This week I’m thrilled to share with you Christopher West’s newest book, Fill These Hearts: God, Sex, and the Universal Longing (Image, hardcover, 244 pages.)
This book follows At the Heart of the Gospel, Christopher’s last book, which featured a chapter on “The Transformation of Desire.” His aim was to show how Pope John Paul II’s magnificent “theology of the body” is not just an intellectual project. It is deeply practical since it provides a “new ethos of seeing.” Discovering the meaning of about our bodies and sexuality helps us glimpse the object they ultimately point to. We see that our deepest yearnings for pleasure, intimacy, connection, and beauty are signposts showing the way to God.
In Fill These Hearts, Christopher picks up the song but sings in a new language. The book still points to God as the fulfillment of our deepest desires. Yet it explores this fact through art, poetry, music, movies, and popular culture far more than philosophy and theology. It’s a new approach —a new expression—and is just what the New Evangelization calls for. The book should strongly appeal even to atheists and secularists. Here’s the publisher’s description:
Fill These Hearts is a book about desire. Not trivial wants or superficial cravings, but the most vital powers of body and soul, sexuality, and spirituality, that haunt us and compel us on our search for something.
Weaving life-altering lessons together from classical and contemporary art, pop music, movies, and the Christian mystical tradition, popular theologian Christopher West explores the ancient but largely forgotten idea that the restless, erotic yearnings we feel in both our bodies and our spirits reveal the cry of our hearts for God.Along the way, West blows the lid off the idea of Christianity as a repressive, anti-sex religion by demonstrating that Christ came to stretch and inflame our desire for love and union to the point of infinity.
Though the book doesn’t release for a few days, Christopher invited me to share its official video trailer, produced by the talented folks at Spirit Juice Studios. It hasn’t been posted anywhere else online so you’re the first to check this out:
Christopher has also generously donated SIX of his books for my weekly giveaway—three copies of Fill These Hearts and three copies of At the Heart of the Gospel. Six winners will be randomly drawn so be sure to enter below.
I’m using Rafflecopter to help with the giveaway, which is cool because it gives you multiple entries for commenting, posting on Facebook, sharing on Twitter, etc. Click below to enter:
(If you’re reading this through email or RSS and don’t see the giveaway widget, click here.)
UPDATE:
The drawing is now closed. Congratulations to the winners who are listed above! Check your e-mail for instructions on receiving the items. If you don’t see an e-mail from me, check your spam box—apparently e-mails with “giveaway” in the title are prone to end up there.
In the future I’ll be giving away more books and resources, sometimes multiple items per giveaway! So subscribe via feed reader or email to ensure you never miss your chance to win.