Pay Me To Decide!

by Siranee

A few weeks ago, Hemant Mehta posted an unusual item for sale on eBay: a chance to save his soul. While unusual items have a habit of showing up on ebay, this one in particular caught my attention.

The DePaul University graduate student promised the winner of the auction that for each $10 of the final bid, he would attend an hour of church services. The 23-year-old Mr. Mehta is an atheist, but he says he suspects that he has been missing out on something.

“Perhaps being around a group of people who will show me ‘the way’ could do what no one else has done before,” Mr. Mehta wrote in his eBay sales pitch. “This is possibly the best chance anyone has of changing me.”

Evangelists bid, eager to save a sinner. Atheists bid, hoping to keep Mr. Mehta in their fold. When the auction ended on Feb. 3 after 41 bids, the buyer was Jim Henderson, a former evangelical minister from Seattle. Winning bid: $504.

The 58-year-old Mr. Henderson has written a book for a Random House imprint and is currently a house painter. He runs off-the-map.org, a Web site whose professed mission is “Helping Christians be normal.” Mr. Henderson is part of a small but growing branch of the evangelical world that disagrees with the majority’s conservative political agenda, and wants the religion to be more inclusive and help the disadvantaged.

The idea that such a method as an ebay auction could become the vehicle for such life altering decisions is both intriguing and frightening. Could this be the new version of flipping a coin to make up one’s mind about something? Should I or shouldn’t I bathe daily, go to work, kill my neighbor … the possibilities are limitless.

Imagine someone who is gay waking up one morning and deciding to post an auction stating the winner would decide what his sexual orientation should be. After all … being gay is a choice and not a condition of genetics right?

I’m sure similiar minded individuals like Mr. Henderson would step right up to the challenge of helping all of us homosexuals attain “normallacy”. Personally, I’d need more than $10 per hour to pull off acting straight 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

But then, if the auction was setup much like this one was, I’d only have to be “straight” for an hour. I could handle that. Hell, I “acted straight” nearly 8-9 hours a day when working out in the real world for almost thirty years. By my calculations, someone owes me $124,800.00.

I accept checks, credit cards or paypal.