Please be a sceptic

 

Because I am a pastor and maintain a church email group list with large numbers on it, I receive lots of ‘pass it on’ emails. Dozens and dozens.

My kids get even more of these chain emails, urging them to pass on the contents from their friends. Some are harmless, some are enjoyable. Others are false or a waste of time. Some are more sinister.

But on the whole Christians are kind and trusting. Some of us are suckers for stories that have a sentimental aspect, especially if it has a spiritual edge, speaking warmly about love or prayer.

Others are suckers for stories that suggest we Christians are being marginalized or persecuted (often true), especially if the story contains an especially witty or powerful comeback.

Actually I suspect readers of the Sola Panel are not typically as prone to these emails, but I bet you have some friends who are. This post aims to serve as a place to politely direct them.

But first, let me give you a sense of the problem. Here are some of the emails I’ve been sent and urged to forward.

There’s the new school prayer (or pledge of allegiance) allegedly written by an Arizona school boy because the Pledge of Allegiance and the Lord’s Prayer have supposedly been banned in most schools.

No name. No date. No place. No source or reference. No details at all. Just a good yarn. All the hallmarks of an urban myth! And this one has been circulating the internet for over a decade in one form or another.

There’s Billy Graham’s alleged ‘Prayer for the Nation’, which supposedly got the biggest response ever when it first aired on Paul Harvey’s radio program. Apparently, we Australians should start to pray it here. Regardless of what you think of the content—and its rhetoric is not all bad—the problem is that Billy Graham did not write it and neither did Paul Harvey first publicize it.

There’s the slightly amusing one about a clever Florida Judge who dismissed a legal complaint against Christian public holidays, allegedly brought by ACLU, by telling them atheists also have their annual celebration (or even holiday), namely April 1st.

Ha! Ha! Aren’t those atheists foolish!

But the laugh is on gullible Christians, because, of course, this story is entirely false. (Even if you spotted this one as false—since when is April Fools’ Day a public holiday?—and just sent it on for amusement, is it really that amusing to laugh falsely at the expense of others?)

Then there’s one I got purporting to be from a Christian prison chaplain warning that Islam is the fastest growing religion in Australia and that in 20 years there’ll be enough to elect a government of their choice complete with sharia law. To illustrate his warning, he reports about the Muslim imam at compulsory prison chaplaincy training who was forced to admit publicly that all Muslims are commanded to kill non-believers, much to everyone’s shock.

In this case, the origin of the story is the United States and someone has re-jigged it to make it fit Australia, with almost identical wording. But the details in the original report itself are disputed.

Forwarding this one is particularly bad, because it damns all Muslims, and does it with a story that at the very least distorts some facts. Yes, some Muslims are extremists. And some of the extremist Muslims believe in killing infidels. But surely we know not all Muslims are like that. And stories like this one make us fear Muslims unnecessarily. I believe Islam is a mistaken religion, but I would prefer to understand the range of Islamic beliefs accurately and to encourage people to reach out in love, not to react in fear.

Of course, people often say they got the message from a reliable friend. But I could list another dozen I’ve received on various topics, of which only two had any truth or value, and then only very partial. And obviously none of the senders had checked.

Can I make a couple of suggestions to anyone ever tempted to pass on such stories when you receive them via email?

1. Ask yourself if you ‘smell a rat’. Does it have the sound of an urban myth? Is there any reference to a published newspaper article, or any other bona fide source? Whose friend had this happen to them? Is anyone named?

Even if there are names, still best to check. Whenever I get an email like this I check it at Snopes.com—an urban myth website.

Almost all such emails I receive turn out to be hoaxes or misrepresent the truth in some respect. Sadly emails involving Christian stories seem to be among the worst culprits!

The basic rule is do not forward sentimental stories without checking the source yourself!

2. If I do decide to pass a message on, I make sure I use the BCC (blind carbon copy) field of the email program. This avoids every recipient being able to find out the email address of every other recipient, and maintains privacy of all the people you send it to. It also avoids the risk of our email addresses ending up on a spam list somewhere.

(Ironically, I once got to see a list of all my friends’ email addresses in an email warning us to be careful about disclosing the contact details of our friends if our phone was stolen!)

For that reason I would also delete all lists of previous recipients that have accumulated in the body of the text, from previous forwardings!

3. If I were to pass something on, having carefully checked its validity, I would remove the request or demand to pass it on.

If the information in the email really is so compelling and helpful, then people will be moved to pass it on anyway. However, when the stories involve any emotional tug or appeal, it can make people feel like a ‘bad guy’ if for whatever good reason of conscience or convenience they don’t want to pass it on. Just let people decide for themselves!

Maybe I am over-reacting and I should just press delete and move on.

But it cannot be good for Christians to forward falsehoods.

It wastes the recipients’ time, clogs up bandwidth, plays on gullibility, can falsely increase a sense of worry or injustice, and distract from more worthwhile activities.

In fact, that’s why I have written this, so I don’t have to re-write a similar warning every time I need to gently advise a church member on this topic.

Please be a sceptic.

9 thoughts on “Please be a sceptic

  1. Googling a substantial chunk of any suspect text will usually provide links that will sort out what’s true or not.
    (Seemingly most usually not)

  2. Thanks.

    Funnily enough when this page loaded a popup type window opened (obscuring the text) inviting me to ‘share’ the article grin

    Since I’m happy with it’s veracity, I will.

    R

  3. I’m a hardliner.  I just don’t.  I don’t forward chain mail of any kind.  I don’t do recipe swaps, and I don’t post a copied message about the disorder of the day on Facebook (today it’s cancer).  I don’t even post or forward something because I have a wonderful husband or love Jesus (even though both those things are true!). It’s not a courtesy to forward chain mail or groupthink, and our motives for doing so are generally not high: it’s a cheap feel-good, or an expression of guilt, not the expression of love which our communications ought to be.

  4. Thanks for your feedback. I think we are singing to the choir here.

    By the way, as a church pastor, I operate a church email group.

    It operates on an opt-in basis. A definite request to join has to be made.

    I use the group facility on my email program, and select the ‘hide email’ option, so no one sees anyone else’s email, except mine, to minimise privacy and accidental spam issues.

    It includes:
    * relevant prayer points for the parish and wider;
    * reminders of coming events (very useful in this age where people often take so long to commit and then forget to use a diary);
    * responses to questions and comments received on comment cards about the sermon, where the issue is appropriate for a wide audience (if one person asked, generally others will have thought the same thing);
    * links to what I consider worthwhile, interesting relevant articles on the web.

    Many church members say they really value it (although different people value different parts) and that it helps them stay in touch etc.

    So there’s an obvious positive use of email.

    Mind you, I have heard of some church members forwarding the church email to other people, and I have wondered whether I should discourage the act, except with permission (both of author – me – and recipient).

  5. Hi Sandy, thanks for this – very helpful for pointing people to.

    The less “spiritual” one which frustrates me (and which I’ve gently corrected people on many times) is the “VIRUS WARNING” chain emails – instructions on how to detect/remove a destructive new virus and telling you to forward the email to all your friends. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one that wasn’t a hoax.

    The major antivirus software companies have sites where you can check whether something is a hoax or a real virus – http://us.norton.com/security_response/threatexplorer/risks/hoaxes.jsp or http://home.mcafee.com/VirusInfo/VirusHoaxes.aspx

  6. Hi Sandy,

    Well said. One day I hope somebody will invent a “Snopes filter” for emails: i.e. something which operates in a similar way to a “SPAM filter”, but which automatically checks the text of incoming emails against a database of claims listed as “False” in Snopes.com, and sticks suspect emails in a “Snopes inbox”.

    If anybody knows of one, I’d love to hear of it.

    Speaking of skepticism, I’ve recently started listening to the Skeptoid podcast (http://skeptoid.com/), operated by an entrepreneurial US skeptic called Steve Dunning. I don’t always find what he says entirely convincing; in fact I often find his wild generalisations about Christianity irritating and patronising. But his strong commitment to proper research and critical thinking helps, by way of example, to keep me honest in my conversations and in my use of sermon illustrations!

  7. I will never forward an email that suggests it should be forwarded.  I usually only see the email once, and most of my email contacts know that I don’t appreciate these emails, unless there is truth behind them.

    Basically I have adopted the principle of letting someone know that I don’t wish to receive these “spam” emails unless there is truth behind them.

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