Bloody Spam!
There is something rather worrying about what some folk email to others.
Now I’m the biggest rubbernecked voyeur when it comes to observing car accidents whilst I’m driving. I think most people are guilty of it, but images of the recent fiery end of the USS Colombia produced a rather bothersome reaction in me.

I think it could be that the source of this particular “choice tit-bit” is also an individual who has a tendency to send me the sort of superficially ‘spiritual’ items that I am sure (I know damn well this individual means me well) are supposed to inspire me, or at least make me go “that’s a nice thought” – even if they are so saccharine on occasion to make a Country and Western singer puke. But in recent weeks whenever I have received something of this nature - and this particular source is not the only one who sends me such stuff - I have found myself wondering where some of this ‘spirituality spam’ is actually coming from.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I often enjoy the thoughts that are contained within these things, giving me something to think about during the day, and I am sure that they are intended to uplift me in a positive way, even if it is just to wonder if the people who compose this stuff are actually living in the same world I am …

A few weeks ago I was sent a tract that left me feeling quite sick with the imagery involved. Essentially it implied that it was a ‘nice comforting image’ for the deceased youth’s parents that he had written this ‘essay’ whilst thinking about his ‘sins’ (and dredging up some fairly petty stuff that most people would put down to being a functional human being of teenage years and teenage angst) with no forgiveness for himself (something which I think we all grow into eventually) and then having “Jeesas” come and over-write his ‘sins’ with blood.

Now having grown up in a somewhat fundamentalist Christian church to start with, I was not overly upset by that imagery at first. What I didn’t expect was the nightmare that followed me into my sleeping hours from reading this thing!
It was the loving description of a file-room dripping in blood that I found so disturbing. It seemed as if because it was given a superficially ‘religious’ overtone, such bloody imagery was acceptable. Yet if something of this nature had been in any other setting, I’m sure that authorities of some sort – probably the chaps in white coats and carrying long sleeved jackets – would have been invited to take a look at the sanity of this young person. But it was all right because he had died in a car accident, and this was offered as proof that he was obviously going to go to “heaven” and be “saved”.
Whatever that means.
And “saved” from what, for what?

Then just this week, as we are waiting for the other boot to land and the latest TV War to start, I was sent another set of images from this particular source. It was supposed to be images taken by an Israeli spy satellite, released by some US government flunky to be shared around the Internet …
I don’t know what was more shocking. My instinct for rubbernecking at car accidents kicked in, and still dreaming that one day some aspects of Star Trek might become real, my first thought was one of shock. My second was of outrage that these people’s deaths were being passed around like a pornographic postcard.
But there was something wrong. I looked at the images again. Then I checked urbanlegends.about.com, and sure as ‘Jeesas’ leaked red stuff, these images were NOT of the USS Colombia, they were from the movie “Armageddon”.

What bothered me was that there seemed to be no apparent thought in the passing on of these images; there was no evaluation of “is this imagery truthful”; or “where have these images actually come from” (because such clarity is most unusual in real life); or “would a government flunky release such images without getting sent to goal PDQ”?
And worse still, if these images had been “real” then these were the last moments of seven brave folk building the future for all of us, and their blood would have been all over the inside of the cabin with no supposedly ‘uplifting’ message.

Perhaps it was only that I received the two such emails so closely together. But I can’t help but wonder if that, while it is acceptable to imagine such a gory image of being ‘bathed in blood’ because it comes from a religious perspective, when with a similar image, implied by the way these purported ‘accident’ pictures were sent to me, I felt like I do when passing a gory car crash, shamed with the relief that it was not me or mine intimately involved.

Why?
Both images were equally gory, both almost equally pointless in their use as markers to the end of lives. But why is it more acceptable to initially gloss over the bloody imagery of the first with its ‘religious’ overtones while the second has produced more immediate reaction and a greater outrage?
To my mind the ‘spiritual spam’ I was sent is, essentially, more offensive as it is claimed to have been discovered after a child had died and was supposedly consoling to that child’s parents. Yet if it had used other names and in different circumstances, it would have been used as evidence of a disturbed psyche and perhaps other questions would have been asked as to why this young person was using this imagery, and why and how they died.

Why does the ‘religious gloss’ make the imagery acceptable? Is it that the imagery is dismiss-able as being ‘spiritual spam’ and therefore a ‘not true / not real’ thing? I find the idea that such an offensive image has stayed with me for nearly three weeks now very disturbing. If this was supposed to be “uplifting”, why am I left with the image of a room drenched in blood, looking more like a murder has taken place? Who wants to be included in some sick crime scene!

Even if the second set of images had been of the Colombia instead of from a movie, the idea that I might be looking at the death of seven brave souls who were building the dream of space exploration I found far less disturbing personally – on the level of ‘car accident rubber-necking’ – what I found niggling was the lack of provenance of where these images came from. Discovering that they were images from a movie, I find myself with a sense of that those space-farers achievements have been dishonoured and I am shamed again.

There are lots of things that are wonderfully uplifting, that do not have the gloss of ‘spiritual’ or ‘religious’ political correctness that excuse the nasty images contained within some of them. Do we really need ‘snuff postcards’ to be shared around that are glossed with the idea that blood is an acceptable ‘spiritual’ washing agent today?