Is a mass forwarded email really a blessing or prayer?

I got the following in an email over the weekend:

Dear Friends and Family,



I was asked by a very special friend as part of her religion class who I thought would DO this. I hope I chose the right twelve. Please send this back to me. (You'll see why.) In case anyone is interested. May everyone who receives this message be blessed. REMEMBER to say a prayer before you read the poem. That's all you have to do. There is nothing attached. Just send this to eleven people.



Prayer is one of the best free gifts we receive. There is no cost but a lot of reward. (Did you pray?) Make sure you pray, and pray believing that God will answer. This is your last opportunity before reading the poem.



May today there be peace within.

May you trust God that you are exactly where you are meant to be. May you not forget the infinite possibilities that are born of faith. May you use those gifts that you have received, and pass on the love that has been given to you.... May you be content knowing you are a child of God... Let His presence settle into your bones, and allow your soul the freedom to sing, dance, praise and love. It is there for each and every one of us. Now, send this to 11 people within the next 5 minutes and remember to send this back...I count as 1...you'll see why.

Suggestion: copy and paste rather than forward

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One thing that I actually do appreciate about this email is that it is a cut and paste job rather than a carrot laden italicized forward job. I hate when a bunch of AOL users forward an email, because each forward encapsulates the email in another envelope which must be opened by me. Some of these can have 20 or more envelopes, which takes that much more time to open just to find that I have wasted my time to find the same email that I have been getting for more than a decade.

This email says "I was asked by a very special friend as part of her religion class who I thought would DO this. I hope I chose the right twelve. " I wonder what that is supposed to mean. Oh, I get it! Who else chose 12? OK, I see, unspecified friend taking unspecified "religion" class choosing 12, hopefully I'm among the right 12, etc, except that the person who forwarded this to me didn't start it; this text was only cut and pasted from who knows how many forwards. This email is also very poorly written with several run-on sentences and other statements that don't even count as sentences.

I have to wonder where we as humans get the idea that forwarding an email absolves us of all responsibility for our actions on this earth. It's as if we can say "Oh, look, I'm going to save this country because I forwarded that George Carlin-esq rant about border security!" "Well, I've never actually witnessed for Christ, but I did pass along that Power Point file to all of my friends, family, and coworkers."

No one reads my blog anyway, so I would like to add that this email came from a close friend of mine from my church who really hasn't had much time for me lately. We're both busy with our families, with teaching classes, and with our work on the church expansion project so that we barely have time to exchange "what's up; nothing much" in passing. But does including my email address among 11 others count as buddy time?

I am a great fan of the internet and email. My wife thinks that I need psychiatric help. When we travel, I like to have an internet connection. She considers it nice to get away from the internet, I don't consider myself to be running from it. However, I don't believe that the internet can replace personal, community, and civic responsibility. Don't send me a "blessing" in an email, or a "prayer", insist that I spam my entire address list or I don't love Jesus, and expect that to count as friendship. It doesn't. I consider it annoying, especially when these emails are sent to my work address and I have to waste valuable time deleting them when I could be working (or slacking off, but I consider deleting these silly emails work, and I get enough junk on the company all hands list).

If you want to save the country, forward those rants to your Congressman. If you want to inspire people, then spend some one on one time with them. Don't forward them somebody else's words with an admonition to spam everybody that they know with the email. You couldn't raise your children by forwarding them silly emails, and you can't maintain a friendship by it either.

Let's keep email where it belongs and use one on one contact where we can. Please, our sanity depends on it.

Patrick Mead Series On Parenting

Patrick Mead has two doctorates and serves as a pastor of the Rochestor Church of Christ in Rochestor Hills, Michigan. He was invited to do our church's vacation Bible school in 2004, and his lesson series was a tremendous hit. We invited him back again this year.

He has a blog like many of us, and is currently doing a series on parenting. I find this series to be more impressive than the spiritual warfare series that he did for VBS, and that blew me away.

His blog is Tentpegs.