Book Review – The Trouble with Paris, Mark Sayers, 2008
I believe Mark Sayers’ book, The Trouble with Paris, should be compulsory reading for all Christians living in our affluent western culture. Taken from a comment from a friend of Mark’s who talked about moving to Paris to freshen up her life, and from another idea that Mark has formulated called ‘How Paris Hilton made me a better Christian’, this book is a landmark work in exposing the unreality of our consumer-driven culture.
Quite simply, the Church needs more people like Mark Sayers. In a Christian culture which puts more emphasis on what Jesus can do for me than seeking to find out how I can serve Jesus, Mark Sayers is a breath of fresh air. But the freshness is not because his message is anything new. Rather, it is because it is biblical. This book exposes the fallacy that our hyper real culture can provide the happiness we seek. It then proceeds to show why the real message of dying to self, and that life does not consist in the abundance of our possessions, that Jesus spoke about, is what really satisfies.
In my life I have found that when people rightly protest about what is wrong with the world, they are often found wanting in terms of having a credible solution to the problem. Mark does not succumb to this weakness. This book is both a warning of the dangers of our addiction to what society tells us is important, and a real solution to how we can escape its deadly clutches. As John Ortberg states on the cover, “Mark has something fresh to say about what can kill your soul and who can salvage it”.
This book is particularly relevant to these times of economic burden, when we are told that they way out of our financial hole is to spend even more. Its message is also particularly pertinent as I write, as we have just had the visit of Paris Hilton herself to Melbourne to show off her, well, herself, to drooling shoppers. The title of this book suggests that Paris Hilton is symbolic of a culture that would rather idolise someone whose raison d’etre seems to be to shop, than weep as Jesus would over Israelis and Palestinians hurling missiles at each other on the other side of the planet.
Perhaps the most pertinent issue to come out of this book for Christians is the fact that, for quite some time now, much of the church has fallen prey to the clutches of hyper consumerism. This is no more evident than in those churches which build bigger and bigger worship centres, and which try to bribe young people with gifts of extraordinary monetary value to get them in the doors. If that is what it takes for the gospel of Jesus to have an impact, we have surely lost our way indeed.
Sayers intertwines his book with stories of people who have succumbed to the promises of life that hyper reality offers and how unhappy they now are, and reminds us at the end that there is a better path to follow, and that the kingdom that Jesus is ushering in is far more inviting prospect to attach our lives to.
The Trouble with Paris brilliantly exposes the lie that we are bombarded with thousands of times a day, that is, that life can be better than the reality we are living in – ‘even better than the real thing’ as U2 proclaimed in the early 1990s. The truth of course is that as we chase the dream of happiness that our consumer-driven culture offers us, we will forever remain unhappy. Hyper reality promises a life than can never deliver, but this book by Mark Sayers shows us that what Jesus offers, and delivers, is the promise of the life that is truly life. Strongly recommended.
by Nils von Kalm
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