Email Forwards

I get a lot of email forwards from well meaning friends with various subjects. The humorous ones are nice for a chuckle but some of the forwards are disturbing.

I often get forwards with a wonderful inspirational message but attached to it is warning that if you don't forward this message to lets say ten people then you aren't showing your love for Christ or something awful is going to happen to you. I don't think Jesus would really want us to send out threatening messages to people he wants to draw near to him so I never forward those messages.

I also routinely see forwards pleaing for help for a small child battling an awful illness and it says to forward it because someone is tracking the emails and will give the family money for each email forward. Thats not true. No one is tracking emails that way and no one is getting money from them.

One of my favorite websites is http://www.snopes.com/. You can search their archive for material you have found in your email and it will tell you if it is true or false. So many are a hoax. Its really fast and easy to ascertain whether or not what has been forwarded to you can be trusted before you send it to other people.

Another trend I am seeing which really bothers me is the political forwards. A lot of them are about Obama and claim to be telling you facts about him such as he is a muslim, or he supports terrorism, or he doesn't salute the flag. I am not an Obama supporter and don't plan to vote for him but I think its sinful to pass on this kind of gossip that you don't know to be a fact. Snopes has disproven almost all of the email forwards I have received regarding this man. It bothers me that so many people read these kinds of forwards and pass them on without investigating a little to see if they are true or not. People believe it, and it drives their thinking and spreads like wildfire. If you think about it, its worse than verbal gossip because email forwards branch out and reach so many people and travel the Internet for years.

I have been guilty of sending out false email forwards in the past but since I have learned to utilize snopes.com better I find myself sending out very few forwards. Lets all just try to be a little more discerning with the information that we come across.