Don't be so gullible, McFly,..

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If there's one thing that irritates me about the vast majority of Christians, it's that they're sheep.

And I don't mean sheep in the Biblical sense, as in "The Lord is my shepherd [ergo, I am a sheep], I shall not want." This is the proper position of the child of God: Following his/her Master, trusting that He will provide.

What I'm ranting about today is The Lemming Factor. The blind following of the Masses, no matter what cliff they're heading toward (or over). The group-think.

All right. I'll spell it out plainly. HOAX EMAILS. Nothing makes Christians look more stupid than their use of the "Forward" button for every heart-tugging, emotional slosh that comes down the 'net--or even worse, the hyped-up panic about some incorrectly researched article.

This morning I received one of the emotional glurge emails, about how AOL and ZDNet are tracking the number of forwards, donating $.30 each time to a family whose daughter has leukemia. Usually there's a statement like "if you delete this, then you have no heart" or other such rot, but unusually, this one did not have that.


As I scanned the header, I found no fewer than ten people I knew on there. It originated from a well-meaning but MISINFORMED Christian who didn't want to be considered heartless, I suppose.


PEOPLE.
THINK before you hit "forward." AOL will never know or CARE about what happens to this email.

Another notorious one that made Christians look like blithering idiots was the furor over a supposed interview with J.K.Rowling and the children who read Harry Potter were becoming satanists. This interview included such infamous statements as "Jesus died because he was weak and stupid," and "Harry is an absolute god send to our cause," (from a supposed Satanic High Priest in Salem, MA). (Erm, did you catch that? "God send" ?? hel-LOOOO. can you say... "irony" ??)

And Christians were in a tizzy. HOW DARE SHE SAY THAT!!! Hysterical emails flew back and forth across all American Christendom.

Yet if they had used their God given common sense and researched the facts, they would have found that the article in question was really from The Onion, an online satirical magazine.

In other words, IT WASN'T TRUE.


There is a solution, folks. You MUST add snopes.com to your list of favorites. And you must patiently, graciously educate those who send around such nonsense. After all, I'm sure you've been taken in once or twice. I know I have been guilty of this occasionally.

And because I don't like the fashion of wearing egg on my face, I habitually check Snopes WHENEVER I get something like this. And you know what? 95% of these emails that are circulated again and again are hoaxes.

Don't be a sheep.

End of Public Service Announcement.
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