Sign up their work email for every porn site you can find!
Nothing a devout religious person likes more than finding out that a goat can do… what?!?
Yep.
I’m a Christian and those emails drive me nuts. “Forward this to 5 people or you don’t love Jesus.” :mad:
By no means all of these glurgy e-mails have a religious theme. But every last one of them is irritating.
Does anyone else think that reducing a heart felt prayer (even if you don’t believe in praying, or whatever), is just reduced to “Make a wish!” glurge?
There was a nun whose class exercise was reduced to chain mail, and she said it irritated her that people would trivialize things like that.
And I thought St. Teresa was “The Little Flower?”
I hate getting that shit now, and when I was a Network Admin, I would send out reprimands to people who sent that shit to company addresses. Even if it came from outside the company, if someone complained to me about it, I would send them a rather nasty e-mail basically saying that they must not be aware that they were sending their junk mail to a BUSINESS address, and only business correspondence was allowed, and don’t do it again or your address will be permanently blocked from the company server. Have a nice day, asswipe.
Try forwarding it to your IT admin. They will probably be happy to send out a reminder of appropriate use of company e-mail.
Well, the alcove shrine in our RC church dedicated to her shortly after she was canonized in the 1920s (The only one we have with an accurate portrait of the saint in question–she died in 1897 and there’s plenty of photos of her–the shrine is mostly a painting of her canonical procession taken from a newpaper photo too) has her as ‘St. Therese of the Child Jesus’. She apparently didn’t like the name ‘The Little Flower’ applied to herself very much, and who can blame her.
I dig her, and I think ‘The Story of a Soul’ is a terrific book*, but I don’t like glurge in my e-mail either. I have no problem with getting an e-mail telling me about the condition of my great-aunt Jessie and asking for prayers, but that’s MY great-aunt Jessie, not some mythical nationwide Jessie that I don’t know. And at work…beyond the pale. Arguments with the Repub in the lunchroom are one thing, but e-mails follow you around forever–damn, they nearly brought down Microsoft! Totally inappropriate to send political and religious e-mails to or from work.
- She was also an efficient writer and never would have written such a wussy prayer." Let this presence settle into your bones, and allow your soul the freedom to sing, dance, praise and love." She would have had some choice things to say about guff like that. In French.
Says it all.
You could always reply, asking the sender whether they believe there’s any truth (in the following nonexistent rumour:) that these religious glurge chain emails are actually often initiated by murderous satanists, as a method of tracking down the identities of the faihtful.
Heh, I like that. Maybe I can work something up.
It’s so hard to keep track. Remind me. Which one is the patron saint if glurdge?
What I meant, is there is only five people in my office and we all know each other fairly well and get along really well. I don’t think it’s silly for me to have my personal wishes respected by people whom I consider my friends - I don’t want any silly religious things in my e-mail. Not work, or home. I wouldn’t dream of sending them anything with an atheist bent, that’s only polite.
My father-in-law sends me religious emails all the time. Even though he has no idea what denomination I am (or if I have any belief at all). I simply just delete them and move on.
No sense in pissing off an inlaw.
And the wish will be granted? What if it was that the person who sent the email would die horribly? The email is either (1) not with God (2) lying (3) stupid or (4) representing a wrathful God. Way to persuade people.
Frankly, I’m a Catholic, myself, and find this sort of email not only to be annoying but to be irreligious.
That reduces god, and the saints, IMNSHO, to little more than tools. In a very real sense it smacks of satanic reasoning: After all, it is the Tempter that offers people vast rewards if only they would do some little, inconsequetial thing.
I have to admit, I’ve passed on prayer requests to my friends from time to time. However they are always specific, including what I am asking for prayers for, and with no emotional blackmail attached. I would never intentionally send such requests to anyone I know who is an athiest, of course. (Please, I want you to navel gaze for five minutes a good cause. Yeah, right, that’s going to do any good for anyone involved. 
)
Finally, this sort of thing subborns and perverts the purpose of prayer. C. S. Lewis put it best: “The primary object of prayer is to know God better; we and our needs should come second.” (Odd, I remember reading, in A Grief Observed, I think, that he’d also written: The purpose of prayer is not to change God, but to change the one praying. Not a contradiction of the other quote, but certainly a different focus.) Somehow this sort of prayer, or worse, extortion of prayer, is as far from a genuine prayer as I can imagine possible.
So, Elenia, it seems pretty reasonable to my mind to tell anyone involved in sending this glurge to your work email that you don’t appreciate it, don’t need it, and don’t want it. If you think quoting any of my comments might help you, please feel free to do so.
Not the point of the thread, but to again fight ignorance on this topic…Catholics do not worship saints. The prayer in that glurge isn’t even a prayer really. Ugh.
St. Therese of Lisieux (“Therese of the Child Jesus”, “The Little Flower”) was French Carmelite nun. St. Teresa of Avila was a Spanish Carmelite nun. Mother Teresa is beatified but not a saint yet.
It is perfectly reasonable for you to object to “silly religious things in [your] e-mail”. I just don’t see that your being atheist has anything to do with the merits of your objection. All I’m saying is you should be able to say “Please don’t send me any more silly religious things- like that St. Teresa one” without tacking on “I’m an atheist and I think its rude to send that kind of stuff to atheists”.
I had a friend who sent them to me (she was convinced her son had a “calling”) so I asked her to stop sending them. She no longer sends me anything and we are no longer friends. Her choice. My good fortune.
I didn’t tell them like that. She already knew I was atheist. In the e-mail, i didn’t even mention religious forwards, I put:
“Please don’t send any chain letters to my work e-mail. Thanks.”
And I think being atheist does have plenty to do with the merits of my objection, even though I would never overtly state it. Many religious people would feel the same if I started sending them stuff about the various inconsistencies of the Bible. I *know * I would get this reaction: “Didn’t you know I was Christian? Why are you sending this to me?” But since I’m atheist, I don’t have a leg to stand on?
Thank you. Honestly, I didn’t really think they did, but she’s Catholic and she sent it. 
And the two statements weren’t really related. I should have seperated them better.
Alas, even many people who claim to be religious don’t really know their religion all that well. I’ve met more than a few people, Catholic, Baptist, and other denomenations, who honestly believe that the King James version of the Bible has to be the only acceptable version of the Bible. Since, of course, that’s how God and Christ really talked. :smack: Compared to that level of ignorance, confusion about the roles of the saints is a little thing.
As for contradictions in the Bible, they’re fun, I tell you. (Especially when facing any of the fundamentalist sects and their evangelists.)
On a bit of a hijack…Lili Taylor starred in a movied called Household Saints about a girl who’s obsessed with St. Therese. It was pretty good.
Anyway, I usually ignore emails like these, unless they’re urban legen