In the beginning was the Word..
All things came
into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.
What has come
into being through him is life, and the life is the light of all people.
The light shines
in the darkness, and the darkness does not overcome it.
from John 1.1-4
Alison Morgan
We
live in a visual world, a world not of word but of image, a world in which even
in interpersonal communication only 7% of the information we take in comes
through words. It’s a world in which picture is paramount - it’s been said we
are all ‘screenagers’ now. And yet as Christians we have inherited what’s been
called a spirituality of print, a spirituality whose primary source is an
ancient document containing, in English, some 788,280 written words.1
Is it any use, in a world where image rules?
The power of
image
The
first country to realise the power of the broadcast image was Nazi Germany, which
developed the first state television. The most recent is the Himalayan kingdom
of Bhutan which, since becoming the last nation on earth to turn it on in 1999,
has seen its traditional culture and spirituality washed away by a wave of
crime, consumerism and family breakdown. And yet without television the Berlin
wall would still be in place, and the hunger, poverty and suffering of the two
thirds world would probably not be very high on the western agenda. We see the
same pattern at the microlevel. Advertising, now the fastest growing form of
communication in the world, landscapes the mind, emotions and aspirations of
millions of people, and it does it, for good or ill, by harnessing the power of
image. We live in a world where people believe things, want things, and care
about things because they see them.
So,
where does that leave us as Christians? Is our dusty printed Bible any good to
us? It seems a funny kind of map to take with us on a journey through the
fast-moving, multi-visual world we now live in.
The frame and the picture
Let me invite you to
think visually for a moment. Think of your life as a painting. You have a broad
canvas, on which all the elements of your daily existence are sketched against
the backcloth of the world you inhabit. Your workplace is there, the
supermarket, the internet and the M25, Starbucks, Microsoft and Channel Five.
And in there too are you, with your family and your friends, your faith and your
church. Round this painting is a frame. It’s a nice frame, a strong wooden one,
tinged a pleasant shade of primrose. The only problem with it is, it doesn’t
fit the picture very well, because the picture keeps wriggling. Little ripples
of tension run across the canvas, the frame shifts, and minute cracks appear.
So what do you do? Well,
you live in a world that has painted this picture for you – a world that has
landscaped not just your life but also your mind. It’s given you a frame to put
round the picture, a set of assumptions about how things should be, about
what’s important. The trouble is, the picture keeps changing, and the frame
doesn’t really fit. You struggle to adjust it, hoping no one will notice; but
somehow it doesn’t quite seem to work.
Every culture has a
worldview, which fits like a frame round the picture of our lives. Worldviews
don’t last all that long; they always contain flaws which sooner or later get
them chucked out - and the reason everything seems so transitory at the moment is
that we are in the process of inventing a new worldview. How then do we stand
back from the picture and evaluate our worldview, examine this frame which looks
good but rubs and pinches in all sorts of painful ways? We turn to the Bible,
our dusty collection of printed words.
The Bible is an
astonishing document. It contains history, poetry, story, riddle, proverb,
myth, law, prophecy and a rollicking collection of biographies. And it provides
a framework of its own – a framework which consists of God himself, creator and
redeemer of this muddled world, the one who first spoke it into being. What are
the tensions in the human condition? What’s God’s perspective on what
we’re doing? It’s in this book. And on the microlevel, what is the way to live
a fulfilled life? To tackle problems? Measure success? Access the future?
Handle conflict? Connect with reality? It’s all in there. By filling our minds
with the Bible we learn to sit light to the packaged reality of the latest
worldview, the world of pre-wrapped values and manacled desires. Think of the
prophet Jeremiah, crying out against materialism and false spiritualities,
railing against a society which oppresses other nations and fails to care for
the disadvantaged.2 Think of the writer of Ecclesiastes, with his
expose of worldly vanity; or of Revelation, with his grandiose vision of the
future. Think of Paul, with his practical advice on common life issues, or the
prophet Isaiah, with his dreams of water flowing in the desert. Read God’s
promises, his warnings; get in touch with his love, dream his dreams. The Bible offers us a
mental and spiritual detox. It offers us a way of filtering the voices that
fill our heads, a way of touching base with the God who alone can see beyond
the frame.
Nurturing the imagination
For 300 years now we’ve lived in a world where
science has been the arbiter of reality. But even in science, the greatest
leaps have always been made by those with the greatest ability to see outside
the commonly accepted worldview – by those with the courage to dream. And
dreams are usually visual. Perhaps that’s why Jesus taught in parables, little
riddle-stories which weren’t really meant to explain things so much as to make
people think a different way. Perhaps it’s why he said we were to be salt and
light to the world we live in, why he painted pictures of mustard seeds and
nesting birds, hidden pearls and growing yeast. And perhaps that’s what we’re meant
to do too. Winston Churchill once said ‘the empires of the future will be the
empires of the imagination’. The imagination works through image. And image is
the province of the arts, media and entertainment industries.
Most people think of Jesus, in so far as they think of him at all, as a great teacher. But if you read the gospels you find that Jesus asked far more questions than he gave answers. He wanted to make us think. It’s a great mandate. Now as never before, people think with their imaginations and with their emotions. So, if you work in arts, media and entertainment, it’s your job to ask questions everywhere you go - little questions, big questions. It’s your job to touch the heart, to stimulate the imagination. To be Jesus, to shed light into darkness. To help people see that the pinching, chafing frame from the chainstores isn’t the only one on offer. To stimulate their imaginations. What’s the best way of doing it? It’s to immerse yourself in the most radical document ever written, and absorb its craziness, its dreams, its hopes, its warnings. To rely on the Holy Spirit to work in you and through you, to bring life through your words and images as he brought life to the universe through his. This is a world that wants to dream of Middle Earth, that queues up to see the March of the Penguins. Why did we like Chocolat? What chords were struck by The Pianist? Perhaps the best films are parables, parables of life which take us out of ourselves and point us towards God.
The Word of God at work
In the
beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
Why
did Jesus work this way, telling stories and asking questions? Perhaps to show
us that if you want seeds to grow, you have to prepare the ground, to spend
time breaking it up, turning it over, raking it fine. Perhaps our job is to
plough the fields of the imagination, so that the word, when it’s sown, can
take root. For the word of God is rather more than a black and white printed
page. It’s written down in the Bible, but it’s as big as reality itself – and it’s alive.
When
the Old Testament speaks of a word, it says dabar.
Dabar means both ‘word’ and ‘deed’, and these two meanings are inseparable.
God doesn’t just use words as tools, as
we do, to give news bulletins or advertise health insurance or explain how to
use computers. A word, in the heart and mind of God, is an active agent for
change. God’s words actually bring into being that which they express: the word
of God does something. And it does it because it is informed by the Holy
Spirit, that same Spirit who hovered over the waters when the world was
created, and who descended upon Jesus when he became a man and lived among us. It’s
why people were so afraid of the prophets – they knew their words were not empty,
but carried the power to actually bring about that which they foretold. As the
word was spoken, so it began to happen.
When
the New Testament speaks of a word, it says logos.
The Greek word logos
has two meanings. It means a spoken word, a message. And it means the principle
of reality – that which puts meaning into the universe and into man, as
philosopher Seneca had defined it. So when John sat down to write out the
gospel for the Greek-speaking world, he used the word logos to describe both the message and the messenger. Jesus, he was
saying, is the mind of God become a man -
the Word became flesh and lived among us. The word of God has become a
person, a person who changed everyone he spoke to, a person who shook the world.
The Latin version of the New Testament translates logos as verbum – neatly recapturing the meaning of dabar - for as we all know from school, a verb is a doing word.
So
perhaps our role, as we rake and till the ground of people’s imaginations, is to
make possible the sowing of words, words which contain within themselves the
power to grow and to bear fruit. It’s an art. I notice that the first person in
the Bible said to be filled with the Holy Spirit was Bezalel, in Exodus 31.3.
Bezalel was not a priest or a prophet or a king: he was a craftsman. God said
to Moses, I have called him by name, and filled him with the Spirit, with
ability and intelligence and knowledge in every kind of craft, to create the
place where I will meet with my people.
So
whether you till or whether you sow, whether you prepare the imagination or sow
the word which disturbs, you work in company with the Holy Spirit who is active
in the world, creating the place where God can meet with his people. True art
leads towards God – the medium really is the message. 3
Summing it all up, friends, I’d say you’ll do best by filling
your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic,
compelling, gracious – the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly;
things to praise, not things to curse. Put into practice what you learned from
me, what you heard and saw and realized. Do that, and God, who makes everything
work together, will work you into his most excellent harmonies – Philippians
4.8-9
This
article was first published in Artisan magazine, Spring 2006.
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1 Statistics for the KJV.
2 These themes recur throughout the book of
Jeremiah, but see especially chapters 2 and 7.
3 McLuhan – a Christian, on whose grave are
written the words ‘The truth shall set you free’.