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Momania: A Blog for Busy Moms

Do you forward chain emails? What about prayer ones?

12:12 pm January 10, 2012, by Theresa Walsh Giarrusso

Chain letters are far less painful to forward than they used to be when you had to hand write copies for each lucky recipient. Today, with just a few clicks you can fulfill your commitment and not worry about any jinxes.

Despite that ease, I generally do not forward chain emails. I find them annoying and most of the time I’m glad I didn’t inflict them on my friends. However, about half the time the chain letters are prayers, and I feel a bit bad for not forwarding those. Maybe it would help someone? Maybe someone could use a prayer that day? Or maybe it would just annoy your friends.

Does not forwarding a prayer chain email show a lack of faith? Or is faith that God would help with or without the email?

Do you forward chain emails? Does it matter if it’s a prayer? Do you feel more guilty about not forwarding the prayer than the regular ones?

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36 comments Add your comment

Stacey

January 10th, 2012
12:24 pm

I guess I only have myself to blame for any “bad luck” that encounter because I do not forward chain emails. In fact, I have blocked a few friends and family members because I got so sick of receiving dozens of chain letters and 9 second prayers from them. It was especially bad at work because you would receive the same email 25 times because you only have 30 seconds to forward to everyone in your mailbox in order to ensure good fortune starts today.

Incidentally, I was told just this morning by a coworker that I will never have money because I keep my purse on the floor under my desk. All of these years I’ve blamed it on having too high of a debt to income ratio. :-D

Denise

January 10th, 2012
12:41 pm

Stacey – your coworker is right! No money will come to a purse that is on the floor. Ask my Granny. :-)

I do not forward prayer emails just because they say if I don’t I have no faith in Jesus. Seriously? That’s stupid. Now, I will say I USED TO…because I used to be (more) stupid. LOL! I will forward a joke if I really get a good laugh out of it. Can’t deprive my folks of great laughs.

Voice of Reason

January 10th, 2012
12:49 pm

I agree with Denise, I forward on good jokes, but the rest is SPAM and goes into my virtual trash can. I don’t care who sent them.

MomsRule

January 10th, 2012
1:01 pm

I do not like prayer chain emails and I do not forward them. I do forward humor pieces to a select group of friends.

TXMom

January 10th, 2012
1:29 pm

I especially love the ones that say “if you don’t forward this, you don’t love God.” Right. Because I’m sure that’s in the Bible.

Techmom

January 10th, 2012
1:29 pm

Is it 2002 again? Who still gets forwarded email spam?

The new annoyance is the crap on social media that accesses your friend list. I’ve blocked every application possible on FB and a few people who insist on only playing games. The worse things lately though are the text message forwards. I had to tell my mom to quit sending those. I don’t mind her comments or pictures via text but I don’t want something that was forwarded form someone’s brother’s aunt who has a friend who thought this was cute.

jmb

January 10th, 2012
1:31 pm

Stacey – listen to you coworker. An old lady taught me that 25 years ago and I freak when someone sits my down now. On topic – I only forward to the ones that send them to me. That’s goes for religious or comical ones.

harold

January 10th, 2012
2:08 pm

I forward them but only to myself because everyone else got angry

Young@heart

January 10th, 2012
2:10 pm

I hardly every forward chain emails…when I do, because they are very touching, well wishes, thinking of you, or a cute saying…I will delete the curse at the end that says forward on to avoid disaster…Then there is no bad luck or judgements wished upon my friends/family, but I let them know I was thinking of them.

Never knew that about the purse….Interesting! Just moved it….any suggestions of what helps money leap in there?

Figment

January 10th, 2012
2:33 pm

I dislike chain emails of any type and usually block the sender if they keep sending me that junk.

Me

January 10th, 2012
2:52 pm

I don’t foward chain emails of any type — don’t care what it is. I don’t want to receive it and I certainly don’t take the time to pass it to someone else who also (probably) doesn’t want it.

JOD

January 10th, 2012
3:03 pm

Nope. Just don’t do it. If I see something really cute, I might cut out all the forwards and just send the good stuff to my Mom or MIL, but not really anyone else. I find it amusing that some people have the gall to suggest that God hangs his love on the forwarding of an email.

I also block all of the games, apps, etc. on Facebook. I don’t care about your crops on Farmville, and sure won’t be sending you magic beans or whatever :o)

motherjanegoose

January 10th, 2012
3:15 pm

@ JOD…love your second paragraph about Facebook. I do not understand those who play games on it all day long.

mom2alex&max

January 10th, 2012
3:39 pm

Heck no. I don’t forward any chain e-mails. If it is a prayer e-mail, I will usually say a quick prayer and then delete it. If it is someone that is really close to me and the need is great, I might post a FB status about it. I will usually stop and send a prayer if someone asks on their FB. But I do not like to littler other people’s inboxes.

Anj

January 10th, 2012
3:41 pm

Usually I respond by Snopes-ing the offending email – and sending THAT link to whoever sent it to me.

Ditto for anything people post on FaceBook. After posting a few replies saying “Hoax, see link”, people stopped posting them to their Walls. I think people really mean well, but don’t realize that there are jokers creating these emails/posts for fun. (or something)

With any luck, they might think, or check Snopes before they post again…

jarvis

January 10th, 2012
3:48 pm

I used to get very upset when I’d get chain emails, but then I realized it wasn’t 1999 anymore and got over it.

Yeah....

January 10th, 2012
4:04 pm

Should of stuck with the epi pen blog and left it at that.

How does a prayer help? People in Texas have prayed all summer to end a drought and it didn\’t work.

catlady

January 10th, 2012
4:29 pm

I don’t do facebook. Nor do I ever participate in chain mails or prayers. If I have a prayer concern, I write an individual email to my friends that I think might help. God doesn’t depend on chain prayer mails to work. I find that blaphlsmeous (I know that is misspelled, but what the heck.)

I don’t worry about “jinxes” or any such.

JOD

January 10th, 2012
4:42 pm

@MJG – I thought for a second that I would check Facebook for an actual *whatever* that people seem to ask for, since I usually try to be precise, but then I figured, why would I unblock that mess??

math lesson

January 10th, 2012
4:45 pm

everyone knows god has a prayer quota and won’t act until he get hit with a set number of prayers. wouldn’t you feel bad if it was your lack of prayer that caused little joey to die of a horrible disease?

A

January 10th, 2012
5:01 pm

I don’t care what the subject matter is, if I get a mass email, I delete it promptly, and if I don’t know the sender personally I will block them.

Lil Timmy

January 10th, 2012
5:09 pm

I prayed for my science teacher, Ms Langston to be my girlfriend and it didn\’t work.

Fred

January 10th, 2012
5:19 pm

You people still OPEN chain emails? Really? You know how to find a blog and post comments so I assume you’ve been on the internet for more than 15 minutes lol.

I don’t open chain emails much less pass them on. How do you know if these insipid things are a result of your friend’s email being hacked? The first thing a good virus does is copy your address book and then send itself to everyone in it. Facebook is also malware, IE spyware. Every “app” on facebook you allow on your computer is another piece of spyware you have allowed to track your every key stroke. Remember that the next time you log on to your bank account. :D

At "Yeah"...

January 10th, 2012
5:22 pm

Ask those people in Houston who were praying for rain if it has rained there yet…

“Between 9 a.m. and about noon today the Houston police department had 51 active flood locations with flooding reports and that’s all over the city in city streets,” the Chronicle quoted city spokesman Michael Walter as saying.

The suburb of Sugar Land got more than six inches of rain.”

guy

January 10th, 2012
5:46 pm

so god was just with holding rain and causing despair until enough people prayed for rain? is that how you think that whole system works? inquiring minds want to know.

theresa

January 10th, 2012
7:59 pm

I have one particular friend who sends them to me all the time.

DB

January 10th, 2012
10:12 pm

Never, never, never, never, never . . .

Valstake

January 10th, 2012
10:24 pm

I never forward chain letters and have don’t play games on Facebook. I log in with an https prefix.

Penguinmom

January 11th, 2012
1:26 am

I don’t forward chain letters, usually don’t even open them – they just go straight into trash. I have lowered the priority of a few people on FB who like to post too many of these types of things. Prayer ones are just as bad. ANYthing that tells me to forward ‘or else’ gets trashed. I do respond to personal prayer requests from friends.

I hate the FB posts that start with ‘only a few people will have the courage [or whatever] to post this’ or the ones that tell you to post it as your status if only for a few minutes (which shows how old they are since that is not the way FB works anymore). Recently there was even one asking you to like a page so that someone who was sick would get money donated to them. Seemed fishy to me.

The purse thing is hilarious! The ground obviously sucks the value out of any money you might have had in your purse and then it disappears! I wonder how it handles the fact that I keep my purse on the floor of my car most of the time. Is that ‘on the floor’ or is it protected by the space under the car?

motherjanegoose

January 11th, 2012
8:08 am

HAHA….my purse is on the ground almost every day. Guess I miss that rule growing up in the north. years ago, I forwarded a funny joke and my e-mail got stuck in a spam blocker of a client and they could not get an e-mail from me. A tech person on their end figured it out. I do not forward anything.

mystery poster

January 11th, 2012
8:35 am

Years ago, my aunt sent me a chain email. My kids and I laughed so hard when we read it, it said something like:

So-and-so died a horrible, grisly death. Then, they realized that a decade earlier she had broken the chain. I can’t believe people would be so gullible as to fall for that.

Layla

January 11th, 2012
9:44 am

I will sometimes read forwarded emails, but only if the person has the decency to delete all the other emails on the address list. Hello, BCC, people! I NEVER forward emails unless it’s a professional one where someone is looking to hire, then I forward to a select few who fit what they’re looking for. What is with all those FB posts that say this child is sick w/ cancer, “like” her page and she can go on vacation? Really? And I’m an animal lover, but there are a lot of people getting all up in arms about pics of animals supposedly being abused, but the photo they show looks really badly photoshopped. I just want to smack them and yell “THINK!!!” I will say that some of my FB friends post interesting stuff that I’d love to participate in (not games) like the “how many of these books have you read” or “what song was number one when you were born” but then you have to allow that app access to everything and that I just won’t do. I block every game that shows up on my feed and I’ve stopped posting most stuff about my life. For me now, FB is simply a tool to share networking and other info, not personal things. Unless I really really need to… :P

DB

January 11th, 2012
11:57 am

@Layla: I know what you mean, I am VERY choosey what I “like” on Facebook these days. The ones that drive me bananas are the ones from brides who are trying to get free photography, etc. in a “contest”, so you have to “vote” for them and the one with the most vote wins. Why should I give my Facebook info to some sketchy photographer half-way across the country just to improve the hits on their website (which is what all these contests are designed to do, that, plus give the photographer/caterer/etc. exposure.)

Kat

January 11th, 2012
3:24 pm

I don’t think Jesus thought about emailed prayers in his lifetime. Just saying…

Kat

January 11th, 2012
3:27 pm

@Anj: I do the same thing. I look it up on snopes.com and then send it to that person (sometimes copying everyone else just to shame the sender), and ask them to use that to check their information in advance AND to not send me prayer requests and chain emails.

jmb

January 11th, 2012
3:41 pm

Penguinmom – not sure about the car but it has something to do with respecting your money. Same as my husband who has to have all bills facing the same direction…to show respect for it.