A few of weeks ago, I received several copies of the latest email that is getting forwarded everywhere. This one was a warning about US presidential candidate, Senator Obama, accusing him of being a radical Muslim.
It had urban legend written all over it. CNN even had a story about the mis-info in that now infamous email.
I forwarded it to a politically astute friend—Forrest Berry—to see what he thought about it.
Here’s his response:
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. . . Interestingly enough, my Mom forwarded the same Obama email to me earlier in the day so I had just researched it when I received your email. In short, it is greatly distorted and mostly urban legend. The email said that it had been checked out on www.Snopes.com <http://www.snopes.com/> but it obviously had not. Here is their link where they analyze this particular email line by line and identify which parts are true and which parts are not.
http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/muslim.asp
I know you know most of this stuff, but you may wish to forward it back to those who sent the piece originally.
As Christians, we ask people to believe our testimony about God and our experiences with him. We are witnesses to his reality. If we expect people to believe us, then we must have credibility. When we distribute false information because we are too lazy to verify it, we seriously undermine our credibility and therefore our Christian witness. Think of how many courtroom dramas you have seen in which an attorney tries to discredit a witness. One has to wonder if the accuser of the brethren may not sometimes use internet hoaxes and urban legends to discredit us. When we promote (by forwarding) untrue information, we are telling the world that we cannot discern truth from lies and thus discredit ourselves and our testimony about God.
Therefore, if you receive an email that seems outrageous (you know, the kind that you just can’t wait to forward) take a few moments to investigate it before you hit the send button. You can be sure that someone down the line will. When that happens, you will be discredited. On the other hand, if you research a piece before sending it, and find it to be untrue, you have the opportunity to set the record straight and in doing so, increase your credibility.
For more information about hoaxes visit www.iiiip.org <http://www.iiiip.org/> or www.snopes.com <http://www.snopes.com/>
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I tend to agree with Forrest. What do you think?
Latest on my accidental missionary blog: 40 Million Reasons I Will Not Vote For Obama or Hillary
