In my high school days, I received chain letters which says that you have to do a novena (prayer for 9 days) and to make copies of the letter for distribution to a number of people, otherwise somebody in the family would meet an untimely death. It was scary, so thinking that I should avert the said untimely death of a loved, I reproduced the letter.
I now know better. But with the advent of cellphones, I still get such threatening letters, citing that so and so died because the recipient of the text did not follow the instruction and simply deleted the text message.
Just this night, I got one such letter, the sender excusing herself saying that she had to do it because of the threat. My initial reaction was to get mad. It was sent anonymously, and when I tried to call the texter, there was no reply.
Eventually, when I cooled down, I sent the sender a message. In a calm manner, I told her that she should not entertain such messages, because this is the work of the dark forces. The originator of the letter is trying to picture God as a vindictive God. If you get rattled by the message, your tendency is to follow the order without thinking. So, I told the sender to disregard it, and pray for God’s mercy.
