By Alison McFerrin

The Selma Times-Journal

The Selma Times-Journal has been following the story about New Selmont Baptist Church’s involvement with the tax returns for a while now, and my opinion has changed back and forth as I listened to new details come in.

Scam? Not a scam? Scam, but not the church’s fault? It’s hard to know for sure.

As Margaret Perry, wife of New Selmont’s David Perry, said, people hear the word money, and they automatically think something bad.

But maybe that’s because we’ve all learned from experience.

Telephone and email scams have probably been around for as long as these methods of communication have existed. We’ve all received the “exciting” news that we’ve won a million dollars, or we’re eligible for a free car, or a special, exclusive deal is available just for us, for a limited time — if only you’re willing to provide your Social Security number and credit card number and sign away your life to the devil.

And so we’ve finally been conditioned to believe that anyone who wants to do something good for us is probably out to get us, as well as our money.

And yet I’d like to believe the best of people — that people really do have pure motives and good intentions. I’d especially like to believe this of people who have committed themselves to spreading the gospel and reaching the lost. After all — what would New Selmont stand to gain from the deception, except for having its name besmirched when the truth comes out … as the truth always does?

I sympathize with the people who are starting to be leery of whether or not what they have signed up for is legitimate. In a life of hard knocks, it’s disheartening to wonder if you’ve put your trust in the wrong person or institution.

I guess the most important thing to remember is the oft-repeated phrase reportedly coined by the Better Business Bureau:

“If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”