Remember God tells us in his word to love our neighbors as ourselves, but we are clearly not demonstrating God’s love to our fellow man if we indulge in telling, sending, or forwarding jokes that; denigrate, belittle, hurt or portray people in a negative and/or derogatory way.
Images, graphics, and other files that are; pornographic, lewd or offensive, that cause harm to the people who send and receive them.
Black humor; makes a joke of tragic circumstances or death. These days it seems to take only minutes after a tragedy occurs before callous jokes start circulating in emails. These jokes may seem harmless at first, but in reality, they can damage the reputations of the victims of a tragedy, and add to the enormous grief and pain being felt by their families, friends, and loved ones.
As Christians, when we hear of a tragic event or the tragic death of a person or well-known celebrity, our response should be to give practical and prayerful consideration for and to those directly and indirectly affected. Our first thoughts should be for their spiritual wellbeing, and, the realization that the person or people concerned could be going into a lost eternity without God.
Instead of laughing at this kind of dark and callous humor, these tragedies should motivate us to ask ourselves… How can I reach, serve and influence more people for Christ? What can I do to share the love of God and make a positive difference in the lives of the people I meet, work with, live with, and associate with?
As Christians, we should reject and immediately delete these kinds of emails when we receive them.
In addition to the email content mentioned above, there are other forms of email misuse we should be wary of.
SPAM emails; have become a global disease as ISP’s and email boxes are overloaded daily with offers for every conceivable product and/or service. These types of emails are frequently of an inappropriate or sexual nature. The generation of, and counter prevention of SPAM has become a huge global industry.
The important thing is to NEVER, EVER, open these emails. Delete them immediately with the contempt they deserve.
Phishing emails are sent from fraudsters trying to steal your usernames and passwords that you use for your online banking and other legitimate internet use. With this information, phishers hijack your bank accounts, online auction accounts, email accounts, and other internet-based trading places you may use. If you receive an email that asks you to click on a hypertext link that takes you to a web page that asks you for your username and/or password for your account at your bank, eBay, Paypal, or any other internet-based trading activity, DO NOT RESPOND and DELETE THIS EMAIL IMMEDIATELY.
This type of phishing email will ask you to click a link in the message body of the email, that takes you to spoofed web pages that look exactly like the web pages of your bank or other online accounts. Once you enter your username and password into the spoofed web page, the fraudster has full access to your eBay, or Paypal, or bank accounts, and any funds or credit cards attached to them.
No bank, or Paypal, or eBay, or other legitimate organizations or businesses you are signed up to will EVER send you an email with hypertext links to web pages, that asks you to LOG-IN and enter through that web page.
The only safe way to enter your personal details for any internet-based activity is by opening a new browser page in your web browser and typing the web address of the domain you want to enter into the URL search pane at the very top of the browser page.
Chain mail: Some emails we receive contain stories that can touch our hearts and emotions. Often these are wonderful stories and true-life accounts of people or events that you would like to pass on and share with others. However these emails frequently end with an appeal to send or forward this story to X number of people in X number of minutes, and a world of good luck and fortune will fall into your lap if you do. And then you are warned… if you don’t forward this email to X number of people in X number of minutes, bad luck of the worst kind will befall you.
For just one minute the email had touched our hearts, and then the deceit of the email is revealed as the ending reveals the chain nature of the communication. An email with promises of good luck if you forward it, and/or bad luck if you don’t, or uses some form of emotional blackmail to get you to forward it, is simply an act of deceit and should be deleted immediately.
