I recommend the book I Sold My Soul on eBay. The author, Hemant Mehta, is an atheist who is trying to help churches be better churches. I’ve reviewed it on my readings page. Here’s just one insight Hemant offers in the book:
"But as I read Christian books, and as I spent months attending an amazing variety of churches in different parts of the country, I kept running across a consistent and troubling truth about American Christianity. It is clear that most churches have aligned themselves against nonreligious people. By adopting this stance, Christians have turned off the people I would think they want to connect with."
Yeah, Paul. That’s actually the idea Rob Bell shares in his foreword to the book… that God could use even an atheist as a prophet. It’s kind of a funny thought… because an atheist could of course never agree that God was acting through them.
I can only imagine how varied the responses to such a statement would be from Christians with differing beliefs about the mission and purpose of the church…where some would say that truth is only found in God and others that all truth is God’s and therefore even an atheist could make truthful statements about the church.
I wonder to what degree we are experiencing a working of God much like that of some old testament history where the Israelites were proud and God used pagan nations to humble them back to God? I wonder if such a book has a taste of that “truth” in it (I haven’t read it personally…yet.)?