"You have to work hard to offend Christians. By nature, Christians are the most forgiving, understanding, and thoughtful group of people I've ever dealt with. They never assume the worst. They appreciate the importance of having different perspectives. They're slow to anger, quick to forgive, and almost never make rash judgments or act in anything less than a spirit of total love . . . No, wait--I'm thinking of Labrador retrievers!" David Learn, 1998

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Grace under Siege 34: The Silencers

     On December 17, as usual, we emailed my latest post--in this case, "The email to end all emails"--to well over 100 of you who had asked to receive the posts that way, had responded positively to receiving them--or at least had not asked to be taken off that list, despite our urging you to let us know if you didn't want to continue receiving them.
     Every single email was returned to us as "spam." I know most of you do not consider these posts spam because when we had stopped forwarding them to you, you wrote asking us please to keep doing it. So we did. For weeks no one objected.
     Then, suddenly, someone decided for all of you that you're wrong, you really don't want these emails.
     We can't believe this is coincidence. The same people who tried to silence us by phone, by denunciations from the pulpit, in Life Groups, in Adult Bible Fellowship classes, by emails to the entire church, by hacking into our computer to steal our passwords, causing harassment with my cursor, keeping me from getting to my own blog, diverting others who tried to get to it, are now attempting to prevent our sending these posts to you by having them declared "spam."
     They are trying to silence us and they want to decide for you what you want to know and what you don't. They think you can't handle the whole truth and make up your own minds.
     But there's more. Not only did this someone or board of someones decide for you that you do not want to hear from us about what's happening at the church. They decided you do not want to hear from us about anything--and deleted all your addresses from our computer. That meant we couldn't even ask you whether your cold was better or where you were spending Christmas.
     And when we restored your addresses to our mailing list, the mere mention of the website still triggers the same response from System Administrator: every item is rejected as "spam" and every address is deleted again.
     IF YOU DO NOT APPRECIATE THE "LEADERSHIP" OF GRACE DECIDING FOR YOU 1) THAT YOU DON'T WANT TO HEAR FROM US AND 2) THAT YOU CONSIDER OUR MAILINGS "SPAM," PLEASE LET THEM KNOW!

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