Have you ever heard of Jack Kerouac and his book, On the Road
Maybe I’ve been living in a hole, or maybe I am too young, but until I read Mark Sayers’ new book, The Road Trip that Changed the World
Mark Sayers posits the unlikely theory (his words, not mine) that Jack Kerouac’s book changed American culture, the church, and the way we all live and view life. Calling this an “unlikely theory” is an understatement.
Ultimately, I agree with what Mark Sayers has written. He wants to argue that during the past fifty years, American culture and church culture has radically changed. I couldn’t agree more.
But to blame Jack Kerouac and his books for this change is to give Kerouac way too much credit.
Mark Sayers would have been better off using Kerouac as an example of the changes that were taking place in culture than to give Kerouac the credit for being the genesis and originator of these changes. In other words, it is much more probable that culture was changing — and with it the church — and one person who exemplified these cultural shifts was Jack Kerouac. He lived out the changes that were occurring, but was not himself the catalyst and creator of these changes. Taking this approach, would have made Mark’s book much stronger.
But what about the changes themselves? I think Mark does a pretty good job describing and analyzing many of the changes that have occurred. To name just a few, Mark writes about how nothing is sacred (p. 107), how feelings have become more important than faith (p. 114), and how society worship idols of self-satisfaction and consumerism (p. 203).
For the most part, I think Mark has correctly analyzed some of the dangers and pitfalls of our contemporary culture. He has a good read on the pulse of our society. I just wish he had left Kerouac out of it. My favorite chapters in the book were the few where Kerouac was barely mentioned (if at all). Chapters 17, 18, and 19 were three of the best chapters in the book, and these chapters were focused more on gleaning insights from the Scriptural accounts of Adam and Abraham. I found Mark’s insights into these biblical texts to be insightful and helpful. I wish he had done more of this type of writing.
Having said all this, I recognize that maybe my difficulty with the book was that I don’t know who Kerouac was. If, however, you have read Kerouac and was influenced by his books, then this might be a great book for you.
And the good news is that the publisher sent along an additional copy of the book for me to give away on my blog. If you want to be entered in the drawing for this book, leave a comment below about whether or not you have heard of Jack Kerouac, and where you think most cultural changes come from. For an additional entry, Tweet this post with my Twitter handle @jeremyers1 in the Tweet.
Michael Hyatt, one of the top bloggers in the world and Chairman of Thomas Nelson Publishers, has just released an amazing new book for anyone with something to say or sell. It’s called 
It doesn’t happen often, but sometimes universes collide.
Frank: In the book, you make several key statements about God’s passion to help the poor. You also make a few statements about how the “powers that be” often neglect the poor. In my country right now (USA) there is a huge debate over this issue among Christians. One aspect of the debate revolves around the question,“Who are the poor exactly?” Some Christians argue that there is a distinction between the poor who are trying to find work and/or who are working (but cannot make ends meet) versus the indigent who refuse to work and expect others to support them.
N.T. Wright: Of course, whenever people discover that other folk are going out of their way to give handouts, some will get lazy and simply try to trade off this goodwill. It’s a telling point, actually, that this was already a danger in the very early church – because you only get that problem arising if the church is being generous. The line between ‘deserving poor’ and ‘undeserving poor’ is very, very hard to draw, and one of the things about poverty, whether one has work or not (some jobs pay so little that the people who do them are still well within the poverty trap), is that it is depressing, and actually saps the energy and nerve and vitality in ways that people like me, who have never been out of work and never been truly poor, can only appreciate by being with and ministering to people who are genuinely and chronically poor.
