Several of my friends and acquaintances have received the following in their respective mailboxes. I only wish I could get one sent to my address as well. Beware, past the jump is an example of what can happen to religion when it becomes infected by The Stupid™. Actually, it is a scam, which should be obvious to anyone who looks at the damn thing. Except for people infected with The Stupid™.
Business Reply Mail Envelope Front
A pretty standard BRE, apart from the GIANT letters that only make sense when I’m drunk on Stoli.
Business Reply Mail Envelope Back
A trite message of hope on the envelope flap.
Page 1 of the scam
Now we get to the funny parts. This letter reads like those “African Republic” spams, but it also replete with illogical and seemingly random bolding, rampant underlining, nonsensical sentence structure, misquoted scripture and supermundane information presented as fascinating material. The funniest parts to me are whenever the prayer rug is mentioned. It is always accompanied by never repeating strings of modifiers and adjectives.
Page 2 of the scam
Now the scam shows its teeth. Simply checking a box and sending some cash to St. Matthew’s Churches will solve all your financial problems! Yeah, that makes TONS of sense.
Front of the Flyer
They are prepared for skeptics like me though. They have testimonials given by racially ambiguous people from the early 1980s!
Back of the Flyer
I’m impressed by the responsibility of these people, who know their debt down to the last penny. I’m sure they’d never fall for a snail mail scam like this one.
Magic Eye Holy Prayer Yo Mama Rug
Worst Magic Eye Ever. If you look closely at his right eye, you can pretty much see the open one immediately. And I can never do Magic Eye Puzzles. Besides, Christ has the fur-covered, chinless, megacranial head of a hydrocephalic.
Back of Rug
Yup. Whatever you say.
If God has anything to do with it.
1. You don’t need a prayer rug. You can just pray.
2. You don’t need anyone to pipe answers to prayer to you. If necessary God will send and angel or two to take care of the matter.
I got one of these the other day and find it to be about the cheapest trick I have yet seen played in the name of the gospel. It’s not even good hokum. At least most of the people into this sort of thing give you some pretty good theater on TV or radio; yell Bam, Bam, Bam while you watch the paralyzed hand un-clench. It’s a pretty good show for 10 bucks. But this is not even signed by someone just the brothers and sister of St. Matthew’s. What do want to bet not officially sanction by the recognized church leadership so you can’t legally accuse the church of fraud. If you get taken by something this bad turn yourself into some nice place were they take care of the incompetent.
Sandy Almond