"OVERWHELMED ?"

“Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment.” (John 7:24)

Today, I received a short and somewhat curt e-mail from someone I think of as a friend, whom I’ll call “Ned”. It said something to the effect of, “I’m getting overwhelmed by all of your e-mails. Will you take me off your list?” I responded the only way (I think) you can respond to a request like that...short and to the point. “No problem!” I wrote. Honestly, unless it’s a genuine matter of life and death, I probably won’t e-mail that person very much anytime soon!

e-mail means different things to different people. On ONE END of the spectrum, e-mail is seen as sacred, almost like U.S. Mail. People at that end of the spectrum want each e-mail they receive to be either be personal OR directly related to their job, and they want each e-mail they receive to be serious and important. On the OTHER END of the spectrum are people for whom the computer and e-mails are very much a hobby. Those on THAT end will send forwards and jokes and cutsy sayings, along with e-cards and other stuff constantly as sort of a hobby. While I don’t see myself as being on either EXTREME, I’m certainly MUCH closer to the latter than to the former! I pretty much am one of those who likes to send and receive and read and explore stuff on-line and have (healthy and appropriate) friendships on-line, and for whom “on-line” can definitely be a hobby.

I’m also very intrigued by the “power” of the internet. If, for instance, my mail carrier friend Ed from Texas writes a powerful and moving piece about saving the U.S. Post Office, I can read it and say, “that’s nice”, OR I can (with his O.K., of course) send it along to 30 friends and suggest THEY send it to a friend or two (and so on) if they liked it. At least theoretically, that e-mail could go to at least half a million readers in around 3 months time. That’s pretty powerful and pretty impressive and turns Ed from a letter carrier venting to a friend into a journalist and an activist whose piece may even wind up being discussed on one of those Sunday television “talking heads” shows!

I checked in my records to see how many e-mails I had sent “Ned” over the past month. I found that I had sent 18 e-mails to “Ned” in that time period. Most were forwards or mass e-mailings. That may sound like a lot, but it works out to be slightly more than 1 every other day. Honestly, if somebody sends me approximately 1 e-mail every other day, I consider that anything BUT overwhelming! Maybe part of it is that I send and receive all of my e-mail on the computer. There’s no “Blackberry” or anything like that for me. I prefer to keep my cell phone as a simple cell phone, and my e-mail on the computer in our computer room. My wife has one of those “Blackberry-like” things that beeps every time she gets an e-mail. I suppose if I HAD one and it beeped every time an e-mail came in, and then I checked the e-mail only to find it was either spam or a mass forwarded e-mail, MAYBE I would feel overwhelmed, too.

I have some friends who send me a lot of e-mails and especially a lot of forwarded mass e-mails. I checked to see how many of THOSE I have received over the past month.

-----My friend E.D. sent a total of 45 e-mails over the last month...I’d say around 27 of those were some sort of forwarded or mass e-mails and the rest were personal.

-----My friend J.G. sent me 11 e-mails over the past month.

-----My friend. D.C.M. sent 10 according to my records. but I think it’s more than that. I think it was more like 20 as I remember deleting some of them after I read them.

-----That’s also true of my father-in-law. I could only find evidence of 4 or 5 e-mails he sent over the past month, but I typically have 1 or 2 forwarded mass e-mails from him on a DAILY basis. I’m sure I’ve deleted most of them, so from my father-in-law, I’d say it’s probably at least 45 e-mails.

----- A guy I know in Florida, N.B. has sent me 9 e-mails in the past month, all of which were mass e-mail forwards.

-----A friend P.Z. who attended the Framingham church I used to pastor sent me 10 e-mails over the past month.

-----J.S. a friend from Florida sent 7 that I could account for (almost all mass forwarded e-mails), but I also think it’s more like 14 and that I’ve deleted some of his.

-----My local friend D.G. sent 9.

The bottom line is, I was not offended by any of these e-mails being sent to me. Well, honestly, about HALF of my father-in-law’s were pretty crazy, but other than THAT, I was really not offended!

About three years ago, a person called me on the phone IRATE and told me to stop sending e-mails. I had only sent that person MAYBE 3 or 4 a month! That person told me, “I get 500 e-mails a day!! I don’t need your e-mails!!” Well, I suppose with 500 a day (if that’s believable), you probably DON’T, now do you?

My friend D.C.M. has stated in the past that he can’t understand why people get so upset and irate about unwanted e-mails. “That’s what the DELETE button is for!” he says.

AMEN!

Do you find you can “get bent out of shape” by receiving forwarded e-mails and/or other mass e-mails from friends? You’re welcome to comment here or to (“dare I say it?!”) send me an e-mail!