With all this wheeling and dealing, somebody is bound to get ripped off. EBay says it only gets about 27 fraud complaints for every million auctions, but the fear is real for some. And whether or not eBay can be held accountable if someone sells a fake baseball. Perhaps eBay is such a hit because it is a microcosm of everything about the Net. After all, it seemingly offers everything.
People talk to strangers, grab unusual trinkets, and everything moves in the blink of an eye.
This was the challenge of the church that lived in the gap between the ancient and medieval eras. As in America today, Christians were not persecuted, but they still struggled against a cosmopolitan, pagan elite. In such a world, Christians had to determine what parts of the post-Roman world were and were not a reassertion of old idolatry. Then there were the ascetics, who fled everything and strove for the marriage-free, shared community of the monastery. For Christians who wanted to be one of those reputed to be the spiritual elite, the desert beckoned.