Like those four heroes of the Bible, would you dare to join me in
learning more of the art of our time and see what God can do through us?
This is the question the author
of All You Want to Know About the Bible in Pop Culture invites
his reader to ponder. Kevin Harvey structures his book in eight chapters, each
dealing with a major theme in pop culture. Starting from Superman’s (which of
course stands for Savior, actually!), going through movies and TV series (oh,
how I loved the Lost chapter!), the
music that is so popular nowadays, and even the things we say that have been
used in the Bible, Harvey shows his readers that there is something worth
paying attention to in pop culture.
The message of the book is this:
pop culture offers just a glimpse, an idea of what people really need. Pop culture
can only go that far in offering people what they lack – God. The other half is
met by the Bible, the true, living Word of God. By looking at all the pop
culture influences of these times in people’s lives, and implicitly in the believer's life, the author argues that the need for love and for salvation are
deeply rooted in every human being, but we might be looking for the source of
joyful life in all the bad places. As he put it: Pop culture is oftentimes quite successful at providing for us the half
that recognizes our brokenness. The half that admits our need for love, for
purpose. The half that tells us we need redemption, someone or something to
save us.
I won’t lie – I have been very
skeptical about this book. At times I felt the author to be too liberal in his
thinking, too impertinently bold in his jokes. Despite all these, I could see
his point, and I sure appreciated the research he’s been doing in proving this
point. I absolutely loved the puns he made, the „inside jokes”, so to say
regarding pop culture, and the references to the Biblical people. At times,
yes, I felt lost because I know not of all these pop culture references, but
all in all, I got the idea and the message. It’s a book I’ve enjoyed reading
and I recommend it to anyone who wants to know what could God and pop culture ever
have in common in this era.
Throughout the book the author
kept coming back to the same idea – God loves people and He is their biggest
fan. One of my favourite passages in the book is this one, and sums up
perfectly the desires of our hearts – to be loved: ...everyone is uniquely created by a God who cares recklessly and without
abandon for them. He would be the first to follow them on Twitter, as well as
their first friend on Facebook, and he would even keep checking back on their
long-abandoned MySpace pages to see if they had finally been updated. God cares
about every intricate detail of our lives, and he has gone out of his way to
let us know that.
For those interested in keeping
in touch with the author, he can be found on twitter @GodFamilyNoles. The book’s
page is www.bibleinpopculture.com.
I received this copy of the book
from Thomas Nelson via BookLookBloggers in exchange for an honest review. All
thoughts expressed here are my own.
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