Back in May I spoke at a conference in Portland, Oregon. Among other things I did a seminar based on The Divine Commodity. After returning home someone directed me to a blog post by Pete Tegeler. Pete had attended the conference in Portland and decided to create a “fake” interview with me on his blog based on what I had presented.

It’s always scary to have a stranger putting words into your mouth, but after reading Pete’s fictional interview I was actually impressed. He not only captured my thoughts accurately, he even did a great job rendering me in MS Paint. Here’s an excerpt of my interview with Pete Tegeler about Consumer Christianity.

From Pete Teleger’s blog:

Like I said in my last post, Christian commodification has been on my radar.  I blogged about “The Divine Commodity”, a book by Skye Jethani.  I wrote how I’ve been seeing this book show up, but that was like saying I think it’s about to rain when I hurricane is moving in.

After I wrote that last post I went to the PNW C&MA District Conference where Skye was the main speaker.  This startled me.  Sense then I have seen Skye’s book being reviewed all over the place.  At the conference  I sat in on a session he taught, amazed that I had just blogged about him (embarrassed at the thought of him finding out).  At one point he asked if anyone of us in the room knew where our shirts were made.  At this point, I may have gotten a bit to excited as my hand shot up like a kid in elementary school.  I was practically chanting “I DO! I DO! PICK ME!”  Not that I wanted to negate his point about us as citizens of the US being disconnected from what we consume, I think I was just feeling proud that my tee shirt is a sweat shop free AmericaApparel shirt that tag reads “Made in the USA”.  I felt silly after.

But Skye said some pretty cool stuff and now I really want to read the book.  Another thing that is cool about Skye is that he is incredibly fun to draw.

Here he is for real:

Here he is in MS Paint:

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The reason I wanted to render Skye here is that I want to interview Skye.  We’ll see how it goes.

Pete: Hey Skye

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Skye: Hi

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Pete:  Skye, I must confess to you that I am a terrible interviewer.

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Skye:  It’s ok.  This one is fake.  It will be great because you can control what we both say.

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Pete:  Right on.  I like that.  I promise I won’t make you swear or something.  Let’s do this!

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Skye: !!

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Pete: You talked at the conference abut how Jesus has a dream so big we can’t get our minds around it and what we are doing instead.  Could you get into that?

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Skye: Yeah.  The founder of the church, Jesus, left us with a dream for how to live – how to be the church – a dream that is so big that we can’t wrap our minds around it, so we just create our own model, not really on purpose, but we do and we base it on whatever our culture is doing, because that is all we know, it is what we are familiar with.  It just so happens that the current model is the institution, it is consumerism.  This can create some problems.  Remember definition of consumerism that I had for you?  Do you have that?

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Pete:  Um, yes.  Right here, conveniently.

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Skye: Could you post that too?

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Pete:  I’m on it.  Here:

Consumerism: A worldview that places the consumer at the center of the cosmos, and affirms that the goal of life is to satisfy one’s unmet desires, and avoid discomfort, by consuming goods, experiences, and other people.

But I have a question: this is … bad?

Read the rest of Pete’s fake interview with me on his blog.