When I was in a single’s ward, a friend of mine (and fellow ward member) was a member of our ward’s email discussion group. One of the rules of the discussion group was not to post commercial messages. One ward member posted just such a message, I am sure quite innocently. My friend emailed her personally and gently reminded her that postings of this nature were against the group’s rules. She replied that she th0ught the message would be useful to some and said she would continue to post such messages in the future. They exchanged a few more emails arguing about this until finally my friend said to her, “You know what? Problem solved: I’m adding you to my spam filter.”

At this same time, my friend was also starring in a local stage production where he was playing Jesus Christ. This emailing sister happened to see one of his performances. She was outraged that my friend had acted in a way towards her she judged unworthy of the Savior, and emailed him once more, this time to convey her outrage that someone who would play the Savior on stage would act so uncharitably toward her as to put her in his spam folder. (Jesus, I guess her thinking went, would not have used spam filters.) It took my friend a while before he even noticed this message, but he finally spotted it in his spam folder one day when he was cleaning it out. Being in a particularly impish mood (as he frequently was), he decided to reply.

“My child,” he began solemnly, “all is forgiven. Now go thy way, and spam no more.”