Gathering In Light

I’m way late to be posting about this book, but I still operate under the “better really late, than even later than that” motto. I was sent “The Divine Commodity” by Skye Jethani, editor of leadership journal, [Powell's affiliate link embedded] shortly before we packed up all our stuff and moved to the great state of Washington. My initial take with books to review is that I give them an hour or two of skimming and then I’ll write the 150-300 words required, which usually takes me another half-hour or so. I figure this is the best way to make sure I break even with a free book, but Skye’s book blew me away. I read every page carefully, I couldn’t put it down. It is very well-written, engaging and fun to read.

The basic premise of the book is that the narrative of American consumerism is all too powerful in scope and is shaping and sapping the church’s imagination. The book is part American-cultural history, part theology, part art history based on the life of Vincent van Gogh. It deals with topics such as branding, the power and influence of Disney on the imaginations of children, consumerism, mega-churches, isolationism, and desire. Jethani draws on many voices from the church from Augustine, to Brother Lawrence, to the Quaker Thomas Kelly, to the Jesuit missionary Francis Xavier to the fourth century Egyptian peasant Pachomius. The book presents troubling signs of consumerism within the church, suggested practices (such as the practice of silence) for resisting these pressures, and Vincent van Gogh as a model for the church to recapture its imagination. Every chapter ends with a discussion around van Gogh’s life and work, and includes color illustrations of various paintings of his. For Jethani, van Gogh’s art was different from both Realism and Impressionism, one hand Realism tried to paint reality according to the naked eye, whereas Impressionism was more about emotion. Instead van Gogh “believed art should do more than present reality; it should represent reality by uncovering the truth that is not apparent to the naked eye.” Accordingly, the church should follow suit and not live as reality is, but as it should be, unmasking, disentangling, the many narrative threads in our lives, drawing upon the light of God, rather than the darkness of human greed, excess and consumption.

This is a very important book for the church to read and Jethani has done a good job preparing it for use in our communities: it is accessible, comes with handy discussion questions, and educational in a way that engaged many pop culture references. I highly recommend it to all.

The Divine Commodity: Discovering a Faith Beyond Consumer Christianity by Skye Jethani

Check out the Divine Commodity site as well.

From the Synopses & Reviews on Powell’s Site:

Synopsis:

Consumerism, which has invaded the church, has created a culture that values style over substance and image over reality. But through Scripture, history, engaging narrative, and the inspiring art of Vincent van Gogh, Skye Jethani explores an alternative vision of faith that liberates us to live as Christ’s people in a culture opposed to his kingdom.

Synopsis:

The human imagination is the key battleground in the conflict between the kingdom of God and the consumer culture. Drawing from the vivid imaginations of Impressionist painters, particularly Vincent van Gogh, each chapter of The Divine Commodity uses personal narrative, biblical exposition, and cultural observation to show how consumerism has shaped our faith, and then challenges the reader to use their sanctified imagination to envision an alternative way of expressing the Christian life in our culture.

My friend Rhett Smith asked me on twitter yesterday where he should start if he wanted to get into some of Žižek’s writings. There are a few different places to start because he has such a huge corpus and covers a variety of topics. For instance the different areas of his work you can dive into are:

1. Christianity
2. Politics
3. Psychoanalysis
4. Film Criticism
5. Hegalian Philosophy

He was interested in learning more about his use of Psychoanalysis, which is almost solely based on Jacques Lacan’s work. Here are my recommendations on this particular subject, if you’d like to chime in about the others please feel free ((all these links have embedded referral codes in them to Powell’s independent bookstore in Portland Oregon. I strongly support local bookstores and hope you will too. If you purchase these books through these links I also receive a little  kickback from the sale)):

• Sublime Object of Ideology is his first book, is pretty lucid for Žižek and focuses on his use of Lacanian Psychoanalysis, which he applies mainly to social critique.
• “How to Read Lacan,” is a super easy to read, short and fun. In it Zizek expounds upon key quotes and texts from Lacan’s corpus and applies them to movies, and contemporary cultural examples.
• Finally, “Looking Awray: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan Through Popular Culture” takes an indepth approach to Lacanian psychoanalysis and uses it to exegete film.
• You can also find more of Žižek’s books on Lacan on my delicious site.

Finally, If you’re interested in getting books that cover the four main pillars of Žižek’s thought: Hegel, Lacan, Marx and Christianity then I highly recommend the four volume: The Essential Zizek: The Complete Set (the Sublime Object of Ideology, the Ticklish Subject, the Fragile Absolute, the Plague of Fantasies).