Not A Blog™

This is a book I’ve been meaning to read for some time. I’ve been following Mehta’s blog, Friendly Atheist, for over a year, now, but I never got around to reading the book that brought his blog to my attention in the first place. I had it on my mind to purchase it about a month ago, but I figured I’d wait for the inevitable gift cards.

The title of the book is rather sensationalist; Mehta himself didn’t really like the characterization that he “sold his soul” and takes every opportunity to remind people that that was not the intent. A newspaper used the description as a headline, and it stuck. He acknowledges its usefulness as a sound bite, however, and uses it to start talking about what he really did.

It’s quite simple, and a great idea. His original offer was to attend one hour of church for every ten dollars bid as part of his desire to learn more about Christianity. By the end of the auction, the final bid came in at just over $500—meaning he could potentially be attending church every Sunday for the next year or year and a half of his life. With something like this, you never know what sort of person is going to be at the other end, clicking the bid button. Fortunately for Mehta, it turned out to be a quite reasonable man who just happens to be in the business of paying people to go to church.

At the risk of providing a spoiler, I think that was the most surprising piece of the story. There is an organization that pays people to go to churches and rate them, in order to provide feedback to the ministries on how well their proselytizing is being received. I can’t think of any particular reason why this sort of thing shouldn’t exist; it just never occurred to me that it might. Regardless, it certainly makes one think twice before delivering a flippant remark like, “you couldn’t pay me to go to church.”

So this man simply had Mehta do the equivalent of what he would normally pay $500 for. It was a dozen or so churches in four states, of all sizes and denominations.

Mehta himself was, fascinatingly enough, raised a Jain. That alone provides some very interesting back story, but more importantly, I believe it allows the book to proceed with a lot less baggage. A former-Christian atheist would not have been able to write this book and have it be as effective. Likewise, I don’t think someone raised atheist would have been an effective author, either. Of course, they could physically have written the book, but I would argue they wouldn’t have been the right people to express the message, and the book would have been received much more poorly. In the first case, you would have a lot of Christians saying “oh, he used to be Christian, so he just has a problem with the church”; in the second case, you have a lot of Christians saying, “oh, he’s never been Christian, so he’s just looking for dirt.” Mehta splits the difference by having been religious growing up—in a religion few have heard of, which I think works greatly to his advantage—but also he had a very real ignorance of Christianity and very sincere desire to learn more about it.

The perspective he provides is not only unique, it’s invaluable. Many Christians and ministries do have a hard time relating themselves to the mainstream population—and many do not even recognize a blind spot exists. I worked in marketing for a church, so I have seen this first hand. I don’t think the Not A Blog™ is the appropriate venue to share stories from that experience, but churches do have some very real problems in that regard. Mehta does a great job explaining these—not only because he points out what they are, but because he also provides suggestions as to how they might be solved.

The biggest complaint I have about the book itself is that it’s a bit simple. It may just be that I was expecting something slightly more intellectually demanding (no particular reason why), but I did get the feeling that the book is unintentionally condescending because it’s a bit too basic. Some chapters end with a hook that consists of nothing more than “In the next chapter I will talk about [subject]” which makes it feel like a high school essay. On the other hand, it was a quick read, and there’s nothing at all antagonistic in its tone. A difficult book can be condescending, too—for exactly the opposite reason—and I think easy is much more reader-friendly than hard. Mehta certainly respects his audience.

Speaking of which, I am not in the target audience for this book. I didn’t really know what I was expecting from it, but I did think it odd that it should be found in the Christian inspiration section of the bookstore. (I was expecting it to be in the philosophy section.) After reading it, though, this is exactly where it should be. It absolutely is inspiration for Christians—inspiration for them to modify their message appropriately and renew their efforts. The problem now becomes getting them to read it. In all honesty, how many Christians browsing the Christianity rack are going to pick up—much less buy—a book with the word “atheist” on the cover?

And yet, this book is for them. It’s especially for the ones who won’t touch atheism at all, but I would recommend the book to any Christian. Well, any Christian that honestly wants to reach unsaved people and have a true dialogue with them, opposed to just putting another tally mark in the church’s attendance roster—which really should be all of them.

I’m glad I read it, though. It wasn’t what I was expecting, but I wasn’t disappointed. If nothing else, it’s a refreshing break among the swarm of angry-atheist books which have been dominating the headlines recently. I Sold My Soul on eBay may not be fueling any fires—but it is fueling frank discussion, and let’s face it: that’s what we need more of right now.

-Ted