new book - must read

many of my best friends are not into church. they are honest with me that Jesus seems more like a product christians attempt to sell, than a person with which they can have a relationship. this troubles me greatly about the current climate i see called "christian culture"--a subculture that calls it's products "christian" as if the word were an adjective defining it's product as safe or good. the problem is that many such products are neither safe nor good--in fact they are often second rate caricatures of true human spiritual experience. a new book called "Rapture Ready! Adventures in the Parallel Universe of Christian Pop Culture" is a thoughtful--and sometimes painfully honest--look at the "christian" world through the eyes of an extremely honest and compassionate humanist Jewish author, Daniel Radosh. i highly recommend reading it. here's a couple of snippets...

 “And even if some of the people who come forward have been genuinely moved to confess their sins for the first time, are they really Christians now? It’s one thing to get caught up with the excitement of a wrestling match or rock show or even a traditional sermon, but what happens the next day or the next week? Do they read the Bible, go to church, talk to a pastor? Maybe. But maybe not. The fetishization of the altar call as a single moment of victory seems to obscure the need for the hard work that is must take to bring somebody to a genuinely meaningful faith.”

...“the best aspects of Christian culture—the unabashed celebration of the transcendent, the challenge to crass materialism, the commitment to personal responsibility—helped me more clearly to see what is too often lacking in secular entertainment and media. Jesus’s radical message of brotherhood, selflessness, and dignity may be just the antidote to our contemporary ethos of shamelessness and overindulgence.”