Recently, a woman from California listed an old baseball card for sale on eBay. The first bid was for $10. When she started getting lots of email requesting more information about the card, she suspected she'd stumbled on something more valuable and quickly ended the sale. Smart lady. What she had found was actually a card made in 1869. The card featured "The Red Stocking B.B. Club of Cincinnati." This club was baseball's first professional team. It's thought to be one of the first baseball cards ever produced, and its value could be more than $100,000.
While a baseball card isn't that unusual of an item to auction off, some of the items people have sold on eBay are pretty silly. Some man sold space on his forehead for advertising, which brought a little over $37,000. A woman sold her dead father's walking cane, his ghost included, for about $65,000. And then there was the famous grilled cheese sandwich that supposedly looked like the Virgin Mary that sold for almost $30,000.
The truth is, you can sell just about anything on eBay, but you can't sell your own soul — at least not anymore. A while back, one man's soul was up for sale and a woman from Iowa had bid $400 before eBay realized what was going on and stopped the auction. While you can no longer sell your soul on eBay — it's in violation of their policy and you can't sell body parts either — you can use the Internet to sell your soul to someone willing to buy it. A 24 year old sold his for $3,800 to a New Zealand pizza place appropriately named after the place of torment.
What is a soul anyway? Our soul is our very life — our heart, our thoughts, our being. Can you put a price on that?
Obviously some people have tried to sell their soul, and then there are those who sell their soul without realizing it. What do I mean by that? Any time we let our lives be dictated by things or other people, instead of following God's will, we are selling our souls. Some sell theirs for power, some for pleasure, and some for money and possessions.
Jesus warns, "What good will it be for you to gain the whole world, yet forfeit your soul? Or what can you give in exchange for your soul?" (Matthew 16:26).
Dollars won't be anything but fuel for the furnaces of hell when we enter eternity. Gold will be nothing but pavement for the streets. All the things we think of as valuable today will be gone in the blink of an eye.
Sell things out of your attic or closet on eBay if you want, but give your heart and soul to Jesus.
For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him (John 3:17).
