265. I Sold My Soul on Ebay

Rating:  ☆☆1/2

Recommended by:

Author:   Hemant Mehta

Genre:  Non-Fiction, Theology, Memoir

224 pages, published April 17, 2007

Reading Format:  Book

 

Summary

In the mid-2000’s, Heman Mehta received widespread notoriety as “the eBay atheist,” i.e. the nonbeliever who auctioned off the opportunity for the winning bidder to send him to church.  Jim Henderson, a former pastor and author of Evangelism Without Additives, won the auction and sent Mehta out to a variety of church services.  Mehta, an atheist who was raised in the Jainism religion (which he rejected as a teenager) writes about the experience, including insightful critiques about what churches could be doing better to win over converts. on the Internet and spawning a positive, ongoing dialogue between atheists and believers.

 

Quotes 

“Pastor Ted and other evangelical pastors I hear about in the media seem to perceive just about everything to be a threat against Christianity. Evolution is a threat. Gay marriage is a threat. A swear word uttered accidentally on television is a threat. Democrats are a threat. And so on.

I don’t see how any of these things pose a threat against Christianity. If someone disagrees with you about politics, or social issues, or the matter of origins, isn’t that just democracy and free speech in action? How do opposing viewpoints constitute a threat?”

 

My Take

While there are some interesting parts of I Sold My Soul on Ebay (especially author Mehta’s discussion of why he became an atheist), it started to lose me with the somewhat repetitious discussion of the different church services attended by Mehta as part of his Ebay bargain.  Okay, but not particularly compelling.