading this email is how God wants you to give your time to Him? Furthermore, the effect of the email seems in general terms to want to convince people to give their time to God. If you’re already giving time to God, why bother reading the email?
“Let me tell you, make sure you read all the way to the bottom. I almost deleted this email but I was blessed when I got to the end.”
Oh, I see. So you (whoever youare, you poor misguided soul) were ”blessed” as a result of … reading an email. First off: How do you know when you’ve been blessed? Does a notification pop up on your Facebook page? “You have 1 blessings from: God;” something like that? God is by definition an infinite being; as a result, it is impossible for God to manifest Himself in any way whatsoever, including doling out blessings to chain mail readers.
What is a blessing, anyway? WordNet.Princeton.edu defines “blessed” as “highly favored or fortunate (as e.g. by divine grace).” So, by reading the letter, God “favors” you. Does God not love all his children equally? I seem to remember that from long ago in Sunday school. God doesn’t play favorites. What if you don’t have web access? Are disadvantaged people less able to access the blessings of God for want of reading chain mail? To that end, shouldn’t God send down his only begotten WiFi?
This is part one of a seven-part series. Read part two here: http://beyondtheflock.wordpress.com/2008/12/10/making-fun-of-chain-mail-part-two/
