New Link Added

I've added www.snopes.com to the list of links. It's a clearinghouse of just about every "urban legend" imaginable.

Even if you've never heard the term "urban legend" you know what they are. Stories like "the vanishing hitchiker" or that needles full of the HIV virus have been found in payphone changeslots all over the country. These are stories meant to frighten or to make some kind of point.

With the advent of the internet, these stories are no longer passed on by word of mouth (maybe around a campfire), but through e-mail which means they make it around the world in a matter of hours.

Here are five of the top urban legends circulating today (one of them is actually true, though).

1. Terrorists have not acquired UPS uniforms.
2. Ashley Flores is not missing.
3. If you enter your PIN in reverse at an ATM, it will not summon the police.
4. Tom Hanks did not fall to his death while making a film in New Zealand.
5. Mentos added to a 2-liter bottle of Diet Coke does cause an explosion (I know. I've done it).

The reason I've added snopes.com is because so many Christians get caught up in these things. We get an e-mail or hear a story, believe it hook, line, and sinker, and then pass it on to every one we know. The problem is that most of these stories are not true and it makes us look stupid.

I can think of two examples off the top of my head. It's been falsely claimed that NASA found 24 hours in their computer models that they can't account for (evidently, they tried to look back in time somehow). Christians know what happened to the extra 24 hours - the long day in Joshua 10. Voila! The Bible is vindicated! Wait a minute - no, it's not, because the story is totally false. The second urban legend is that Hell has been found in Siberia (now, somebody might think Siberia is hell, but that's another story!). The story goes that as a well-drilling outfit was drilling an especially deep well, they heard screams of terror coming from the hole (for some reason, unknown to me, they put microphones in the hole). Therefore, they had to have found Hell. Again, voila! The Bible is vindicated because we have empirical proof for Hell. Yes, we have proof for Hell (Jesus taught that it exists), but it doesn't come from this piece of fiction - it's a complete fabrication.

We all receive e-mails from our friends and co-workers (at times we're asked to forward them). Some of those e-mails repeat urban legends - stories that we should not pass on to others as if they're true. And especially we shouldn't use them as arguments for the truth of Christianity. Christians are pretty gullible. I know. I am one.

The next time you get one of those stories, go over to the folks at www.snopes.com and figure out whether it's fact or fiction. As followers of Jesus, we're supposed to be people of the truth and that even applies to the e-mails we forward and the stories we tell.