Sam Van Eman’s “On Earth as It Is in Advertising”

I am reading Sam Van Eman’s On Earth as It Is in Advertising: Moving from Commercial Hype to Gospel Hope. And I am thinking that I’m holding an incendiary, revolutionary document in my hands.

I am thinking that this book anticipates the Occupy Protest by a good six years (the book was first published in 2005), but then goes the protest one better. It keeps focused on the key issues involved and the practical ways to effect change in the culture and society.

I am thinking that author Sam Van Eman is tossing a live hand grenade right into the middle of Christian complacency.

And I am thinking these things became Van Eman is taking on what is still the most significant issue affecting American Christianity – how consumer culture has invaded and taken over the church, resulting in our inability to tell the difference between what he calls the “SimGospel” and the Gospel of the church.

The “SimGospel,” he says, is “a simulated version of the biblical narrative. It is goodness, borrowed. Like the game SimCity, a computer program that allows the player to create and govern a simulated city, the SimGospel is an imitated means to self-establishment. We follow directly on the autonomous heels of our Eden ancestors by overruling God’s intended order and creating our own way of life. We become little gods…”

And the SimGospel plays itself out in all of the little things that are so much background noise in our culture and society. TV commercials. Paying for the opportunity to wear a brand. Never being quite satisfied with what we have. Defining “success” in the church using the same yardsticks that are used in business. And that’s just the beginning.

This could have turned into a diatribe or a major rant, but Van Eman directs it another way – toward helping us understand how to reject the siren song of the SimGospel for the reality of the Gospel. And that reality involves understanding what it means to bear God’s image, and to bear the needs of ourselves and others.

This is where the hand grenade gets set loose. Like in where most of us spend a goodly portion of our adult lives – work.

“What if,” Van Eman asks, “we could see work in a new way – as something for others instead of as a means to our own ends? What if we were able to see work from a biblical viewpoint? What if work were considered a gift to others, and a gift to God in the form of contributing to the building of his kingdom?” Work is a noble task, he says, and “we are called to it for the purpose of serving the Creator and the created order.”

Imagine if we Christians “occupied” our work with the belief that what we did and how we did was just as important as any sermon, and worship service, any choir concert, any revival and any mission service. Imagine if we thought of ourselves as bearing God’s image in the workplace.

That’s the live hand grenade.

On Earth as It Is in Advertising is a profound, provocative book. It’s an ideal book to read between Black Friday and the commercial hype now known as Christmas.

I read it, and I feel the need for repentance.

Related:

Sam Van Eman blogs at New Breed of Advertisers.

The Faux Pas That's Now a Family Legend

In the time B.K. (before kids), my wife and I lived and worked in Houston. I was at Shell Oil, and she worked at the Houston Chronicle in the department that wrote and produced the travel sections and special editorial and advertising sections.

Her department had five or six people, including her boss. One of her co-workers, whom we’ll call Mollie to protect the identity of the innocent, had gone to college with us at LSU. And Mollie said she would be late one morning, because she had to first take her beloved but old and ailing dog to the vet to have him put to sleep.

My wife knew the people she worked with had a tendency to the cruel and cretinous. She could imagine what jokes they were going to come up with. And so that morning, before Mollie arrived, she put the fear into them. Don’t you dare make light of this, she warned. Don’t you dare make a joke about it. This is really upsetting, she loves this dog, so back off and give her some silence. Even back then, she was known for “the look” – which I had been the squirming target of many times, and our sons would be even more – the look from Mom that says don’t even think about it.

Her co-workers got the look. They promised to behave.

Later that day, my wife and Mollie would be going to get their pictures taken for passports, needed to do many of the travel stories they were being assigned. So they both planned to be a little more dressed up than usual (this was back in the days when people dressed like they were going to work in an office, because they were).

The department was working, when in walked a somber Mollie, quiet after bringing her dog to the vet and dressed for her photograph.

My wife, my poor wife who wanted to be encouraging and sympathetic, who had warned the cretins within an inch of their lives, decided to say something nice about Millie’s clothes.

“Mollie! You look dressed to kill!”

The words were out before my wife realized what she had said. There was a moment of silence. No one said a word; everyone focused on the typewriters in front of them. My wife thought she might have dodged the supreme embarrassment bullet, that everyone had missed the gigantic faux pas she had just committed – the very one she had warned the others against.

And then she saw shoulders shaking, as people tried to stifle themselves. She saw people shaking. And then it couldn’t be contained, as a huge wave of laughter erupted.

When she told me later what had happened, I tried to be sympathetic. But I was laughing too hard.

I got the look.

Two of my High Calling colleagues, Sam Van Eman at New Breed of Advertisers and Deidra Riggs at Jumping Tandem, are hosting a feature on laughter, Like Therapy Only Cheaper. To see the stories told by others, please visit Jumping Tandem for the links.

The 18th Day of Community: Sam Van Eman

I can’t recall when exactly I started following Sam Van Eman’s blog New Breed of Advertisers, but judging by where it falls on my RSS feed, it’s been at least several years.

Sam works for CCOJubliee, a campus ministry involved in colleges and universities all over the United States that seeks to develop young men and women to live out their faith in all areas of life. He is also the author of On Earth as It Is in Advertising: Moving from Commercial Hype to Gospel Hope, in which he discussed the negative messages of advertising and contrasted them with the positive messages of the gospel.

He calls himself both a “critic and a fan of advertising,” and he places advertising squarely in the midst of the concept of being a neighbor, as he describes on his blog: “You're good at what you do. You study and listen and read - honing your trade - only to understandably and occasionally forget that behind the progress toward success are real neighbors consuming your work. So you must ask - and keep asking - not the myopic, ‘How can I get customers to fall in love with my product?" but a more generous, "How can I love by getting this product to my customers?’"

It’s that belief, and how he writes about it, that first pulled me into New Breed of Advertisers, and kept me there. It doesn’t matter whether the subject is an ad about soup or Volkswagen or the NCAA, he takes the same insightful look, grounded in faith, and then looks at what the ad is really communicating.

Sam is also a content editor for The High Calling Blogs, focusing on the area of culture.

So check out New Breed of Advertisers. For someone like me, with a background in corporate communications, his blog and his writing in general provide the background story of familiar territory.


(In December, a number of us participating in the “Twelve Days of Community” - see the button at the top right - sponsored by The High Calling Blogs. The purpose was to highlight the blog or web site of someone other than ourselves during the season of Advent and Christmas. I liked the idea so much that I’m going to continue to do that -- highlight a blog or web site of a person whose thoughts and writing have had an impact on me and others.)