to All of God’s Beautiful Spammers.

James left a comment on my blog that is a request for money for his church building. I get spammed all the time, especially from Nigerians (nothing against Nigerians). He is probably too busy to come back and read this, with all those thousands of Christians to contact, but if he came back, this is what I would have liked to say:

Brother James,
Greetings in the name of the LORD to you, and, in deed, to all those in the Religious Spamosphere who call upon the name of the LORD, and call upon us to release the first fruits of our money so that you can finish building your churches in Nigeria.

James, your comment this morning made itself a permanent home on my blog. I will repost it here so we can all read it;

“Dear Brother in the Lord,
Greetings to you in the name of our lord Jesus chrish.May the peace of our lord be with you.
On behalf of the hole church we write this mail to you you conening our church.we have being worshipping in this uncompleted church for the past 5 years.And we have been collecting some donation from the church members every sunday in the services.All this money we have being collecting as being used to complete this our chrrch.We will like to complete this church before January.We thererfore come to you for some finanicial assistance to complete church.May the almighty God continue to be with us in Jesus.(Amen).We will be lookingf forward to hear from you.
Reguards,
Brother James”

Yo, James . . . heres the scoop – Until your comment was posted, my blog was ad-free. Now it is not. I wish to congratulate you on your spamming journey into the world of Christian blogging. So many harvesters have been sent to gleen in the email boxes of God’s church and reap the benefits thereof, that it has become overflowed. Thus, you must now enter our blogs. How savvy you are. To avoid filters, to bypass screens, to rubbish etiquite, to employ ‘bots’ in your search for religious donors. Is that a spiritual gift that some Apostle imparted to you or did you have to learn it from low-life sales sharks? I hope you were not influenced by Christian “businessmen” or superapostles in this matter.

But James, the new media world is different. You will find that the bloggers you will now be approaching with your requests are a different tribe than the church people you previously harrassed. Despite what you have heard about people in a postmodern world, we (and I speak for many Theoblogians) have a very strong moral code, and probably more “rules” than our parents, since we live in a dynamic, fast-changing world that demands a deeper ethical code. A code that you have broken. And I therefore cannot allow your sin to remain unchallenged. Your wrongdoing was twofold:
1. You cannot violate a comments section of our blogs with a request for money, especially when you have no relationship to any of the readers or even to the author of the blog. You treat us as potential donors, not as people in relationship. You treat our thoughts as springboards to your own message and sales pitch. IT”S WRONG! Simple stuff to us, but this fact may be an epihpany to you and your brothers.
2. By continuing to violate our blogs and our email boxes, you make it difficult for those ministries in Africa that really do need help, but are not as savvy in the way of the internet as you. And even if they were, their Christian conscience would not allow them to violate the Body of Christ. God forbid we rape God’s Bride for her money!

Brother, we pray for your deliverance. Some clues to move you towards your salvation:
– Establish relationship with us. You have a ministry? Great. Start a blog, a web-site, a photo album, start something and let us know about it. That way you can feed out what God is doing and we can check it out when we need to.-. Tell your Nigerian friends that even if they are Princes, Governors, Apostles or future Kings, money will not make them happy.
– Figure out how to start churches without buildings. Its a whole lot cheaper, easier to reproduce, and you can find a way to use the facilities in your own town. This is what many of us are doing and have done. You will find that many Christian bloggers have started churches in their homes or in local coffee shops, or don’t even identify their community with a building at all, and your request for funding will fall on deaf ears.
– About those church pipe-organs we sent you – oooooops . . . OUR BAD!. I don’t know why we sent them. Our ancestors, in their naive modern rationale, felt that their 1800’s Western music was God’s Top of the Pops and they wanted to thump you on the head with their aural metanarrative. Sorry about that! Send them back if you like – we could actually use them now. I am sure many Church DJ’s would love to mix in some pip’in hot chords with their electronic loops.

Need some money to send them back?
No problem, I have some critics who you could call. These Christian writers and speakers tell us that the emerging generation have no moral absolutes, no ethical code, no appreciation of what is RIGHT. I don’t feel like disagreeing with them publicly, because they make their living this way and I don’t want their families to suffer or their churches to decrease. That would not be RIGHT. But maybe you could call them. I should really send you their email addresses . . . and home addresses if you like. Or maybe you should just phone them . . .

Dec 5. Backblog:
This is what I am actually sending to James at firstapostolic2000@yahoo.com
James, beloved of God, come back to my blog and let us reason together. God has a better way for us all. Let us start the relationship.
Andrew

Now if about 3000 of us sent him a nice message, daily, for about a month . . . naaaaahhhhhhhh just kidding!!!!

ATTENTION ALL BOTS: PLEASE SEND ALL FINANCIAL REQUESTS TO : [[{ firstapostolic2000@yahoo.com }]] Naaahhhhh – kidding again. What do you think i am?????????

Backblog edit: Clue number one was taken away due to negative response from one reader.
It said “1. Lose the King James language. You sound like a right idiot. Honestly, do you really talk like that? Is that how you ask for vegetables at your local store?
According to one reader, some of them do talk like that and therefore it is good that he is consistent and integral. My sincerest apologies to anyone else out there who speaks in King James English. This blog does not discriminate regarding pre-1700 dialects.