“It is a truism of the business world that Coke and Pepsi don’t make soda pop, they make advertising. Nike may pay Indonesian laborers absurdly low wages, but their most important concern is convincing us that it is meaningful, daring, and fulfilling to spend over one hundred dollars for a pair of sneakers. If you …
Alternating Alternative
“Thus with the ‘alternative’ face lift, ‘rebellion’ continues to perform its traditional function of justifying the economy’s ever-accelerating cycles of obsolescence with admirable efficiency . . . Ever since the 1960s hip has been the native tongue of advertising, ‘antiestablishment’ the vocabulary by which we are taught to cast off our old possessions and buy …
Being Evangelical For the Time Being
Time for our daily dose of squirting water down the hole into the postmodern rabbit warren, as part of my on-going project of trying to prevent these guys from emerging into the garden of orthodoxy in order to nibble on the carrots of truth. In his next chapter, Brian McLaren discusses why he is still …
Social Totemization
“Brands are also a handy device for papering over nasty ambiguities like how things are made and what product is ‘right’ for a person’s socioeconomic standing and lifestyle. This strategy has been taken to ridiculous extremes, as in the case of sunglasses, hiking shoes, water, beer, and countless other cases where the most everyday products …
The Central Culprit Here
When the enemy is at the gates besieging your city, swinging the battering ram, there are many things to dislike about what they are doing. But we would not usually think to describe the problem of the repeated thuds as “boring” and “repetitive.” It is the same way with this postmodern foolishness, but in some …
Postmod or Postmill?
In this chapter of the McLaren saga, I intend to simply address one thing, and so it may not take as long as the reviews of the other chapters. Or maybe it will. If somebody puts the nickel in, maybe I will just go off. This chapter is on why McLaren is “missional.” And of …
What Television Sees
“They were both aspects of the advertised life, an emerging mode of being in which advertising not only occupies every last negotiable public terrain, but in which it penetrates the cognitive process, invading consciousness to such a point that one expects and looks for advertising, learns to lead life as an ad, to think like …
Making Your Back Teeth Cold
In his fourth chapter, McLaren asks what salvation means exactly. He then goes on to explain that salvation means God coming in judgment to deliver us from the evil oppression of others, God confronting us with our own sinfulness and forgiving us, and God teaching us. And McLaren affirms that God does all of this …
McLaren the Ungenerous
In this next chapter of McLaren’s he makes a number of good points which, taken in isolation, would simply be good. But in the context he places them in, the direction is quite dangerous. It is kind of like admiring the discipline and marksmanship of a pirate crew. “Yes, quite. That was well done. But …
The Old “Me and C.S. Lewis” Ploy
In Chapter 2 (Chapter 3, but who’s counting?) Brian McLaren starts to say some good things about the manifestation of God in Christ. Not surprisingly, he doesn’t get very far. Compared to the superlative language of less generous orthodoxy, his praise sounds comparatively anemic — “I believe God was in Jesus in an unprecedented way” …