My Dear Padre,

Padre, Padre, Padre. I have whereof to speak with thee. I have a complaint. Pray do not be upset. Yes, it is true that I only contact you when I have a complaint. And yes, I usually have a veritable laundry list of offences. But then, I contact you much less than you contact me. It seems then, that turnabout is fair play, no? Since I cannot see you (you see how my powers are so much less than yours), I will assume you have agreed.

First, you have left me unprotected, my friend. In your absence, Angela the Medium has begun contacting me. How could you allow this? You check in, now, only every couple of months. In the mean time, Angela is at work, promising to read her crystal ball for me, or show me how her computer-generated tarot cards will tell me my destiny. That’s heady stuff, there, Padre. YOU don’t have tarot cards, do you? How am I to resist the allure of a blind-mailing list medium? I blame you and the Angelic Office of Emails. I mean, what’s the point of having modern communication if you forget to used it? I could recommend a friend to teach your secretaries a computer apps class.

Secondly, I am vexed. Vexed my friend. VEXED. Your people (I can only assume it is your people) are putting bad information on facebook. You know what I’m speaking about already, don’t you? I’m talking the bit that goes:

“Dear reader, please like and comment ‘Amen’ on this post if you want God to bless you.”

I wish to be clear. I am not crediting you with unoriginality. You have a whole variety of these. The example I give is a for-instance only. But I am confused. Confused and a little concerned.

First, I am confused because these posts are almost always written in abominable grammar. You put apostrophes in the wrong places, forget your Oxford comma (even if you are not British, you should use it), and spell things SO WRONG. Or is it so wrongly?—why am I asking you? Clearly, you would not know. I can only assume that angels do not study composition and grammar either. Incidentally, what do they study?

Second, I worry that you are giving people a false impression. You imply that heavenly blessings come from pressing a “like” or a “repost” button. Of course, I do not need to inform you that scripture says little about this. “Whoso reposteth on facebook, blessings shall follow him round about,” has been left out of my copy of the Bible. And before you blame my translation choice, let me assure you—I have checked in the Bible of the good King James (blessed be he!) as well. Nothing. I need not ask you how saints of old–or even saints, like, 20 years ago–got blessings when there were no chain-posts to like. Did they simply lounge about in squalor, unblessed and unfulfilled? If so, facebook is a bigger blessing than even I realized.

But finally, and perhaps most vexing of all, you have been distracted. While you are busy pumping out “repost” memes and ads for mediocre Christian films starring Kirk Cameron, you have ignored the real problem. Shampoo has taken over facebook! It is everywhere, my dear Padre. Young men, women, newly married moms, aged ladies, tutorial videos—EVERYWHERE. Shampoo has made itself ubiquitous. And they are unashamed. They greedily peddle their wares and make a profit and you do nothing about this? Facebook is literally drowning in shampoo.

Why are the guardian angels not guarding? Who is to protect the innocent facebook user who gets on to share a like or log onto facebook dating (you should do some work on that too by the way—if you really want to be helpful)? How am I get my fill of dubious political news articles if I cannot get on facebook? And how, HOW, am I to like and comment “Amen” on the articles that you seem to think bring such blessing? Trust me my friend, it is no great thing to be kicked out of guardian angel-ness because you could not even protect facebook from shampoo.

I expect that these concerns will be addressed speedily and in good order. Kindly inform the angels that I would like a message in my junk-mail folder to alert me that my request is filed.

Sincerely,

Your friend