The Divine Commodity: Discovering a Faith Beyond Consumer Christianity

Skye Jethani has written a great set of reflections on the way that USAmerican Christians, especially Evangelicals, have been seduced and co-opted by the marketisation of their culture. One of the prima facie odd things about this book is the way that Skye uses Vincent Van Gogh as a way to help us into the key insights he wishes to convey. In fact this works well and helps us to learn about Van Gogh and to retrieve him as a Christian worth listening to for what he can help us to appreciate about Christian responses to culture and social issues.
 There are some good insights into the way that a wrongful assimilation to culture have affected the way we conduct church and worship.
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Quotes and notes

Over a century ago another struggling Christian fled the church to find God in the stars. Vincent van Gogh is remembered for his volatile mental health, severing his ear, and later taking his life. But the tortured artist also had a volatile relationship with Christianity, oscillating between devotion and rejection. At one time his fervor was so intense he became a missionary. Later he announced, “That God of the clergymen, he is for me as dead as a doornail,”1 and called himself “no friend of present-day Christianity.” His paintings and letters show us a man wrestling to synthesize his faith with modern thought. But his struggle was primarily with the institutional church, not Christ. In his final years, as his mental illness became more severe, van Gogh reveals a profound devotion to Jesus while remaining disillusioned with the church. His most celebrated painting from this period, Starry Night, captures this sentiment. The scene of a quiet hamlet beneath a churning sky of stars was composed from his imagination. For this reason Starry Night depicts the vistas of van Gogh’s soul more than the countryside surrounding Saint-Rémy, France. The deep indigo of the sky was used by Vincent to represent the infinite presence of God, and the heavenly bodies are yellow — van Gogh’s color for sacred love. The divine light of the stars is repeated in the village below, every home illuminated with the same yellow warmth. For Vincent, God’s loving presence in the heavens was no less real on the earth. But there is one building in van Gogh’s imaginary village with no light, no divine presence — the church. Its silent darkness speaks van Gogh’s judgment that the institutional church was full of “icy coldness.” Like many people today, van Gogh struggled to find God in the confines of institutional, programmatic religion. Instead, he found himself drawn outside the respectable piety of the church to commune with peasants and prostitutes. And his devotion to Christ was inspired by nature — the radiance of sunflowers, the knuckled contortion of olive trees, and the silent providence of the stars. Rather than visiting the church, van Gogh said, “When I have a terrible need of — shall I say the word — religion, then I go out and paint the stars.” location 135

A more recent painting by pop artist Ron English captures the church’s condition today. A parody of van Gogh’s work, Starry Night Urban Sprawl replaces the original French village with the architecture of consumerism — fast food restaurants and Hollywood icons. The church steeple is crowned with McDonald’s golden arches and King Kong straddles the roof. Unlike van Gogh’s Starry Night, in Ron English’s composition the church is not dark. Light diffuses through every window and door, but it is not the sacred yellow light of the stars above. Instead, the church repeats the electric white light of the franchised stores and restaurants around it. It reflects the values of the earth, not the values of the heavens. This church is a corporation, its outreach is marketing, its worship is entertainment, and its god is a commodity. It is the church of Consumer Christianity. Richard Halverson, former chaplain of the United States Senate, is said to have observed that: In the beginning the church was a fellowship of men and women centered on the living Christ. Then the church moved to Greece, where it became a philosophy. Then it moved to Rome, where it became an institution. Next, it moved to Europe, where it became a culture. And, finally, it moved to America, where it became an enterprise. location 156

Our minds are so captivated by these ideas that we’ve lost the ability to think an alternative thought. As a result, the imagination has become the critical battleground between the kingdom of God and consumerism, and before we can hope to live differently we must have our minds released from consumerism’s grip and captivated again by Christ. As Thomas Kelly contends, before we can live in full obedience to God we must be given a flaming vision of such an existence. This burning image comes to us through our intuitive faculties. “Holy is imagination, the gateway of Reality into our hearts.” location 197

cannot imagine how to carry out the fantastical mission of our leader. Wanting to obey Christ but lacking his imagination, we reinterpret the mission of the church through the only framework comprehendible to us — the one we’ve inherited from our consumer culture. location 299

who dismissed Jesus’ words, they had eyes but they could not see. Vincent believed the ability to perceive the unseen was achieved only by the grace of God. He wrote, “You need a certain dose of inspiration, a ray from on high, that is not in ourselves, in order to do beautiful things.” location 425

the Gospels are dominated by Jesus telling stories and weaving parables. He used these verbal Trojan horses to sneak radical truths past his listeners’ defenses and into the chamber where their imaginations slumbered. And as they began to awaken, Jesus’ stories illuminated a new vision of the world. They disentangled reality for his listeners, and his disciples slowly perceived the kingdom of God that Jesus saw all around him. It was a kingdom that defied the conventionality of his day. location 458

If we are to effectively make disciples of Jesus Christ and teach them to obey everything he commanded, we cannot neglect the imagination. Knowledge and skills are important, but neither will be employable if the mind is still imprisoned by the conventionality of the surrounding culture. location 476

Who would want an uncontrollable, mysterious, and holy God when you could have a genie in a Bible? location 632

Sometimes amnesia can be very convenient. Without awareness of one’s story or context a person can be whomever and whatever he or she desires with no worry of repercussion. Without context there is no responsibility. location 730

items are rarely packaged to convey the story of their creation or the human lives impacted by their production. Instead the packaging reinforces our consumer amnesia by appealing only to our desires. Marketing actively discourages shoppers from contemplating where items come from, nor do we want to. We simply want to buy them, use them, enjoy them, and discard them with no larger responsibility. location 746

a brand is a manufactured idea that infiltrates the imagination. location 898

Colin Bates, a marketing expert, says “a brand is a collection of perceptions in the mind of the consumer.” location 898

Nothing in the commercials explicitly communicates PC users are dullards or klutzes, but that is the power of branding. It triggers the imaginative ability of the mind to make these associations automatically. Branding has allowed Apple to become a seller of identity and not merely computers. location 944

Should it scare me that my five-year-old has memorized more corporate brands than prayers, Bible verses, or even names of relatives? location 980

Ford and Pizza Hut spend millions of dollars marketing in preschools?18 Three- and four-year-olds cannot order a pizza or buy a car, but by planting a branded seed in the kids’ imaginations and associating it with positive feelings, these corporations hope to reap the fruit when these children begin to form their identities as teenagers. This sort of brand marketing has been so effective that the average ten-year-old has already memorized between 300 and 400 brands. location 987

After studying recent Social Security records he’s reported an increase in the number of children named after popular brands. location 994
Note: of ccourse thisshould be reflected on in the light that conventional names are often saints ...

Brands are the little gods of modern life, each ruling a different need, activity, mood, or situation. Yet you’re in control. If your latest god falls from Olympus, you can switch to another one. location 1014

appears that God’s people are constructing and expressing their identity through the consumption of Christ-branded products. As Mark Riddle observes, “Conversion in the U.S. seems to mean we’ve exchanged some of our shopping at Wal-Mart, Blockbuster, and Borders for the Christian Bookstore down the street. location 1019

becoming synonymous with “unclean” or “heathen.” Because the absence of a foreskin carried so much meaning in the ancient world, in a real way it was the prototype religious brand — location 1071

When the church gets into the business of staging experiences, that quickly becomes idolatry. MS: I’m stunned. So you don’t encourage churches to use your elements of marketable experiences to create attractive experiences for their attenders? Gilmore: No. The organized church should never try to stage a God experience. location 1383

We’ve come to regard our church buildings, with their multimedia theatrical equipment, as mountaintops where God’s glory resides and may be encountered by mere mot-als. location 1503

Others may simply be carried along by the music, crowd, and energy of the room. Whether a result of God or group, what is beyond question is that many people depart feeling spiritually rejuvenated and capable of taking on life for another six days. The problem with these external experiences, as Moses discovered, is that the transformation doesn’t last. In a few days time, or maybe as early as Sunday lunch, the glory begins to fade. The mountaintop experience with God — the event you were certain would change your life forever — turns out to be another fleeting spiritual high. And to hide the lack of genuine transformation, we mask the inglorious truth of our lives behind a veil, a façade of Christian piety, until we can ascend the mountain again and be recharged. location 1510

Far more energy is poured into the Sunday morning experience than actually equipping people to internally experience God throughout their “common business.” location 1596

from a smiling Quaker man, or syrup from Aunt Jemima? Through branding corporations came to possess names, faces, and even personalities. They became people in the public’s imagination just as they had gained personhood in the courts. Advertising has formed us to give our affection not only to the products we consume, but also to the personified corporations that supply them. location 1757

Through branding a church differentiates itself from all the others offering the same basic product — God. After all, in a competitive religious market the goal is not simply for believers to be dedicated to God, but to the particular institution who supplies him. location 1776

people became, the more dissatisfied they were with the church. In fact, those recognized to be the most Christ-centered were the least enthusiastic about engaging church programs. Rather than a utilitarian ocean liner transporting them closer to God, the church was seen as a lumbering cruise ship full of entertaining distractions, and the more mature Christians were eager to get off. location 1989

In less than a century, Christians have gone from opposing over-consumption at Christmas to demanding it be done in Christ’s name alone. location 2069

Ads became the prophets of consumerism — turning the imaginations of the people toward the goods they didn’t know they wanted. location 2096

a consumer culture designed to keep adults thinking, and buying, like children. Maturity and rationality are the enemies of our desire-based economy. As Benjamin Barber says, “For consumer capitalism to prevail you must make kids consumers and make consumers kids.” location 2144

The ideal consumer remains a child from the womb to the tomb. location 2150

The dilemma posed by consumerism is not the endless manufacturing of desires, but the temptation to settle for desires far below what we were created for. The forces of marketing have captured our imaginations and convinced us to desire mud pies and sneer at the possibility that greater pleasures even exist. We have been reprogrammed to desire immediate satisfaction rather than infinite satisfaction. location 2223

The redemptive affect of sorrow, its power to redirect our desires from the immediate to the infinite, was the subject of an English sermon van Gogh delivered in 1876: Sorrow is better than joy . . . for by the sadness of the countenance, the heart is made better. Our nature is sorrowful, but for those who have learnt and are learning to look at Jesus Christ, there is always reason to rejoice. It is a good word, that of St. Paul: as being sorrowful yet always rejoicing. For those who believe in Jesus Christ, there is no death or sorrow that is not mixed with hope — no despair — there is only a constant being born again, a constantly going from darkness into light. location 2272

Perhaps the complicated interplay of sorrow and joy he recognized in Gethsemane eluded even his artistic brilliance. In 1889, his friends Gauguin and Bernard sent him photographs of their paintings of Christ in the Garden ofOlives. Vincent said the paintings “got on my nerves” perhaps for the same reason he abandoned his own attempt. They could depict Jesus’ suffering, but not the inner joy that led him to accept the Father’s will. Rather than painting Jesus in Gethsemane, Vincent used the olive trees themselves to illustrate the truth of the story. He believed “that one can try to give an impression of anguish without aiming straight at the historic Garden of Gethsemane.”26 Instead, he saw in the contorted trees a representation of Christ’s pain. By giving the olive trees a vaguely human form van Gogh hoped to “make people think” more than if he had depicted Jesus explicitly. In this way the trees could be the symbol of Jesus’ pain as well as his own. location 2292

This kind of pain comes in two varieties — there is suffering we don’t choose, which is often referred to in the New Testament as a “trial,” and there is suffering we do choose, which we call a “discipline.” location 2325

The table of Christ confronts and abolishes our consumer tendencies. It mocks our desire for comfortable community, and it abolishes the principle of homogeneity because we come to the table of Christ as guests and not the host. We have no control or authority over who is invited. Instead we are asked to surrender control and simply take our seat with the other wounded souls redeemed by the broken body and shed blood of Jesus. location 2655

In Starry Night the golden light of the heavens, his color for divine love, is not seen in the church building. Instead, he reserves this sacred hue for the houses of his imaginary village. location 2736

“The structure of the suburb tends to confine people to their houses and cars; it discourages strolling, walking, mingling with neighbors. The suburb is the last word in privatization, perhaps even its lethal consummation, and it spells the end of authentic civic life.” location 2757

Note: this may relate to Actor Network Theory but in any case tells how physical non human stuff affects culture and organisation of humans

In many ways the suburb is the topological manifestation of consumerism, the ethos of commodification lived out in architectural form. Suburban living means dividing life into clearly discernable parts. Professional, recreational, industrial, and residential activities each have their zone. These zones are connected by roads where we drive alone in our cars, minivans, or SUVs. Socioeconomic zones are separated by neighborhoods and school districts. Family zones are demarcated by fences. And within the home, family members are zoned into private bedrooms — each with a television, Internet connection, and telephone. The suburb, like the consumer worldview from which it came, forms us to live fragmented and isolated lives of private consumption. location 2761

most homes are set as far back from public spaces, the street and sidewalk, as possible. The rooms facing the street tend to be the spaces we use least — the formal living room or dining room. The spaces where real life happens, the kitchen and family room, are hidden in the back. Outdoor recreation is also confined to the back of the house, usually behind a fence. Everything about suburban home design communicates to the passerby, “Leave me alone!” location 2774

With no real sense of self apart from our possessions and preferences, every telephone ring, knock at the door, or alert from our inbox is not welcomed as a human-to-human connection, but merely an attempt to invade our personal zone to take some commodified part of “me” away. We instinctually assume that every stranger we meet has a hidden agenda. In our society it has become altogether implausible for anyone to be genuinely interested in us. location 2792

we aren’t actually interacting with real people online but “phantoms.” The medium allows us to abandon real identities to become whoever we want, or whoever we think people want us to. location 2798

Note: this may relate to the idea that in corporisations we are roles rather tha whole people. Do we transfer that or is something else going on? cf also I and Thou and the Secular City

Van Gogh’s painting from 1888 is clearly modeled from Millet’s work, but the sower neither fills the canvas nor dominates the composition. Instead, Vincent’s painting is dominated by a radiant citron-yellow sun that saturates the sky with light. We know from his letters to his friends that van Gogh used yellow light and the sun to represent God. It is Christ who dominates his Sower painting, rather than the humble servant in the field. location 3229

Van Gogh’s painting reminds us that we have a role to play, but we are minor actors in a much larger cosmic drama. Our work certainly matters, but probably not as much as we’d like to think — because ultimately the outcome of our labor is not in our hands. We work, and the world is changed, but exactly how this spiritual impact occurs remains a mystery. location 3237

Rather than abandoning the outcomes to God, we’ve been formed to judge a ministry’s legitimacy, and our own, based on measurable outcomes. The most common are referred to as the ABCs of ministry: attendance, buildings, and cash. If these three factors are increasing, we assume that our ministry is effective, our church is legitimate, and our community is blessed. But what if Jesus, Paul, and Vincent are right? What if the outcome of our labor is beyond our control? What if we are not the primary agents behind bountiful growth or its absence? What if we stopped judging ourselves and others based on outcomes which rightfully belong to God, and rediscovered the humility of the sower — the one who rises day and night, casts the seed upon the ground, and marvels as it grows? location 3257

The shock-and-awe approach to mission is extremely appealing to people shaped by consumerism. location 3278

we ask, How does Coca-Cola impact the world? How does Disney impact the world? How does Starbucks impact the world? And we forget to ask the only question that really matters: How does Jesus impact the world? location 3286

We have incorrectly made the scale of our methods conform to the scale of our mission. location 3288

God’s plan to redeem creation (big) is achieved through his incarnation as an impoverished baby (small). Jesus feeds thousands on a hillside (big) with just a few fish and loaves (small). Christ seeks to make disciples of all nations (big) but he starts with a handful of fishermen (small). Even Goliath (big) is defeated by David with a few stones (small). location 3302

Phil Vischer came to embrace the counterintuitive wisdom of God after losing his Daisy Cutter dream. He now advises other followers of Christ to embrace a mustard seed approach to changing the world: location 3313

The premise of this book has been that the Christian imagination must be free to sing a new song before the world can hear our music. This requires a process of deconstruction and reconstruction: Deconstructing our commodified view of God, and reconstructing a sense of wonder through silence. Deconstructing our branded identities, and reconstructing identities rooted in faith through love. Deconstructing our attempts at transformation through external events, and reconstructing internal transformation through prayer. Deconstructing our devotion to institutions as God’s vessels, and reconstructing relationships with our brothers and sisters in Christ. Deconstructing our unceasing pursuit of pleasure, and reconstructing the redemptive power of suffering through fasting. Deconstructing our contentment with segregation, and reconstructing the unity of all people through the cross. Deconstructing the individualism pushed by consumerism, and reconstructing our love for strangers through hospitality. All of this razing and building begins in our own imaginations. location 3330

the recommendations in this book have been primarily personal disciplines to awaken and transform, rather than calls for changes within the church. Silence, prayer, fasting, love, hospitality, and friendship — these are what I need to loosen consumerism’s hold on me. And it is only when minds are illuminated, imaginations set free, and wounds healed, one by one, that real transformation can come to the church. location 3390


The Divine Commodity: Discovering a Faith Beyond Consumer Christianity: Amazon.co.uk: Zondervan: Books