c. 2006 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) This seems to be weed season.

In 99-degree heat, my lawn service cannot keep up with opportunistic weeds creeping in from the edges of the lawn.

At my desk, I notice a tenfold increase in spam e-mail _ investor alerts, body-enhancement products, cheap software, lottery scams, phishing scams, “Nigerian letter” scams _ which my various spam filters seem helpless to catch. The Federal Bureau of Investigation estimates cybercrime costs the nation $67 billion a year.

Banks flood our mail boxes with credit card offers _ over 5 billion a year, rising at the rate of 22 percent. More and more target the recently bankrupt or are fraudulent offers designed to snag the unwary.

As a mid-term election approaches and hopefuls for 2008 start jockeying, politicians try out sound bites such as “soft on terrorism” to see what will grow in a gullible public’s lawn this election year. If half the public still believes weapons of mass destruction existed in Iraq, as one poll indicated, why not say any old thing?

Like all weeds, of course, spam, banks and politicians are relentless. My 200 spam e-mails today will be 210 tomorrow, and eventually I’ll make a mistake and click on one. If cheap demagoguery doesn’t fly today, tweak the attack, and maybe it will score tomorrow. Strewing weeds is certainly easier than honest work or dealing with a nation’s actual needs in challenging times.

Weeds can choke a lawn or cornfield, as spam is now choking the Internet, credit scams are tarnishing the banking industry and absorbing disposable income, and politicians’ deceit and incompetence are undermining citizens’ confidence in government.

At some point, people’s patience runs out, and that can be a time of even more danger. When people feel impatient, helpless and frustrated, their moods open the door to worse weeds, such as relentless moralizing, campaign platforms designed to harvest rage and religious scapegoating.

Take spam, for example. Bad as it is, proposals emanating from Washington are even worse. Government snoops and their allies in the telecommunications industry would like nothing more than to get their hands on the Internet, to tax away its commercial potential, to deny its freedoms of speech and press, and to use its tools to spy on citizens.

In my opinion, people of common sense need to do two things.

First, they need to get in the game. Progressive Christians, for example, need to learn from the right wing’s takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention in 1984 _ they can’t assume that order and decency will prevail. Moderates in any religious tradition need to stand up to the extremes. Frustrated citizens need to be wary of both political parties.

Second, we need to act where we can _ in most cases at the local level _ and have the same confidence in the marketplace that Jesus had. As he showed, a truth spoken here will impact many lives there. One person healed will become a dozen seeking healing. One moderate studying the Bible with determination and an open mind can help American Protestantism reclaim traditions of free-thinking and tolerance.

If spam stops working, spam will stop coming. If individuals pay off their credit cards and live within their means, phony solicitations won’t work. If people stop rewarding sound-bite politicians and demand attention to needs and issues, more thoughtful leaders will emerge.

That might seem unrealistic. But that is the precise calculus of faith. Yahweh believed that a single tribe could restore all of lost humanity. Jesus believed that a handful of men and women could continue his work and transform the world.

Even in vast and complex systems, individuals can change the marketplace.

KRE/JL END EHRICH

(Tom Ehrich is a writer, consultant and leader of workshops. His book, “Just Wondering, Jesus: 100 Questions People Want to Ask,” was published by Morehouse Publishing. An Episcopal priest, he lives in Durham, N.C. His Web site is http://www.onajourney.org.)

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