Tag: image of god

7 ways Christians lost the gay marriage battle, and how we should (not) fight the war

Warning // Long post. Even by my standards. I’d suggest skimming it and reading the bits under the titles that you think are interesting

It turns out #lovewins.

If you’re one of my friends, or someone I don’t know, who’s celebrating the changes to the laws in America, and anticipating those changes where you are — I want you to know three things right off the bat, before you set out on reading this post:

  1. God loves you. He shows that love for you in that Jesus dies for you (and for me) even though we didn’t ask him to, or want him to.
  2. I think all people everywhere are equally broken and we all experience a world that is equally broken through equal brokenness, whether this is in our sexuality, gender or anything we build our identity on. I hope this stops me sounding judgmental because it certainly removes any platform I might stand on to judge you (or others) from.
  3. I am hoping that this reflects God’s love for you (and thus, my love for you), and that it isn’t a judgmental, handwringing exercise that makes you feel misunderstood or hated. If you feel either of those things, get in touch. Let me know where I’ve gone wrong. Let’s have a coffee or a beer. I like both.

This post is something like a post-mortem examining where I think Christians got it wrong when we spoke about gay marriage (not all Christians got all these things wrong). It’s a reflection, at times, on what we could have said, should have said, or didn’t say as much as it reflects what I’ve experienced Christians saying, or said myself. Some of it, especially the transgender/intersex stuff towards the end, is new thinking for me. Some isn’t. I’d love to hear other ideas about where things went wrong.

But ultimately, whatever the outcome in the courts and parliaments of this world, I’m not all that worried. Because the hash tag gets it right.

#lovewins.

That’s the good news for Christians who’ve woken up to a sea of rainbows at every turn in the last few days. An iconic and colourful reminder of the victory over the (largely) Christian case for not changing the definition of marriage in the (formerly) Christian west.

The US Supreme Court handed down its judgment this weekend, and I maintain (despite this causing some angst amongst Christian friends previously), that Australia is certain to follow. This isn’t entirely a meek capitulation, I think the fight was lost a long time ago.

Anyway I keep reminding myself #lovewins.

There’s been a lot of handwringing from Christians on the Internet in the fallout to this momentous decision, but I just want to remind my handwringing brothers and sisters, that if you take the Bible seriously, which people against gay marriage typically claim to, then this is how the story of the world ends. #lovewins. It’s already written.

I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes.There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”

He said to me: “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To the thirsty I will give water without cost from the spring of the water of life. Those who are victorious will inherit all this, and I will be their God and they will be my children — Revelation 21:2-7

#lovewins because it won at the Cross. Life now would be a whole lot easier if we came to grips with that when coming to grapple with politics and life in general. Incidentally there’s some bad news after those verses for the people in this world who don’t think God is all that important. But I’m writing this primarily for those who claim to believe in the God of the Bible and follow his son.

Stop worrying.

#lovewins.

1. We didn’t treat people the way we’d like to be treated

You might feel like the world is against you. The world might well become against you. You might deserve this. I think we’re in for a big dose of our own medicine here, and that’s what terrifies me. Because we Christians deserve what’s coming. Do you know why people think Christians are anti-gay? Do you know why until very recently in most of these countries that are changing the definition of marriage it was illegal to be gay? These questions are more complicated than the simplistic finger pointing at the church might allow, sure, there are countries that aren’t “Christian” where people are anti-gay, and where homosexuality is still illegal, but in these western countries, the church is caught up in the answer to most of the questions that lead to members of the gay community, and their friends and supporters, having a pretty big axe to grind with Christians.

It wasn’t uncommon for churches in Australia to delight in the way the King James Version rendered statements about homosexual behaviour, and apply it to the people who engaged in such behaviour. Words like abomination. Scratch below most of the arguments mounted against gay marriage and there’s an undercurrent of judgmentalism and disgust that is reserved for the particular sin of homosexuality in a way the Bible never reserves judgmentalism or disgust for one particular sin. All sin disgusts God. Including our judgmentalism.

There’s a world of difference —a vast, chasmic, world of difference — between these three ethical golden rules. The world, in my experience, typically lives by the first. Which is why we’re in trouble. Jesus famously proclaimed the second one at the Sermon on the Mount, and, in reality, displayed the third.

Treat others the way they treat you. 

Treat others the way you would have them treat you. 

Treat others the way Jesus treated you. 

This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. — 1 John 3:16

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. — 1 John 4:16-17

This is where I think we’ve failed, especially in the time where we’ve felt like the big kid at primary school, able to push people around to get the best spots in the playground. Only. We’re not in primary school anymore. We’ve graduated. And we’re the impish kids in the first year of high school, hoping nobody hits us up for our lunch money or gives us a wedgie behind the classroom, or something more sinister.

What would acting out the golden rule, or the example of Jesus have looked like in the marriage equality debate?

I think it would start by imagining a time where Christians were a persecuted minority in our country, where people who didn’t believe the same things we believe about the world were doing all they could to stop us practicing the thing that is at the core of our identity. Perhaps because they believe it to be harmful to us and to others. Especially children. So harmful they wanted to prevent it on behalf of the children, but also for our own benefit. That we might be happy.

Sound familiar.

You know. Perhaps we should have said: “we can totally understand where you’re coming from wanting an intimate, committed relationship, lifelong, relationship with a person you love. That seems like a completely natural thing to want. Personally, we think marriage is something God made to show us something about him, and his love for us as we experience it in the eternal loving relationship we have with God through Jesus, so we want our marriages to reflect the world as he made it, and his promises about the world, but when it comes to your own relationships, call them whatever you choose. We respect your freedom to think that through, we’d simply ask that you offer us the same freedoms.”

Perhaps, when pushed, we might have mentioned that marriage is something that celebrates the coming together of people of two different genders — male and female — and that this coming together is the natural way that children are born, and a marriage offers a stable basis for a family unit. But we’ve pushed this to the front of our reasoning far too often (and I’ll get to this below. I promise).

You know. There’s a bit of Bible oft neglected in this vein.

I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people — not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world. But now I am writing to you that you must not associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sister but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or slanderer, a drunkard or swindler. Do not even eat with such people.

What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside. — 1 Corinthians 5:9-13

I think if we imagined ourselves in this sort of situation we might have hoped that people would be tolerant of our beliefs and acknowledge that somehow at the heart of personhood is the ability to define how we see ourselves and how the world sees us. Somewhere at the heart of personhood is being able to decide the core of one’s identity. What it is we pursue as our heart’s desire. What it is, if you follow David Foster Wallace’s definition, that we worship. The Bible, I think, is pretty clear that this is what personhood involves — we either deliberately seek to carry the image of the living God, or we replace God with other gods or desires. This seems to be the choice that God sets before people from the very beginning of the Bible’s story. And yet we, in our wisdom, want to try to force people to pick God when they want to reject God. At that point, when the Church pushes to legislate against something, no matter how loving we think we’re being to people or their children, we’re robbing people of something fundamental to their personhood.

Is that how we would like to be treated?

Is it how Jesus treats people? At the Cross Jesus shows that #lovewins, but one of the ways he does that is by allowing people to be people. To pick whether or not we want to pursue life lived as God designed it, or life lived as we designed it. Even in the operations of God’s control over every event in history, even in his involvement in the decision of every person who puts their faith in Jesus, this fundamental part of our personhood is protected.

Do you think we’ve offered the gay community, and their supporters, this sort of respect? I don’t think so. I think it’s true that some people have tried to offer ‘equal rights’ in everything except the label people apply to their relationship, but labels matter. And words are flexible. And while we might follow the God who gives all words their true meaning —who spoke the world into being by true words, who speaks through words in order to be understood, and who entered the world as the “word made flesh” in Jesus— we don’t have the monopoly on words and their meanings. Especially not amongst people who have chosen to build their life around things other than this God.

We might think this is a silly choice. We might believe it’s a dangerous choice. We might even want to recommend and alternative choice, especially as we acknowledge that by rights we should be included in the number of people declared not good enough for God. But somewhere caught up in seeing a person, and treating a person, and loving a person, the way God loves people, is giving people responsibility and freedom to make a choice about their identity and personhood, mindful of the consequences — whether those consequences come here and now, or whether they’re the eternal consequences, spoken of in that same bit of Revelation, where #lovewins.

“But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.” — Revelation 21:8

By rights, I should be in that number. Many of those words describe my thoughts, and some describe my actions.

That’s why it’s great that #lovewins.

The only reason I’m not in that number is that Jesus is none of those things. This realisation, that when we take up the challenge to treat people the way Jesus treated us, we’re taking up a new sort of identity, a new understanding of what it means to be a person, is meant to shape the way we approach the world. It’s meant to help us see the gap between our picture of reality and morality, and the way others approach morality.

This isn’t an exercise in being all high and mighty and claiming that God is on our side in a moral debate. The most we can claim is that we believe he is. It’s meant to be an exercise in humility.

There. Death. But for the grace of God. Jesus. Go I.

Too often our contributions in this debate have not been humble. We’ve simply spoken as though we’re the prophetic voice of God to our world and people are idiots if they don’t listen. We’ve given them no reason to listen because our words about love have not been backed up with actions of love.

Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth. — 1 John 3:18

You say you love gay people?

Show them. Not in an abstract way — though even that would be a start if you were doing something about the sorts of horrific rates of suicide and depression amongst young people who identify as homosexual.

Love in a concrete way. Treat them the way Jesus treated you. Stepping in. Taking a bullet for you. Taking your burden upon himself. Being a safe place. Speaking up against those voices that offer condemnation rather than love. While faithfully pointing to the truth about God and judgment. But then offering a path to mercy and forgiveness. To wholeness. To a new identity. A better, more satisfying, place to find your identity than any part of our broken human experience — be it the things we love doing, the people we love, our job, our sexuality, our gender — all these things are broken by those behaviours that lead to judgment. Jesus isn’t. His love isn’t.

Admit you’re broken. Admit your sexuality is broken. Admit you’re both a sinner and judgmental. Admit our hypocrisy. Stop treating gay people and their friends and family like the enemy in some political fight to bring down the world.

#lovewins.

This isn’t how we lost the fight. I’m still getting to that. This is more in the “what to do now” space, inasmuch as it’s in the “what Jesus told people to do and what the Bible tells us to do” space.

2. We lost when we entered the fight expecting to win, rather than seeking to love

Here’s what Jesus told us to do when things don’t go God’s way in a couple of choice bits in the Sermon on the Mount. Here’s the sort of people Jesus called us to be as we follow him. His where we’ve got this fight oh so wrong, simply by fighting, instead of by treating minority groups in our community the way I suspect we’re going to clamour for them to treat us in coming years (and why should they? There have been axes being sharpened on this one for a while now).

Blessed are the meek,
    for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
    for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful,
    for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart,
    for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers,
    for they will be called children of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
    for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” — Matthew 5:5-10

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. — Matthew 5:38-45

We’ve been, I think, too strident, combative, and bombastic in our defence of marriage, and we’ve made most of our noise about marriage (a created thing) rather than about God and his kingdom.

I can’t tell if our expectation was to win this fight. That’s certainly the language that has been used in this debate by people I’ve spoken to. I can’t see what creates the expectation that we should either win, or fight, when it comes to this sort of thing outside the boundaries of our own lives and identities, and the life and identity of the church. Our job isn’t to fight and win, it’s to follow Jesus who won by losing. Our job is to faithfully be different — to love — even in the face of those who want to fight us. This is how #lovewins

“Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

“You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.

“You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven. — Matthew 5:11-16

 

3. We lost when we decided to fight for marriage, rather than speaking about marriage as an analogy for the Gospel

This has already dragged on for a while, and I’ve got a few more. God made people male and female to reflect his nature. God isn’t gendered. But marriage, in the bringing together of two persons in one flesh is a great picture of the Trinity, and the eternal loving relationship at the heart of the universe. Just as loving Trinitarian relationship gave birth to life in Genesis 1, marriage was the means, in the Genesis story, by which Adam and Eve carried on the creating of life. Marriage is about that. But because of the Gospel, marriage is about more than that.

Personhood is also about more than marriage. A person is able to be a fruitful reflection of God’s image without marriage (see Jesus, humanity of, and Paul, bachelor status in any fictional dictionary). In Genesis two people become one flesh. Two halves don’t come together as one complete thing.

Marriage (and sex) is not the ultimate human relationship (or transaction). It’s not a basis for human identity (though it changes your identity). And it can’t possibly be a fundamental human right because it takes two. Two willing parties. You’re not less human if you are unwilling to be married or cannot find someone you are willing to marry.

So many of our arguments for marriage sound like we’re worshipping marriage either as an idol, a god of our own making, or in such terms that somehow we’ve elevated this good thing God made as a thing to reveal his nature and character into this thing that completes us.

In Romans 1, Paul says the world is meant to play this role:

“since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities — his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made” — Romans 1:20

And the problem with our human nature, when we’re confronted with the amazingly good thing God has made that has hallmarks of divinity stamped all over it, is that we’re so stupid we keep confusing the signature of the divine for the divine. So we get all excited about these created things and worship them instead.

“They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator” — Romans 1:25

Whoops.

See. I think those supporting gay marriage, and the rhetoric supporting the case for gay marriage does exactly this with marriage. The case for gay marriage seizes on the goodness of marriage (and marriage is good) but applies it to relationships where the God of the Bible has already been tossed out the window. Paul would say this sort of thing is a prime example of what he’s talking about.

But lest we get all finger pointy — the “Christian” case for marriage does exactly the same thing whenever it fails to see marriage as something that reveals God’s eternal power and divine nature.

You know. When we make it all about kids. And society. And wholesome family values. And Biblical morals. And history. And… Anything but God.

And the thing that makes God’s eternal power and divine nature clearest. Love. The love that wins. The love displayed at the Cross. Marriage, ultimately, is a picture of that love — in our marriages, but human marriages also give us a picture of the relationship where we can find meaningful identity and satisfaction (see Revelation 21, above).

For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. — Ephesians 5:31-32 (the whole chapter builds to this point)

4. We lost when we made marriage about children, rather than about the sex that produces them

A lot of the logic supporting this point is contained above. While according to the Biblical picture of things before and after the Fall, children, ideally, are made in marriage, marriage isn’t just made for the making of children. It’s made for intimate, one flesh, love between people whose bits fit together, and the product of this fitting together is, occasionally, children. I suspect if you tried to count the number of times sexual intercourse occurs between men and women, and put it up against the number of pregnancies in this world, you’d get the sense that there’s a lot more sex in a marriage than there is the production of children. Some of this activity might be specifically attempting to produce a child, but most of it, I would think, is for the purpose of maintaining and growing a loving, intimate, relationship.

Children happen as the result of sex. But we don’t require fertility tests before marriage (and that would be truly, truly, awful if we did). Often our arguments against gay marriage failed on this basis.

The mystery and beauty of marriage is that two somehow become one. Male and female.

While sex is a part of gay relationships, and will be a part of gay marriage, the Biblical picture of marriage revolves around two different kinds of human coming together as one.

“The man said,

“This is now bone of my bones
    and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called ‘woman,’
    for she was taken out of man.”

That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.” — Genesis 2:23-24

Whatever you make of how to read Genesis, it’s clear this is part of the story that Christians build their picture of marriage from, and while it talks about fathers and mothers, there’s no mention of making babies here, but there is a sense of the bringing together something that God made to be brought together.

It’s worth noting, I think, that sex is a thing created by God, and how we use it either reveals his character or ours. It reveals something about his divine nature, or about our corrupted nature. Its one of those things where how we use it (or don’t use it) shows if we’re following God’s design or our own. This is pretty powerful. But it also means that we often misplace hope for satisfaction in sex, our sexuality, and even marriage, that these things simply can’t deliver on.

People are free to take or leave this story, and this basis for understanding marriage — and increasingly people in our world are choosing to leave it — but when we made it sound like Christians think marriage is important because “children” we shot ourselves in the foot.

Marriage is certainly a great context for having kids, and kids who know their parents are committed to one another through life’s ups and downs certainly have a solid basis for flourishing. But this sort of relationship isn’t a guarantee that a kid will flourish, nor is anything other than marriage a guarantee that a kid will get a lesser deal in life. Focusing on the nuclear, biological family, as though most people experience or desire that, because this is a “human right,” or even as though this picture was particularly Biblical, always struck me as a bit self-defeating too. It felt like we were hitting struggling single parents (and even not struggling single parents) with wild swings designed to knock out the gay marriage argument. What made it even dumber, I think, is that laws surrounding adoption and surrogacy for gay couples are dealt with completely apart from marriage anyway.

This whole line of reasoning confused what marriage is in its essential form, and what marriage is capable of producing and becoming when the debate, in terms of legislation, was simply about what marriage is. I think the fight was lost because those against the change shifted the goalposts rather than adopting a robust defence of the two words that will actually be changed in the definition (at least in the Australian case).

5. We lost when we lost the fight on gender, and didn’t think hard enough about how to include the T or I parts of LGBTQI in the conversation

We live in an age that celebrates mind over matter when it comes to identity. What you think you are and feel you are, therefore you are.

Here’s Miley Cyrus:

“I don’t relate to being boy or girl, and I don’t have to have my partner relate to boy or girl…I don’t relate to what people would say defines a girl or a boy, and I think that’s what I had to understand: Being a girl isn’t what I hate, it’s the box that I get put into.”

It seems everything is fluid. Especially for people who are privileged enough to be able to choose to be fluid, rather than for people who are locked in to a marginalised or complicated facet of the human experience.

It’s not just sexuality that gets confused when humanity turns on God, and that turn is felt in the ‘frustration’ of God’s creation. It’s gender too. And our biological sex. While part of my point here is that maleness and femaleness are, in marriage, different and distinct. That’s not true for all people — and just as the church is grappling with how to care for same sex attracted people who want to be faithful to the God of the Bible, we need to grapple with what it looks like for transgender and intersex people to follow Jesus and carry the image of God.

Before this gets too far down a rabbit hole where this needs to be acknowledged — I’m a guy (gender) in a guy’s body (sex) and I know that there’s an incredible amount of biological complexity out there that means this sort of alignment isn’t always the case. I think we need to be careful not to exclude transgender or intersex people from our definitions of humanity, or from our consideration, in clumsy conversations about marriage. This whole issue is worthy of its own post, and I’m not entirely sure of where to go with that sort of line of thinking yet. I want to be careful, because I think there’s a sense where both sex and gender can occur along a spectrum of maleness-femaleness, and it’s important to distinguish between transgender issues and intersex issues. I’m not going to say much, if anything, about the implications of a T or an I identity for marriage, but I suspect it is tied up with helping find some sort of clarity in terms of gender and sex (and sexuality) identity for those dealing with this complexity and working carefully from there.

What does fascinate me, is the kind of democratisation of the transgender experience through people who simply choose to defy categorisation, or people who want to argue that gender is meaningless both in terms of gender identity, and sexual practice. This basically confines the ‘bits’ associated with one’s sex — the matter — into a very small part of our identity. An unchosen bit of baggage. Mind has triumphed over matter at this point, and I suspect a fuller and richer account of our humanity and a more fulfilling and healthy approach to identity sees mind and matter brought together in harmony, or acknowledged tension rather than simply denial.

This concept of personal, individual, mind-driven, fluidity has pretty massive ramifications for our concepts of personhood, and I think, like any time where we put ourselves in the driver’s seat, rather than God, there are bound to be interesting consequences.

The link between gender and sex is increasingly being torn apart, and the proposed changes to the Marriage Act in Australia simply codify this shift that happened a while back without much fuss, and, I suspect, for well-intended reasons. Other people have been much better at caring for transgender and intersex people in our community than evangelical Christians (I’m sure there are liberal Christians who have put more thought into this than we have). I’m unaware of much, if any, evangelical Christian thinking that seeks to understand, love, and serve the T or I part of the LGBTQI community, I haven’t proactively looked (though I will), but I have been part of many conversations about gay marriage where these issues have not been spoken about. I’ve seen conversations on Facebook where transgender people have been dismissed as abnormal or insignificant, and I can’t imagine that this has won us friends or favour when it comes to hearing us speak about Biblical concepts of gender and how they relate to a broken and fractured world (and our own experience of gender). Which in turn means we can’t really speak to uphold the traditional definition of marriage as being between a man and a woman when we aren’t engaging with the complexity of the human experience beyond such neat categories or within these neat categories.

On the link between mind and matter and identity, there’s actually some notion of fluidity and identity driven by the mind and our hearts (thoughts/passions/feelings) that Christians, can affirm. Our minds and hearts are where the action is at in terms of defining our identity as people. They’re where the Bible suggests that battleground is in terms of us either choosing to follow Jesus as children of God, or take up with idols. We are shaped by our hearts and our minds in a way that we aren’t shaped by our bodies (which simply act out this stuff).

“Are you still so dull?” Jesus asked them. “Don’t you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body? But the things that come out of a person’s mouth come from the heart, and these defile them. For out of the heart come evil thoughts—murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what defile a person; but eating with unwashed hands does not defile them.” — Matthew 15:16-20

Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. — Romans 12:2

There are a couple of things I think need to be incorporated in to this part of the discussion — the idea that God is not a male who is adequately reflected by male humans, but that maleness and femaleness operate together and separately to bear the image of God, and the sense that gender increasingly becomes meaningless as we are transformed into the image of Christ, united with Christ, as the bride of Christ. This is the ultimate form of identity for the Christian (this changes the way we approach maleness and femaleness in our human relationships, but it doesn’t do away with those concepts altogether in these relationships in this world).

So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” — Galatians 3:26-28

6. We lost when we made the argument about the next argument (the slippery slope), rather than lovingly understanding what the people in front of us desired and were asking for

I hate this version of the argument against gay marriage more than any other. Gay marriage will not open the door to people marrying their dogs. The arguments used for gay marriage might be used by polyamorists, but the people asking for gay marriage aren’t asking for polyamory and we’re failing to love them, understand them, and listen to them, if we treat their arguments as though someone else is asking for something else.

7. We lost when we didn’t fight harder for love to mean something other than sexual intimacy or total acceptance (not compassionate tolerance)

The tragedy of the #lovewins idea is that what we’re ending up with isn’t a really robust and beautifully messy picture of love. We’re ending up with fairytale love that can’t really handle any opposition.

What do people mean when they write #lovewins? What are people actually celebrating when they rainbowfy their Facebook profiles?

I haven’t read much beyond the highlights of the judgments handed down in the US, but it seems that they pay lip service to the idea of tolerance for those who disagree and then immediately label such positions as hateful or anti-love.

The Greek language has multiple words for love describing multiple kinds of love. We have one word and it’s context that determines the meaning.

Who wants to stand in the way of love?

Not me. Not anyone I know.

But who says what love is?

What I think people are saying when they say #lovewins is that one particular view of love has triumphed over all the others. And by triumphed over I think we’ll increasingly understand this to mean “totally wiped out of the public sphere” any alternative pictures of love, especially those from the pre-enlightened past.

Most of the stuff we watch and listen to about love basically says love is sexual intimacy with one person, or the thing you offer to your family. There’s erotic love and there’s filial love. There’s a fair bit of erotic love going on in the marriage debate, though it’s more about sexual commitment than simply temporary intimacy. Erotic love is the love that we write songs about and feature in movies. It’s boy meets girl love replaced with person meets person love. But this cheapens and limits our view of love such that we can’t believe in a platonic, non-sexual, relationship if there’s any physical affection displayed. So, for example, I once hugged one of my sisters and someone who didn’t know she was my sister, and knew I was married, thought there was something going on. Isn’t love richer if it means something more than sex, and something more than simply family ties or a commitment secured by contractual agreement?

Love, apparently, also means never telling someone you disagree with their choices. This is the new kind of filial love. Loyalty is built in networks where people offer this sort of love to each other, and this sort of love doesn’t cope well with disagreement or dissent. Even disagreement offered with loving intent. Tolerance now means believing everything is legitimate, rather than believing that people should be free to make choices that are wrong and be loved anyway. Our interactions with each other are cheapened by this vision of love. Isn’t love richer if it doesn’t seek to deny or iron out differences, but transcends those differences?

If the Revelation picture of the future from the start of this post and the end of the Bible, where #lovewins is true, then how do Christians love those around us? I think it’s about respectfully allowing people to make a choice (rather than trying to insist they make a particular choice), but it must also mean making some case for the Christian view of the world, and the Christian view of love, even if that case is unpopular, and is perceived as hateful.

This is where the medicine we’ve got coming to us is really going to hurt. I don’t think we’ve loved others very well. I think they’re about to treat us the way we treated them. I think as we become the minority our perceived pursuit of victory at all costs, rather than us having offered love and respect at our cost, is going to come back to bite us. Hard. And this will be an opportunity for us to show how love wins. This will be an opportunity for us not to fight more battles, but to follow the one who fought the battle for us, and who models what love looks like for us… this is how we might make God known in things he created, and is now recreating by the Spirit.

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. — 1 John 4:7-14

 

On Fry, Brand, and Jesus: Why two comedians have a laughable view of God

If you love articulate British comedians and God, like I do, then this has been a pretty bizarre week for you. I’ve enjoyed the challenges posed to my understanding of God by Stephen Fry, and by the equally challenging account of the divine from Russell Brand.

Fry believes nothing is true about God. Brand believes everything we can possibly imagine about God is true because we can’t possibly know him because of our finite limitations in an infinite universe. While Brand’s approach to the God question is much closer to my own, I can’t help but think that I’d rather preach to people who think like Fry. His objections are actually easier to engage with than Brand’s wholesale lack of objections.

Both of them have such a profoundly anaemic picture of Christianity, and thus, I think, of God, because both of them entirely miss the point of Jesus.

In Jesus we see God’s response to the brokenness, evil, and suffering in this world – the promise of a better world through the absolute victory over evil and death. But in Jesus we also see the gap between our finite limitations and God’s infinite nature bridged, so that truths about life, the universe, and everything, become knowable because the God who spoke life, the universe, and everything, by his word sends his word into the world, as a man. That’s how John, the disciple, describes the arrival of Jesus on the scene. Jesus steps out of infinity, and into concrete, measurable, reality.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” — John 1:1-5

He comes to make God knowable – contrary to Brand’s understanding of God as expressed below…

 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth… or the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known. — John 1:14, 17-18

I’m sharing these verses now because the right place to go when people ask questions about God — his character, his existence, or his nature, in order to understand nature, is always Jesus. At least in the first instance. That’s what John is claiming here. And Jesus, acting in this capacity, is largely missing from both Fry and Brand’s treatment of the God question.

There’s a fair bit of Bible in this post— because despite Fry’s very eloquent, tight, takedown of God, despite the appearance that this is a modern insight that makes belief in God completely untenable — these questions are complicated, but they’re answered incredibly thoroughly in the Bible, they aren’t questions that should be particularly confronting to Christians. Like every good Sunday School question, the answer is Jesus. If you’re reading because you think Fry has fired a shot that has fatally wounded God, or the Christian faith, can I encourage you to slog through it, and at least by the end you’ll understand why I haven’t, as a result of Fry’s video, quit my job and packed in my faith.

Jesus makes God knowable. He makes God approachable. He comes to bring light to darkness, order to chaos, comfort to the afflicted — he came to put an end to the exact problems Fry identifies with the world. The question of why a good God would allow such problems to occur is one that I’ve tried to answer in several thousand words elsewhere. But it’s a separate question.

Stephen Fry appeared on a show called “The Meaning of Life” and was asked what he, an atheist, would say to God if he were to be confronted by him after death.

Here’s his answer.

Here are some of the highlights…

“How dare you create a world in which there is such misery that is not our fault? It’s not right. It’s utterly, utterly evil. Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid god who creates a world which is so full of injustice and pain?”

“Because the god who created this universe, if it was created by god, is quite clearly a maniac, utter maniac. Totally selfish. We have to spend our life on our knees thanking him?! What kind of god would do that?”

“Yes, the world is very splendid but it also has in it insects whose whole lifecycle is to burrow into the eyes of children and make them blind,” he says. “They eat outwards from the eyes. Why? Why did you do that to us? You could easily have made a creation in which that didn’t exist. It is simply not acceptable.”

“It’s perfectly apparent that he is monstrous. Utterly monstrous and deserves no respect whatsoever. The moment you banish him, life becomes simpler, purer, cleaner, more worth living in my opinion.”

Wow. If you’re going to grapple with the Christian God — that is, God as Christians understand God to be — then you’ve got to take this God on the terms Christians take him. Fry totally fails to do this. He seems prepared to cherry pick bits of the Bible and Christian understandings of God that suit his picture of God, but he’s pretty dismissive of the bits that don’t make him a capricious monster.

The rudimentary Christian response to Fry — based on the same Bible he cherry picks from to build this picture of the God he doesn’t believe in — is that God did not make a world full of injustice and pain, he made a good world (Genesis 1), that humanity then stuffed up, when we tried to replace him and be our own gods, as a result this world was ‘cursed’ (Genesis 3)… but God sets about restoring the world through the rest of the Bible. Fry would have us be automatically obedient to God — prevented from such rebellion, but this creates the sort of “totally selfish” God he abhors. In terms of the question of other potential responses God could have taken to our rebellion, Brand is right to recognise the very finite, selfish, perspective we bring to these sorts of questions.

The slightly more complicated response would be that God made a world with flesh eating insects in it and gave humans the job of faithfully spreading the perfect and peaceful Garden of Eden over the face of the earth “subduing” the chaos, as we reflected his creation out of darkness (Genesis 1), that’s caught up in bearing his image, ruling his world as his representatives and being fruitful and multiplying… The dark, watery, formless world God works with after Genesis 1:2 is an ancient picture of a chaotic void that required subduing.

Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. — Genesis 1:2

Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

So God created mankind in his own image,
    in the image of God he created them;
    male and female he created them.

God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” — Genesis 1:26-28

If there wasn’t darkness to overcome, or something to fix, how then would we express this relationship? How would we be anything other than divine playthings— or servants— the kind you find in most other ancient religions.

We were given a job to do, as part of improving the world from good to perfect, and we failed to do that when we metaphorically flipped him the bird. Jesus completes this job. He defeats evil. That’s the storyline of the Bible in three sentences.

The properly human thing to do — if we’re going to be obedient image bearers, is to work to stop flesh eating insects burrowing into the eyes of children, and in plenty of cases through history, it’s Christians leading the charge against exactly this sort of brokenness in the world, because a Christian worldview equips us to think and engage well with such brokenness. Whatever motivation might Fry have to eradicate this bug as a result of his rejection of God? It will come from his humanism, not his atheism. Fry identifies a problem with the Christian God, but provides no more satisfying account of the mixed and broken nature of the world we live in than Christianity (I’m biased, but I’d say his views of the world are less coherent). This is actually a much better picture of what God hopes for from humanity than Fry’s conception of the faithful Christian life, where “we have to spend our life on our knees thanking him?!” In this view of our created role, representing the creator in his good creation, we show our thankfulness to God and glorify him when we are creative, exercising our God-given imagination in line with this God-given purpose.

Let’s leave aside this dilemma for a moment, and turn, instead, to Russell Brand, and his response to Stephen Fry. This clip features a few more bits of the Stephen Fry interview, but also Brand’s own take on God. Brand says a lot of cool stuff that I agree with — but his answer, too, is completely devoid of Jesus.

There’s a bit in that video where Fry and Brand both talk about Jesus. They both talk about him as though he can be discussed apart from the nature of God — a treatment of Jesus foreign to any orthodox Christian since the very earliest days of the church (and arguably from the very earliest descriptions of Jesus in the Bible, and from the teaching of Jesus himself)

Fry says, of Jesus:

“I think he was a very good soul. An inspiration as a teacher. I do think a lot of the things he says are actually nonsense when you examine them. They seem very beautiful. But it’s a bit like the Dalai Llama. They’re actually twee, and completely impractical, and in that sense an insult to the human spirit. Like, “let him who is without sin cast the first stone” – at first you think that is wonderful, “yes, what hypocrites” how can you possibly have a justice system? Nobody would ever go to prison?”

So he’s hardly likely to find any answers to his big questions about God and suffering if he a priori rules out Jesus as a source of the answers to that question.

Brand has a go showing that Jesus’ teachings aren’t so ‘twee’ by applying this principal to the justice system… it’s an interesting exercise, and it certainly shows an awareness of the human heart…

“I would say that when you are condemning murderers or pedophiles is to acknowledge that within us all is the capacity for evil. As the Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said, the line between good and evil runs not between nations, religions, continents or creeds, but through every human heart, so when you are judging the pedophile, when you are judging the worst kind of criminal, to acknowledge that the thing in them that has manifest as negativity is also within us, and our first duty is to negotiate with the negativity within ourselves, and if we can successfully negotiate with that then we can create a better society.”

The problem with this picture — so far as the Bible’s description of Jesus is concerned — is that it seems to me one of the necessary implications of the ‘he who is without sin’ passage is that it is Jesus, the one who is without sin, the one with the undivided heart, who, rightfully can throw stones (or judge) sinners, and who rightfully, can judge not just the worst kind of criminal but every one of us who has our heart split between good and evil. He’s also the one who creates the better society…

But I digress. Not so far, because what is clear here is that neither Brand nor Fry are operating, or engaging, with an understanding of Jesus that looks remotely like the understanding that Christians have of Jesus when it comes to questions of evil, suffering (Fry’s big thing), infinity, or our ability to know God in our limited human way (Brand’s big thing).

Brand’s God is what in theological terms is called transcendent —wholly other, unable to be properly described or contained using human words or senses. But he is not what, similarly, in theological terms, is called immanent — present and observable in this world (beyond some nebulous spiritual connection between all things that exist or are conscious).

His picture of God as the infinite, indescribable, ground of being and existence meshes up with the Christian God — except that the Christian God reveals things about himself through revelation, this is how Christians understand God, especially in the light of the life of Jesus — who claimed to be one with the father. And thus is the lynchpin between God’s immanence and his transcendence. Because Jesus lived, breathed, spoke, and died — and in living affirmed God’s previous revelation concerning himself in the Old Testament — we know that the God we believe in is not just the transcendent creator and sustainer of life and ‘being’ in this universe, but that he is also knowable, and describable (so long as we acknowledge out limits and recognise Jesus as they way in to such descriptions). In Jesus, God entered the finite world in a way that was accessible to our finite senses. In Jesus, God becomes accessible.

Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.

Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.”

Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves.” — John 14:6-11

An interesting implication of Jesus’ description here, where his life perfectly represents the Father, is that this is what people were created to do. This is Jesus living out the good human life. The next thing he says is an invitation back to this type of function — which I think is a fair way removed from the picture of the ‘Christian’ life Fry paints.

“Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.” — John 14:12

In John 17, just before he’s arrested, he sums up his work in an interesting way in the light of the sort of work we were created for…

Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. I have brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do.” — John 17:3-4

A bit later Jesus describes what this sort of life looks like — it’s not rocket science to figure out how this might help us think about a human role in the face of suffering… it also puts paid, I think, to the idea that we need to be on our knees because God is some sort of self-seeking maniac.

“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. ” — John 15:9-15

Here are some highlights from Brand. These aren’t things I completely agree with — but they’re things that people who want to dismiss God holus-bolus, like Fry, have to grapple with, or at least, I think, they need to provide an alternatively coherent account of the world if they want to subject the idea of God to ridicule.

Brand acknowledges the limitations of our humanity — something Fry, as an atheist-humanist is not so keen to do, because it doesn’t really mesh with his narrative that all you need for human flourishing is humanity, and human endeavour.

“Now Joseph Campbell, the cultural mythologist, said all religions are true in that the metaphor is true. So what Campbell is saying is that religion is an attempt to explain the unknowable in the same way that science is an attempt to explain the unknowable. Science can explain the mechanics of the universe, it can explain the mechanics of anatomy and biology, but can it ever explain the why? The answer is no. It can never explain the why. What we all want to know is is there a reason for us being here,and what is the nature of the universe, what is the nature of our consciousness.”

Brand trots out the argument from an incredibly fine tuned universe as support for his believe in God. Which is interesting. He is also trying to grapple with the question of infinity — either the infinite nature of God, or of the universe against the very finite nature of our existence.

“I suppose what Christianity, and Islam, and Judaism, and Hinduism, and Jaianism, and Buddhism are trying to do is make sense of our position, our perspective as awake, conscious, sentient beings within the infinite.”

He gets plenty wacky in his exploration of consciousness — but again, for those of us who accept that God is the ground of being for every life in this universe, there’s something quite close to what Christians might affirm here.

“For me, as a person who believes in God, my understanding is this, that my consciousness emanates from a perspective and it passes through endless filters, the filters of the senses, the subjective filters of the senses and of my own biography. This is good. This is bad. This is wrong. I want this. I don’t want this. But behind all of that there’s an awakeness. An awareness that sees it all. And it’s in you too. And it’s in Stephen Fry. And it’s in the man who interviewed him. It’s in all of us. An awakeness. An interconnectivity. None of us can ever know if there is a God. But we do know there is an us. None of us can ever know if there’s wrong or right. But we do know there is an us.”

Our finitude does, Brand suggests, come with certain limitations when it comes to making absolute moral judgments. Especially judgments of an infinite being. It’s a weird category jump to assess God in human terms, and that Fry wants to hold God up to human standards, or against some sort of definition of morality apart from God, suggests that he hasn’t quite grasped the nature of the God Christians believe in. God is not subject to universal moral principles deduced from our human experience — he is wholly other, he authored the universe, it exists within him, he is not a part of the universe from within.

“Now, we can argue that when a lion eats the gazelle it can’t be very nice for the gazelle, but what we can argue is that in infinite space, that doesn’t matter. That in the tiny fragment of reality that we experience through our material senses – our eyes that only see a limited range of light, our ears that only hear a limited range of vibration. The things that we experience here, we can’t make any absolute conclusions from them. No one knows if there is a God, or if there isn’t a God. No one knows which interpretation is closest.”

Unlike Fry who simply holds up the question of suffering as though it’s a complete rebuttal to the idea of an all-powerful, all-loving, God, Brand sees that humans are partly culpable for whatever suffering happens in this world, and also partly the God-ordained solution (this is especially true if what’s suggested about Genesis, above, is correct). For Brand, suffering, too, is a reminder of our limitations, and a motivator for good. He’s able to see something like a divine purpose in the suffering, with this idea that it pushes us towards the divine. Even if, for him, the ‘divine’ is the consciousness that holds us all together.

“Yes there is suffering. What can we do about suffering? We can help one another. We can love one another. And if you can do that through atheism – then do it through atheism. But a lot of people need to know that this is temporary, that we are the temporary manifestation of something greater. Something complete and whole. Something timeless and spaceless and absolute. And every dogma in the world has been trying to tackle and understand that. Art has been trying to represent it, science has been trying to explain it and no one can. We’re up against the parameters, and I believe without embracing something spiritual, something whole, something beyond human thought we have no chance of saving ourselves, and saving the planet, we are all connected to consciousness, we are all connected to one another, and to me that sounds a bit like God.”

If God is purely a transcendent being who doesn’t really interact with the world, and who leaves us waving our arms around blindly in the throes of our suffering, hoping that we’ll somehow accidentally bump into him, or each other, for the better — which is sort of Brand’s version of God — then I think Fry is actually closer to the money. This sort of God is a bit of a monster, human existence becomes something like a reality TV show that God watches, or controls, from the sidelines. God becomes this sort of Big Brother, muttering the occasional instruction, keeping the housemates in the dark about the reality of the universe.

But God doesn’t do this. He doesn’t stand apart from our pain. He enters it. First by becoming human – Jesus, God the Son, enters the world as a baby, a lowly baby, a part of a despised and persecuted people group, in an imperial backwater. Then by being executed. Painfully. Horribly. Unjustly. The injustice is magnified when you consider just who it is that is being executed and what he has given up in order to become human, let alone to suffer and die. John puts it like this:

So the soldiers took charge of Jesus. Carrying his own cross, he went out to the place of the Skull (which in Aramaic is called Golgotha). There they crucified him, and with him two others—one on each side and Jesus in the middle.”—John 19:16-18

Jesus is nailed to two planks of wood. On a hill. In public display — for the purpose of seeing him utterly humiliated. The lowest of the low. Killed in the most painful way imaginable. For the sake of those who kill him, and those who given the chance, and given his claim to be ruler of our lives, would also want to kill him.

John describes the life of Jesus, and rejection of Jesus, in his opening:

The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.”— John 1:9-11 

This is not a God who is distant and unknowable, who leaves us flailing around blindly in our pain. Who uses pain as some sort of subliminal way of getting our attention (though it might point us to the truth that something is very wrong with the world). Nor is it a maniacal self-serving God who demands we approach him on our knees and sends flesh-eating worms with no solutions. This is a God who is so committed to doing something about the pain and suffering in the world — pain and suffering that, if God is the God of the Bible, is a result of us rejecting him, that he came into the world to be rejected all over again, to take on pain and suffering, out of love.

What’s interesting, too, is that the kind of connection-via-consciousness that Brand so desperately wants as a link to the divine is something Jesus says is the result of his life, and death, for those who reconnect to the transcendent God, the source of life, through him.

“My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.  I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one —  I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

“Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.” John 17:20-24

I like the version of God revealed in Jesus much better than Fry’s version of God, and more, even, than Brand’s version of God. I think Jesus gives us not just hope in suffering, or hope beyond suffering, but also a pattern for responding to the suffering of others that is much more satisfying the Fry’s directionless indignation (because, let’s face it, he’s angry at a God he doesn’t believe in who looks nothing like the God who reveals himself in Jesus), and much more focused than Brand’s unknowable God-beyond-our-senses.

If only I had a British accent.

Je suis Jesus: Not the pen, or the sword, but the Cross

macltoons

Image Credit: @macltoons (tweet)

Am I Charlie?

I’ve pondered this question a bit since the first tweets and placards started carrying the phrase ‘Je suis Charlie’ — ‘ I am Charlie’— following the shootings in Paris.

Am I Charlie?

I certainly feel a natural inclination to identify myself with the press, I’ve never quite shaken off the sense that I’m a journalist, even as I plied my journalistic skills in the name of public relations, even as I’ve poured pixels onto white space as a blogger, even now as I form sentences to be delivered as sermons not news stories, part of me desperately wants to be Charlie. I want to strike blows for a free press, for free speech, for the power of the pen in the face of the sword (or in the face of AK47s and fear).

Am I Charlie?

Do I actually want to be Charlie? Is Charlie Hebdo and what it stood for, and published, actually journalism? Or are they simply agent provocateurs operating under the guise of the press, seeking to test the limits of free speech? Even that appeals to my inner contrarian just a little bit.

Am I Charlie?

What about as a follower of Jesus — how much can I be Charlie? How much do I want to align my quest with theirs? How much can I align my life with theres? Certainly there is much of their humanity that I share, but what about their ideology, or their practice? What overlap is there between the tenets of the Christian faith, expressed in the person of Jesus, and the tenets of a satirical newspaper perhaps best expressed in the mockery of those who don’t conform to a left-wing political ideology.

I am Charlie inasmuch as I am human, but I am more than Charlie.

When it comes to my humanity, and how I understand it. I am not Charlie, I am Jesus. This offers a better comfort, a better solution, and a better course of action, in times of tragedy. It helps me respond not just to the situation in Paris, but also the situation in Nigeria, and not just to the situation in Martin Place, Sydney, but the situation in Pakistan.

It teaches me the value of human life, and how to respond to my enemies, and my neighbours.

It teaches me not to respond first by reaching for pen, or sword, but by clinging to the Cross.

Je suis Jesus. I am Jesus.

At least, so far as the Bible accounts for my humanity when I follow Jesus, I am Jesus, because I am united with him through his death and resurrection, by the Holy Spirit.

Here’s what Paul says to the Galatian church in the letter we now know as Galatians…

 I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

Paul’s words in his letter to the Colossian church are handy to hang on to when we’re trying to figure out what this means in the aftermath of tragedy — or, indeed, any where and any time in this tragically broken world.

Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.”

Je suis Jesus.

This has to be our perspective, as Christians, when horrible stuff happens in this world. It doesn’t let us stand back and not be involved, it moves us to respond to the brokenness and pain around us knowing that Jesus took on the brokenness and pain of others — including our own — to love us, to redeem us, to fix us — even as we were his enemies.

Over and over again the Bible calls us to imitate Christ because the underlying spiritual reality is that we have been united with him, by the Holy Spirit, and we’re being made over into his image and likeness. Our humanity is redefined, and rediscovered.

I’m not just united with him — I’m called to live as a part of his body in the world, the church. To be Jesus to this world, in the midst of turmoil, tragedy, and grief. To point people to God’s solution to the world’s brokenness, not my own.

Here’s what Paul writes to Corinth…

“Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many.”

… to Colossae…

He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.”

And to Ephesus…

Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.

A body is not disembodied. It is not just ideals and ideologies. My body gives life to my thoughts, and dreams. It turns them into action. It makes them real. And in a sense, that’s what we’re called to do when we say “je suis Jesus,” we respond to tragedy in a way that embodies not simply who we are, but who he is.

Being conformed into the image of Jesus in a way that brings certain responsibilities in public discourse, and in public life. Images are powerful. Images motivate people to all sorts of behaviour. Images stir the emotions. The shootings in Paris teach us that, if nothing else. Images can stir crazed gun men to take up arms in the face of provocation and offence, images can draw our attention to the horror humans are able to inflict on one another, and images can unite people in the wake of a tragedy by pointing to some more redeeming features of our shared humanity.

The pen, the sword, and the Cross

The pen, it seems, is the weapon of choice for the left — not just Charlie Hebdo — but as we digest the events in Paris, and even further afield in Boko Haram, it’s common to see solutions based on free speech, education, hashtags, and other tokenism. Fundamentally it’s the idea that we can talk ourselves out of this hole, out of this despair, that somehow if we just get the words right, we can stop the bloodshed. We can respond to offensive words with more words. And words, of course, should never hurt us.

The sword, then, is the weapon of choice for the right. I’ve read commentators conducting post-mortems on recent tragedies, or suggesting solutions to the underlying issues whose opinions range from giving everybody guns (relying on the threat of mutually assured destruction), or sending in guys with bigger guns to stamp out these issues and bring order.

Je suis Jesus. I am not called to solidarity — or conformity — with those who would wield the pen as a weapon to secure their ideology (like Charlie Hebdo), though I am called to love the cartoonist, the journalist, and, I believe, to value and preserve free-speech (or to be prepared to speak freely, and face the consequences, when speech isn’t free). My identity is not caught up with my ability to speak, to write, to draw, or to have others do this in a way that expresses who I am. Nor, am I called, to solidarity — or conformity — with those who want to take up arms to defend their ideology (like the terrorists, or the anti-Islamists), even if the ideology closely matches my own, even if taking up arms is the response the government chooses this is only my responsibility if I am a politician, or soldier, and there are other ethical issues that kick in there.

There’s no doubt that the Biblical solution, at least temporarily, to the chaos in this world involves a wisely discerned mix of left and right. Certainly the New Testament describes the Government as a sword, wielded by God (and this wielding, as God’s interactions with human history via governments always have been, happens through human agency). And certainly there’s an expectation from the very nature of the Bible, and the nature of humanity, that we are made to communicate with each other, to relate, and to approach problems with words, and reason, not simply with fists. This is one of the things that clearly marks us out from the rest of God’s creation right from the opening chapters of the Bible. We, like God, speak. And things happen.

But I am not in government. I vote for a government. I pray for our government, and other governments. But I am not a wielder of the sword.

It’s simplistic to say Jesus wasn’t interested in words simply because he didn’t write much down himself. He was the word made flesh. It’s simplistic to say Jesus wasn’t interested in the process of government, and saw no place for armed responses to events simply because rather than taking the throne he died at the hands of the government, and rather than carrying a sword he carried his Cross. The reality is much more complicated than either of these caricatures allow.

What is clear though, is that when it comes to transforming the broken world, and when it comes to the transformation being conformed into the image of Jesus involves, there’s a certain flavour to what Jesus did that goes beyond employing pen or sword to triumph over our enemies.

The use of the sword or the pen as a means to fix this broken world will only be temporary so long as their use is detached from God’s own solution to the mess. Jesus. Specifically the Cross. If we want real and permanent solutions that transform humanity for the better, then the Cross must organise our approach to chaos, and our wielding of pen or sword.

Je suis Jesus. The mark I make on the broken world should not be in my name, or the name of my ideology, or my platform. If I am Jesus, if I am being conformed to his image, if I am to represent and identify with him, the mark I make should look much more like the mark he made. Not with the pen, not with the sword, but with the Cross.

Je suis Jesus. How do I respond?

How did Jesus live? What did he call me to do? What does ‘setting my mind on things above’ even look like?

The calls to imitate Jesus based on the theological truth that we are united with him, and being conformed into his likeness, always look like expressions of what Jesus did at the Cross. What he calls us to do— to love God, love our neighbours, and love our enemies.

Look what Paul says in his letter to the church in Philippi. Imagine a world where this is the solution people adopt in times of conflict and you can see how the cross is the solution to every imaginable human to human conflict.

Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.

In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

Who, being in very nature God,
    did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing
    by taking the very nature of a servant,
    being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
    he humbled himself
    by becoming obedient to death—
        even death on a cross!

Or there’s these words from his second letter to the church in Corinth. Paul talks about what it means to face up to human enemies, with competing ideologies, while preaching the Gospel and taking part in what he later calls “God’s ministry of reconciliation”…

But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may also be revealed in our mortal body. So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you.

And finally, to complete the circuit, what Paul says life looks like when we “set our minds on things above”…

Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. Because of these, the wrath of God is coming. You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived. But now you must also rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator

Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.

Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful. Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts. And whatever you do,whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”

The message of Christ — the message of the Cross — is what motivates the sort of virtues Paul lists here, these are the virtues of the Cross. The virtues Jesus displays as he dies for his enemies, as he calls out “father forgive them” not just in the face of the insults of the crowd, but the massive ignomious insult of the Cross, where he, in very nature God, is murdered by the ones he came to save. People. Me. You. People who had set ourselves up as God’s enemies, and showed that enmity by nailing him to a plank of wood in a manner of death reserved for slaves and traitors.

That’s a whole lot of Paul’s letters covered — and a whole lot of Paul saying essentially the same thing. If we are Jesus, if we share in his death and resurrection, and the transformation that brings, we’re called to respond to the brokenness in this world like Jesus did. Stepping into it, experiencing the pain and suffering of this world, in order to bring love, forgiveness, and reconciliation, to others, especially our enemies, not simply because this is a good way to live (it is), but because it points to what God did for us, his enemies, in Jesus Christ, and at the Cross — which is where real transformation can be found.

This approach — being the body of Christ in the midst of a broken world and in the wash-up of a tragedy also helps us answer the big philosophical question that is almost always asked in the aftermath of a disaster — where is your God in this chaos? The answer is that he is right in the thick of it, working through his people. Until that answer is true we’re leaving our world in an existential quagmire.

Until all of us who want to say “Je suis Jesus” start stepping up and carrying our metaphorical crosses (starting at home, there’s plenty of tragedy in our nation, in our streets, in and our homes, as well as the global stuff), until those of us who own the name of Jesus are loving like this, being the body of Christ in our world, we’re relying on pen and sword to answer these questions, or provide solutions to problems these tools are ill-equipped to solve.

Wielding the pen just produces more hateful and hurtful words (alongside beautiful expressions of our shared humanity).

Wielding the sword might save some lives, but it always comes at the expense of others. Those we’re called to love.

Wielding the Cross, living like Jesus, should only come at our expense, mirroring the way that a restored relationship with God, for us, came at God’s expense, not ours.

The pen is mightier than the sword, but the cross dwarfs them both. The cross is how God makes his mark on the world. How he signed his name on the world, his name, which brings reconciliation and salvation to those who take it up.

The Cross guides our use of pen and word, and the government’s ideal use of the sword. The cross is the weapon God uses to transform the world, life by life.

9 principles for using social media (and other media) well as Christians

A few months ago I was asked to talk to some final year students at Queensland Theological College about ‘Ministry in an iWorld.’

You can see my (mostly) self-explanatory set of slides from my presentation here.

This weekend I’m repurposing what I said at this presentation for a group of young adults, so-called ‘digital natives,’ from church at South Bank. I’m hoping they’ll teach me some stuff about social media beyond the walls of Facebook.

This post will hopefully be something like a bridge from that college presentation to this next one… and hopefully also work as something of a one-stop-shop for where I’m up to with thinking on this stuff. One of the things I love about blogging is the way you can see your own thinking evolve over the passage of time, and hopefully this is equally helpful for people reading along at home.

Anyway.

Here’s the basic idea…

The internet presents fantastic opportunities for Christians to visibly be people who are made in the image of God, broken by sin, while being transformed into the image of Jesus, so long as we understand the medium.

That mix of being being broken by sin while being transformed into the image of Jesus is pretty important if the cardinal virtue of the new media is authenticity. And I think it is.

It’s important for us to understand the mediums we’re using to communicate because whether you think it’s a gross oversimplification – or a meaningless cliche – the medium really is the message. Or, at least, it dictates how the message is received. So we do actually need to be thoughtful about how (and if) we should use different tools at our disposal to proclaim Jesus.

Here’s a clip from Community where a baby boomer gets excited about the opportunities on YouTube. The same opportunities exist on all sorts of platforms, but we’ll work better online if what we do is less baby boomer and more native. That means thinking about the platforms and why and how people use them.

I thought it might be worth distilling that presentation down into these principles, and explaining what you see in the slides a little bit. Some of these points are abstract and theological (rather than practical), so I’ve tried to give the implications of each point as I understand them. So here goes.

1. God is the ideal communicator/media user. And Jesus is the ultimate example of his communication style.

The Christian God speaks. He created the world (by speaking). Somehow the world, as a creation, reflects the creator. Somehow our relating and communicating is a reflection of the relating and communicating within the Trinity. It’d be almost impossible to make any logical jumps from how God operates to how we should operate without believing that God reveals himself accurately as he communicates. God communicates through revelation – in the media of the Bible (including both the content and communication methodology), but ultimately he communicated in Jesus. His word made flesh. And God’s communication in Jesus shapes his communication through his people…

In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.” – Hebrews 1:1-3

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” – John 1:1“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” – John 1:14

“Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” – John 20:21

Implications: 

  • God made the world, how the world works reflects him.
  • God provides the definition of ‘good’ in all areas of life, including in how we go about communicating to other creatures (other people).
  • We see the best example of his communication, and the easiest to imitate, in the person of Jesus – his life, his manner, his words, his method, and his audience shape our life, manner, words, method and audience.
  • John’s Gospel starts with Jesus, the word, being sent into the world in the flesh, and ends with Jesus sending his people into the world.

2. We were made to communicate like God does, as his representatives.

In Genesis 1 we learn that God creates, speaks, rules, and relates. In Genesis 2 we see God’s image bearers doing the same thing. Bearing God’s image is an active thing. A job. And this job is performed by speaking (in Genesis 2 man names the animals, as God named the things he made in chapter 1). God’s use of living image bearers is one of the big differences between the God of the Bible and the dead idols he triumphs over throughout the Old Testament. Dead gods are represented by dead wood in shapes made by people, the living God is represented by speaking images that he made.

Compare Genesis 1:26 with Exodus 20:4.

“Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

“You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below.”

The  ‘image’ in these two passages are different Hebrew words, but the word used in one for sky and the other for heavens above, and the words for earth and water are the same, as is the word ‘make.’ I think there’s a strong link. God’s people are meant to represent God in a similar way to how idols were thought to represent dead gods. Israel weren’t meant to make images because they were meant to be images. Speaking images.

The communication power of images was pretty massive in the Ancient Near East, and in Rome, and whenever the word image appears in the Bible it is riffing off what people understand images to do in those contexts. When we follow Jesus we are transformed by the Spirit to bear his image in the world, as he perfectly bore the image of God.

“The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.” – Colossians 1:15

“For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.” – Romans 8:29

“And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.” – 2 Corinthians 3:18

Implications:

  • Our whole lives communicate about who it is we worship.
  • Social media is all about projecting an ‘image’ to the world (often using images).
  • We can choose to project an image of ourselves, our idols, or the idol of self, or we can choose to represent Jesus, bearing his image, like we were made to.
  • When we speak as Christians we should speak about Jesus and the world God made, as people shaped by Jesus.

3. God communicates by bridging the gap to his audience – especially in Jesus – so we should too.

There are some fancy theological buzz words for this – God makes himself understandable (accommodates) us when he speaks, especially through the process of coming to us, becoming like us and speaking our language (incarnation) – this is what we should be imitating. God is infinite. We are finite. Add up every human thought ever produced, published, and uploaded to the interwebs, and you’re not even getting towards a drop in the ocean when it comes to knowing about God, or the universe he made. Google’s Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt famously claimed (perhaps incorrectly) that:

“There were 5 Exabytes of information created between the dawn of civilization through 2003, but that much information is now created every 2 days.”

This means there’s a lot of information out there about the world (and the suggestion is that Schmidt underestimated how much). If you add up the lifespans, and knowledge, of every human who has existed, and will exist, you still get a finite number. And God’s knowledge is infinite… God knows lots about everything that we don’t (and can’t). He especially knows things about infinity – and his infinite self – that we cannot possibly comprehend. In order for us to know anything about God, truly, he needs to tell us in ways we can understand. This is where the concept of revelation fits in. God bridges this gap and reveals himself in his world, by his word, by the Word made flesh (Jesus), and by the Spirit. This is called ‘accommodation.’ God accommodates himself to us most clearly in Jesus, in the climactic act of the story he is orchestrating on the world stage, the ‘incarnation’ – where he becomes human, and knowable, in the ultimate act of revelation – the act that the rest of revelation (the Bible) points towards (and points out from).

If God has revealed himself to us by his Spirit we’re a little closer to the infinite than we were before this happens. We know stuff about God that other people don’t yet. When we speak in this world we need to remember this gap, and do our best to bridge it.

While these words from Paul in 1 Corinthians could sound like a bit of a dodge, moving away from scrutiny, they’re also consistent with the gap between God’s nature and ours, and what is needed to communicate across that gap, as outlined above.

This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words. The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.” – 1 Corinthians 2:13-14

Paul doesn’t say we should leave that person in the dark and wait for the Spirit to do its work, he seems to think the Spirit works through us as we speak, and particularly as we accommodate the people we’re speaking to. It’s interesting to read this chapter in parallel with Philippians 2. Paul seems to be modelling his accommodating approach on the incarnating accommodation of Jesus.

Though I am free and belong to no one, I have made myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law), so as to win those not having the law. To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings.” – 1 Corinthians 9:19-23

He goes into this ‘accommodating’ thing more in his second letter to the Corinthians.

“… we have renounced secret and shameful ways; we do not use deception, nor do we distort the word of God. On the contrary, by setting forth the truth plainly we commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God. And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For what we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ.” – 2 Corinthians 4:2-6

Implications:

  • Jesus used the medium people in his day used (he spoke – but he also demonstrated his message through action, and symbols (like the Lord’s Supper), using the language of the people he spoke to (Aramaic), the genres they were familiar with (parables and sermons), and adapted his message according to who he was speaking to.
  • Jesus words were backed up by his life. He lived a persuasive life. Our conduct backs up our message – our conduct, thanks to social media, is more visible than ever before.
  • We should aim to communicate with people where they are at, and try, as much as possible given the gap between how we see and understand the world and how those we are communicating understand the world, to “go native.”
  • Accommodation will include understanding the mediums we use to communicate with these people, how people use them, and what these mediums do to shape the messages (and messengers) they carry, and communicating accordingly in ways that commend and fit our message.
  • We need to present the unchanging Gospel in ways that are consistent with how the people we are speaking to use the mediums we adopt.
  • Our communication should be us generously offering what God has given to us to others. We are giving something to the people we speak to.

4. God communicates by subverting the mediums he adopts. So we should too.

If the ‘incarnation’ – the word becoming flesh – is God’s ultimate piece of communication, the ultimate part of this ultimate piece of communication is the cross (and the resurrection). The Cross reveals God’s ethos – God is a God whose character is defined by costly other-centred love. The Cross was a communication medium – it was used to declare the weakness of the crucified, to humiliate them while celebrating the might of the Roman empire. Jesus turns the Cross upside down. Paul arguably does the same with first century oratorical conventions. The Christian message is subversive. When we ‘accommodate’ and ‘incarnate’ we are also ‘subverting’ – this is consistent with what the genres adopted in the Bible do to other texts in their categories, from Wisdom Literature in the Old Testament to Gospels in the New. It’s this subversion, shaped by (and including) the content of our message, that will make it hard for people to accept the Gospel. For Paul, this meant living out the message of the Cross, being beaten, bloodied, humiliated and scarred – and owning that as part of his testimony about the ‘foolishness’ of Christ in the face of first century oratory that celebrated the perfectly sculpted orator’s body and the fusion of the schools of philosophy and rhetoric. Paul is the anti-orator. But in being the anti-orator, he is also being an orator. It’s a paradox. One we also have to wrestle with.

“For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God… God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong… And so it was with me, brothers and sisters… When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power. – 1 Corinthians 1:18, 27, 2:1-5

Implications:

  • Jesus becoming human is a model of drawing near to the people we want to reach, Jesus being executed on the cross shows that this drawing near should cost us something and provide a benefit to the other.
  • Our participation in any communication mediums – including social media – should be shaped by the Cross.
  • It should be loving, costly to ourselves, for the sake of the people we are trying to reach.

5. Media platforms are not neutral tools, they bring message shaping ‘myths’ to our communication, which in turn shape their users.

These ‘myths’ are what we should be subverting.

You can read more about this stuff in this massive series on what social media use does to our brains. Communication mediums are like any tool – they shape the people who wield them as we use them to do stuff. Consider the arms of a builder using a sledge hammer vs the arms of a builder using a jackhammer. Tools shape us. It’d be naive to think that we (individually and collectively) aren’t changed when we make the switch from using largely oral communication to written communication, or changing from written communication with a high cost of production that is difficult to distribute to the almost frictionless publishing of the online world.

A ‘myth’ in this sense is the stories surrounding the platform, which provide implicit ‘values’ for the messages the medium carries – so, for example, with Facebook the myths are about friendship and connection. Facebook also uses an algorithm to control what people see or don’t see – this algorithm is a pattern based on these ‘myths’ and it completely shapes our experience of Facebook without most of us being aware.

These myths shape our communication – so they shape our thinking directly (inasmuch as our thinking is shaped directly by communication), and indirectly (inasmuch as we are shaped by the tools we use).

I think the Bible has some good stuff to say about worldly myths when it comes to communication – given, especially, that the New Testament was written into a time where arguably the greatest propaganda machine that has ever existed – the Roman Empire – was defining the way media happened (and Christian media words like “Gospel” and “preaching” had meanings for first century audiences that were being subverted).

For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” – 2 Corinthians 10:3-5

“Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.” – Romans 12:2

Some of the values and ‘myths’ our communication platforms contain will be expressions of the function as image bearers of the living God that all humans still have so we don’t necessarily have to turn every communication platform upside down in order to use them, but we do have to be aware of how and why a medium/platform works to use it well.

Implications:

  • If we are trying to decide whether to use or subvert a medium we should ask questions about the ‘myths’ or embedded values mediums/platforms contain, and the patterns these values create.
  • We need to know how mediums work so that our messages will be seen by the people we’d like to see them.
  • The Gospel of Jesus, with its ’embedded values’ that renew our minds, is the story that shapes us as communicators into living communication mediums. This trumps all other mediums/myths.
  • What these mediums do to us as we use them is part of the cost of communication that we should be prepared to wear in order to reach people.

6. Social media platforms are ‘social’ and they are ‘media’

Most people who get social media wrong (in my opinion – and by most objective measures of effective use of a medium) fail to take the dual nature of new media into account. It’s there in the name. Social Media is both ‘social’ – built around person-to-person relationships in networks, and ‘media’ – a public and permanent form of communication. If you’re not a stickler on your privacy settings (and even then – thanks to the way people can copy, record, screenshot, and share the stuff you post beyond your intended audience), when you post stuff online it’s a form of broadcasting/publishing. While you might post stuff to your friends on a platform like Facebook, every friend who joins in a discussion on one of your posts is potentially broadcasting the conversation to all of your mutual friends and most of their friends. That’s essentially how the Facebook algorithm works (though it is tweaked constantly).

If you’re talking to your friends online it’s worth remembering that it’s possible that you’re talking to your friends through a megaphone in a public park. Most people might not be interested in listening, but they don’t always have a choice. This is truer still on platforms like Twitter where the privacy settings are almost non-existent. And on blogs. The implications of this are that while the stuff you post may have an intended context when it comes to people you know, what you say can very quickly be shared beyond that context. An example – probably far removed from the experience of anyone reading this, is how much the mainstream media is now relying on tweets for their coverage of major events and human interest stories. Twitter is the new vox-pop. It’s handy for journalists because they can pick people based on their level of expertise, number of followers/retweets, or proximity to events.

Broadcast media from a central authoritative voice is dying. Authority is being determined by the market – the stuff that is shared and ‘viral’ rather than by expertise. This is good for those who want to publish stuff who didn’t originally have the platform, but it is bad for expertise (and expertise is important). Experts need to publish for themselves, and figure out how to get their content distributed through networks.

Media distribution used to look like this:

broadcast

 

 

 

Now it looks like this.

social

 

Those graphics are flogged from Tom Standage’s TEDx talk promoting the excellent Writing On The Wall which explores how this shift in media is a return to how the media worked prior to the mass media – suggesting that it’s mass media with distribution power in the hands of the few that is a relative anomaly once societies become literate.

Implications:

  • Don’t post stuff on social media that you don’t want broadcast to the world.
  • Because it’s media and you have a message you have to think a bit like someone being interviewed by a journalist (or all the people seeing your stuff). So stay on message – or at least avoid doing or saying things that undermine your key message. Which is the Gospel.
  • When you do post stuff, be aware that the whole world could be watching on have the audience beyond you initial audience in mind (and so, provide context for people who don’t know you, where possible).
  • When you want stuff to spread, don’t act as a ‘broadcaster’ – social media is two-way, it celebrates user generated content not stuff that feels corporate. Post stuff as a real person, to real people, with a view to ongoing relationship and conversation – not as some sort of robot.
  • Credibility is hard to achieve and easy to lose.

7. Social media platforms are ‘democratised’ media – they make everybody a potential reporter, an editor, or a curator.

Broadcast media as we know it is dying. Most of the obituaries point to the Internet, and the changing patterns of media consumption, as the killer. I think it’s also partly that our broadcast media is really terrible. Generally. And one of the ways it’s terrible is that it’s a completely one way street – and they’ve invited their demise by turning to social media to suddenly make media consumption two-way (think hashtags during Q&A, or tweets during reality TV). This trend is known as ‘democratisation.’

The word ‘democratised’ is a buzzword that describes a few concepts that distinguish social media from broadcast media. It captures these ideas.

  1. Everyone is free to publish online – publishing is free, or cheap (in the case of a blog).
  2. What people see (and where people are going to see things) has now been taken out of the hands of the publisher and put in the hands of algorithms like Google’s search tool and Facebook’s news feed. Google will doubtless be working harder and harder to include social ‘juice’ in their algorithm to deliver more intuitive results.
  3. User generated content has somehow gained traction at the expense of expert generated content and content generated by large corporations. Authenticity is the cardinal virtue of the social media world.
  4. Authority comes from the crowd – via recommendations directly sourced, and through user-generated platforms where content is created and reviewed by the masses (eg wikipedia, airbnb, Trip Advisor, Urban Spoon, Yelp, Beanhunter, etc).
  5. We participate in this new media world whether we know it or not – everything we share, like, interact with, and view, is monitored and used to shape the internet we, and our friends, see. We all have an audience.

Here are some handy facts about how this works. This is largely about Facebook and comes from a video called ‘A World Without Facebook.’

content

audience

The algorithms Facebook use influence our ability to effectively report, edit, and curate. They’re stuff to be aware of when it comes to the content you share. The algorithm changes all the time – but it basically measures how connected people in your network are to you (how often they interact with you), and how popular a particular post is. The algorithm is getting smarter all the time and Facebook is focused on serving up ‘high quality’ items. Posting lots of stuff nobody cares about is a way to guarantee Facebook will stop serving up your stuff to your friends. Maybe think about how often you interact with different sorts of posts and avoid the ones you tend to avoid.

Implications

  • The average person posts three things a day in their newsfeed, the average user with an average number of friends has up to 390 pieces of content they could be seeing any time they log in. It’s a noisy world. If you want people to meet the authentic, Gospel shaped, you and hear what you have to say you have to figure out how to grab attention amidst all this noise. Probably it will involve paying attention to others, and responding like a person who loves them (and actually loving them).
  • Genuine generosity or ‘providing value for free’ is at the heart of most advice about social media success.
  • There are fun studies out there on what happens to your newsfeed when you like everything, or like nothing, that suggest the more genuine you are in your interactions online the better the experience.
  • Be generous and genuinely other person centred on Facebook and you’re simultaneously winning and subverting the Facebook game.

8. Social media platforms are limited

Social media is ‘cheap’,  disembodied and pixelated, and word/verbal heavy (in the old way of talking about communication – it’s logos driven).

It doesn’t take long for a horrible use of a new tool to follow the invention of a tool. Historically horrible uses of tools have driven innovation – the porn industry is responsible for massive technological change, as is military research. Trolling. Cyber-bullying (really, just bullying). Horror stories about adults grooming kids. Phishing scams. Vigilante name and shame campaigns exposing people who are actually innocent as criminals. Doxing. It’s easy to see the very obvious failures of new media (old media isn’t much better – just google “phone hacking scandal” to see a prime example of pretty horrible stuff being done in the name of ‘media’). But social media has some pitfalls for the rest of us too.

Even when we accept the premise that our communication in person is ‘mediated’ – as in, we choose how we present ourselves and communicate our thinking to another party – a significant portion of our communication (and our ability to receive communication via our senses) is non-verbal. This means communication online is mostly words (we can do videos and pictures as well), it’s disembodied. Our communication is mediated by pixels. It’s disincarnate – by nature. Moving away from costly relationships and into the frictionless online environment is a move in the opposite direction to the example Jesus gives in becoming flesh. This said, God obviously values communication via text (and other mediums), that’s why we have the Bible – his written word (and why it calls us to live in ways that communicate things about who he is through our ethics, structures, and sacraments).

Part of the myth of social media is that it’s free – or cheap. Which gives messages carried on the medium an implicit value – lower than the value of a plane ticket that brings people together, lower than the value of a posted letter, or a phone call. But these communication forms are still valuable because all communication says something about the communicator valuing their audience. Communication takes time, creativity, effort. It costs. Online communication is also costly in terms of what the use of a medium is doing to the person using it, following the thinking outlined above. This cost is also caught up in the old saying that if you’re not paying for something you’re not the customer, you’re the product. Being on Facebook, or other mediums, comes at a cost to your privacy, to your brain, to your schedule…

It’s worth reading this mega-essay from Michael Jensen on the ABC’s Religion page to get a slightly different view on this question. He cites a whole heap of examples that back up the value of communication via writing, suggesting it is a valuable form of co-creating and image bearing. Which is absolutely true. If participating in social media wasn’t of value then I’ve wasted the 4,800 words I’ve spent on this post so far…

Here’s a snippet from this essay.

“Even when we say that the physical presence of a person doesn’t remove the need for interpretation, it is still the case that we use written texts to substitute for the relative immediacy of physical presence. People have of course been using social media for centuries. What is a letter but the use of a written text to mediate the presence of one person to another? And ancient writers had noticed the power of a written text to convey presence-in-absence. Psalm 119 is an extraordinary encomium to the torah, verging perhaps on blasphemy, since the words and commands and precepts and statutes are themselves praised to the highest. But since the divine word conveys – or even substitutes for – the divine presence, this logolatry is perfectly in keeping with Hebrew monotheism.

The epistolary form that so dominates the New Testament canon brings this issue of presence-in-absence to the fore. Paul repeatedly pours himself into his words, keenly feeling the pain of physical absence because of distance and because of the chains of his imprisonment. In 1 Corinthians 5:3, he writes, “though absent in body, I am present in spirit”…

For Paul, the point of being present in body is not as if somehow to remove the need for hermeneutics – it is, rather, ethical. This conveys a hermeneutical advantage, but does not remove the need for hermeneutics. What I mean by that is the fact that Paul reminds the churches of his physical presence, and yearns to be present with them again, is a testimony to his integrity and affirms his love for them. It was not only his words, but his observed manner of life in connection to those words – in imitation of Christ – that establishes his apostleship, and proves his sincerity of motive. He reminds his listeners of his costly service of them and of the way in which he supported himself financially when he was with them.

What Paul reminds us of here is that bodily creatures delight in their proximity to other bodily creatures. The physical presence of another person comforts and stimulates and enlivens us in a unique way. If it were not so, then death would not worry us: we would just read what the dead person wrote. Paul’s chains, and his fear of his impending death, do concern him because he will not be able to be present alongside his words so as to confirm and entrench them. It is he who will write, “now we see through a glass darkly; then we will see face to face.” Nevertheless, his words can – effectively if not completely – mediate his presence to his first readers, and beyond them, even to contemporary readers. Logos can, by the powers of recollection or imagination, supply the missing pathos and ethos.

Ultimately, in fact, Paul’s ministry was about the temporary absence of Christ, and about the way in which his presence could be mediated – by the Spirit, received by those who believed the preached Word of God.”

This is great stuff. I’ve edited out a few of the Biblical references because that quote is already too long… But while I agree that text is a “substitute for the relative immediacy of physical presence” that can “mediate the presence of one person to another” – it’s not a two way mediation. It only works that way for the person receiving the text. And the best ‘social’ media (indeed the best of any ‘communication’ – if it is an act of communion between two parties) is two-way. I think that’s what John captures when he writes this (and he writes something that is essentially identical in 3 John).

I have much to write to you, but I do not want to use paper and ink. Instead, I hope to visit you and talk with you face to face, so that our joy may be complete. – 2 John 1:12

Implications

  • Social media is disembodied ‘logos’ driven communication, which makes ethos (and other context people use for interpretation) largely invisible – when we use these platforms we need to provide this context in our words.
  • A good rule of thumb given the limitations of written communication is to write with clarity, while reading with charity. Give people what they need to understand you, read people in the most generous possible way and ask for help understanding what they’ve said.
  • While we interact with other pixelated avatars online, there’s a person on the other side of the screen.
  • The best communication – modelled on the incarnation of Jesus – is costly, and moves sacrificially from disembodiment to embodiment. Communication via pixels is easier than communication via blood, sweat, and tears.
  • Presence in ’embodied’ communication means the relationship is simultaneously costly/valuable for both parties. In text the cost is paid by the writer in the absent presence of the reader, and the value experienced by the reader in the absent presence of the writer.
  • Text is a great and important way to communicate, especially when we have to be absent. It lasts longer, and, thanks to the Internet, is much less costly to transmit than for any previous generation. Once upon a time text had to be engraved into stone. Printing this post on a printing press would have required plates to be created letter by letter.
  • A good rule of thumb in ‘costly’ communication is to up the cost a step when you’re responding. If someone texts you, ring them, if someone calls you, catch up over coffee, etc. The medium is the message – how we choose to communicate to someone shows how we value them.

9. Social Media has incredible potential for Christians to be the people we are called to be for the sake of the people around us.

This is more conclusion than final point, and this conclusion is the basic position I think we arrive at given the first eight points. Every communication medium has limits. That’s part of our finitude. But the massive opportunities presented by the incredibly low barriers to participating in the new media landscape mean Christians who want to live out our calling faithfully should be seeking to do this online (and offline). Where opportunities present themselves.

Implications:

  • Christians are called to pursue generous, costly, engagement with others, seeing the value of any available medium, but always seeking to become more ‘incarnate,’ in order to both present and live out the message of the Gospel so that our medium and message are aligned.

Here’s where things end up for Abed and Shirley, if you can remember back that far…

3 essays you should read that will help you understand media and the world better

I know. I know. Not much happening in these parts at present. But this isn’t just a token effort. I’ve been reading a bit around that Facebook series I still have to finish (with, incidentally, a list of recommended reading). Anyway. I love long form writing – the sort of thing that is shorter than a book, but longer than your typical magazine feature, and I’ve found these essays particularly useful for thinking about media, and thus, thinking about the world explained by the media people produce. None of these are new. But they are good.

David Foster Wallace, E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction, 1993

This is a fun essay from one of my favourite writers that looks at what an addiction to irony in pop culture does to public discourse. It was written way back in 1993. David Foster Wallace, like Kurt Vonnegut and Nicholson Baker (who essentially ‘reviewed’ wikipedia, and who also reviewed a book about a guy who wrote a book about reading the dictionary), can make a book review of a dictionary something entirely readable and enjoyable (PDF).

E Unibus Pluram is part celebration of post-modern pop culture conventions, part navel gazing, but it is chock full of insights about our relationship with the screens in our lives.

After providing a brief survey of the nature of sit-com humour (back in the 90s), DFW makes this interesting point that gels with all the media ecology stuff you might have paid attention to in that mega-long Facebook series (the premise – the media we consume shapes us in ways we don’t always notice).

“If television can invite Joe Briefcase into itself via in-gags and irony, it can ease that painful tension between Joe’s need to transcend the crowd and his status as Audience member. For to the extent that TV can flatter Joe about “seeing through” the pretentiousness and hypocrisy of outdated values, it can induce in him precisely the feeling of canny superiority it’s taught him to crave, and can keep him dependent on the cynical TV-watching that alone affords this feeling.”

He puts on his prophetic hat a little – remember this is pre-smart phone, pre-flat screen, pre-internet TV…

“The appeal of watching television has always involved fantasy. Contemporary TV, I’ve claimed, has gotten vastly better at enabling the viewer’s fantasy that he can transcend the limitations of individual human experience, that he can be inside the set, imago’d, “anyone, anywhere.” Since the limitations of being one human being involve certain restrictions on the number of different experiences possible to us in a given period of time, it’s arguable that the biggest TV-tech “advances” of recent years have done little but abet this fantasy of escape from the defining limits of being human.”

Neil Postman, Five things we need to know about technology, 1998

Neil Postman wrote a book called Amusing Ourselves to Death which is something of an extended treatment of these aforementioned ideas from David Foster Wallace, combined with a connection to the work of Marshall McLuhan (who coined the term “the medium is the message” – amongst other things).

Postman wrote this nice warning against whole-heartedly embracing technological developments without paying heed to the cost. His ideas, in sum:

“First, that we always pay a price for technology; the greater the technology, the greater the price. Second, that there are always winners and losers, and that the winners always try to persuade the losers that they are really winners. Third, that there is embedded in every great technology an epistemological, political or social prejudice. Sometimes that bias is greatly to our advantage. Sometimes it is not. The printing press annihilated the oral tradition; telegraphy annihilated space; television has humiliated the word; the computer, perhaps, will degrade community life. And so on. Fourth, technological change is not additive; it is ecological, which means, it changes everything and is, therefore, too important to be left entirely in the hands of Bill Gates. And fifth, technology tends to become mythic; that is, perceived as part of the natural order of things, and therefore tends to control more of our lives than is good for us.”

The fifth point is the most interesting.

“Our enthusiasm for technology can turn into a form of idolatry and our belief in its beneficence can be a false absolute. The best way to view technology is as a strange intruder, to remember that technology is not part of God’s plan but a product of human creativity and hubris, and that its capacity for good or evil rests entirely on human awareness of what it does for us and to us.”

J.R.R Tolkein, On Fairy Stories, 1947

This one is a slight change of pace. I hadn’t heard of it until I read a footnote in TheoMedia, but it has come up a couple of times since. It’s worth a read, partly our of curiosity, but partly because if you want to be a story teller it pays to learn from master story tellers… What I really like about this essay (and about the others above) is the link they make between media-making, and media-consumption, and what it means to be human. DFW was an Atheist, Neil Postman was Jewish, and Tolkein a Catholic – but each has something profoundly true to say about our humanity and how it is shaped by what we consume and create.

“Mythology is not a disease at all, though it may like all human things become diseased. You might as well say that thinking is a disease of the mind. It would be more near the truth to say that languages, especially modern European languages, are a disease of mythology. But Language cannot, all the same, be dismissed. The incarnate mind, the tongue, and the tale are in our world coeval. The human mind, endowed with the powers of generalization and abstraction, sees not only green-grass, discriminating it from other things (and finding it fair to look upon), but sees that it is green as well as being grass. But how powerful, how stimulating to the very faculty that produced it, was the invention of the adjective: no spell or incantation in Faerie is more potent. And that is not surprising: such incantations might indeed be said to be only another view of adjectives, a part of speech in a mythical grammar. The mind that thought of light, heavy, grey, yellow, still, swift, also conceived of magic that would make heavy things light and able to fly, turn grey lead into yellow gold, and the still rock into a swift water. If it could do the one, it could do the other; it inevitably did both. When we can take green from grass, blue from heaven, and red from blood, we have already an enchanter’s power—upon one plane; and the desire to wield that power in the world external to our minds awakes. It does not follow that we shall use that power well upon any plane. We may put a deadly green upon a man’s face and produce a horror; we may make the rare and terrible blue moon to shine; or we may cause woods to spring with silver leaves and rams to wear fleeces of gold, and put hot fire into the belly of the cold worm. But in such “fantasy,” as it is called, new form is made; Faerie begins; Man becomes a sub-creator.”

 

“The human mind is capable of forming mental images of things not actually present. The faculty of conceiving the images is (or was) naturally called Imagination. But in recent times, in technical not normal language, Imagination has often been held to be something higher than the mere image-making, ascribed to the operations of Fancy (a reduced and depreciatory form of the older word Fantasy); an attempt is thus made to restrict, I should say misapply, Imagination to “the power of giving to ideal creations the inner consistency of reality.”

Ridiculous though it may be for one so ill-instructed to have an opinion on this critical matter, I venture to think the verbal distinction philologically inappropriate, and the analysis inaccurate. The mental power of image-making is one thing, or aspect; and it should appropriately be called Imagination. The perception of the image, the grasp of its implications, and the control, which are necessary to a successful expression, may vary in vividness and strength: but this is a difference of degree in Imagination, not a difference in kind. The achievement of the expression, which gives (or seems to give) “the inner consistency of reality,” is indeed another thing, or aspect, needing another name: Art, the operative link between Imagination and the final result.”

Those bits are good. These bits are absolute gold.

To many, Fantasy, this sub-creative art which plays strange tricks with the world and all that is in it, combining nouns and redistributing adjectives, has seemed suspect, if not illegitimate. To some it has seemed at least a childish folly, a thing only for peoples or for persons in their youth. As for its legitimacy I will say no more than to quote a brief passage from a letter I once wrote to a man who described myth and fairy-story as “lies”; though to do him justice he was kind enough and confused enough to call fairy-story-making “Breathing a lie through Silver.”

“Dear Sir,” I said—Although now long estranged,

Man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.
Disgraced he may be, yet is not de-throned,
and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned:
Man, Sub-creator, the refracted Light
through whom is splintered from a single White
to many hues, and endlessly combined
in living shapes that move from mind to mind.
Though all the crannies of the world we filled
with Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build
Gods and their houses out of dark and light,
and sowed the seed of dragons—’twas our right
(used or misused). That right has not decayed:
we make still by the law in which we’re made.”

Fantasy is a natural human activity. It certainly does not destroy or even insult Reason; and it does not either blunt the appetite for, nor obscure the perception of, scientific verity. On the contrary. The keener and the clearer is the reason, the better fantasy will it make. If men were ever in a state in which they did not want to know or could not perceive truth (facts or evidence), then Fantasy would languish until they were cured. If they ever get into that state (it would not seem at all impossible), Fantasy will perish, and become Morbid Delusion…

 

Fantasy can, of course, be carried to excess. It can be ill done. It can be put to evil uses. It may even delude the minds out of which it came. But of what human thing in this fallen world is that not true? Men have conceived not only of elves, but they have imagined gods, and worshipped them, even worshipped those most deformed by their authors’ own evil. But they have made false gods out of other materials: their notions, their banners, their monies; even their sciences and their social and economic theories have demanded human sacrifice. Abusus non tollit usum. Fantasy remains a human right: we make in our measure and in our derivative mode, because we are made: and not only made, but made in the image and likeness of a Maker.

His epilogue is insanely good. I’ve already quoted heaps of him. I know. But this is eminently quotable, and I am guessing you’re not going to click the link and read the whole thing, so here is an only ever-so-slightly abridged version of his concluding remarks.


Probably every writer making a secondary world, a fantasy, every sub-creator, wishes in some measure to be a real maker, or hopes that he is drawing on reality: hopes that the peculiar quality of this secondary world (if not all the details) are derived from Reality, or are flowing into it…

The peculiar quality of the ”joy” in successful Fantasy can thus be explained as a sudden glimpse of the underlying reality or truth. It is not only a “consolation” for the sorrow of this world, but a satisfaction, and an answer to that question, “Is it true?” The answer to this question that I gave at first was (quite rightly): “If you have built your little world well, yes: it is true in that world.” That is enough for the artist (or the artist part of the artist). But in the “eucatastrophe” we see in a brief vision that the answer may be greater—it may be a far-off gleam or echo of evangelium in the real world. The use of this word gives a hint of my epilogue. It is a serious and dangerous matter. It is presumptuous of me to touch upon such a theme; but if by grace what I say has in any respect any validity, it is, of course, only one facet of a truth incalculably rich: finite only because the capacity of Man for whom this was done is finite.

I would venture to say that approaching the Christian Story from this direction, it has long been my feeling (a joyous feeling) that God redeemed the corrupt making-creatures, men, in a way fitting to this aspect, as to others, of their strange nature. The Gospels contain a fairystory, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories. They contain many marvels—peculiarly artistic, beautiful, and moving: “mythical” in their perfect, selfcontained significance; and among the marvels is the greatest and most complete conceivable eucatastrophe. But this story has entered History and the primary world; the desire and aspiration of sub-creation has been raised to the fulfillment of Creation. The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man’s history. The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation. This story begins and ends in joy. It has pre-eminently the “inner consistency of reality.” There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true, and none which so many sceptical men have accepted as true on its own merits. For the Art of it has the supremely convincing tone of Primary Art, that is, of Creation. To reject it leads either to sadness or to wrath.

It is not difficult to imagine the peculiar excitement and joy that one would feel, if any specially beautiful fairy-story were found to be “primarily” true, its narrative to be history, without thereby necessarily losing the mythical or allegorical significance that it had possessed. It is not difficult, for one is not called upon to try and conceive anything of a quality unknown. The joy would have exactly the same quality, if not the same degree, as the joy which the “turn” in a fairy-story gives: such joy has the very taste of primary truth. (Otherwise its name would not be joy.) It looks forward (or backward: the direction in this regard is unimportant) to the Great Eucatastrophe. The Christian joy, the Gloria, is of the same kind; but it is preeminently (infinitely, if our capacity were not finite) high and joyous. But this story is supreme; and it is true. Art has been verified. God is the Lord, of angels, and of men—and of elves. Legend and History have met and fused.

But in God’s kingdom the presence of the greatest does not depress the small. Redeemed Man is still man. Story, fantasy, still go on, and should go on. The Evangelium has not abrogated legends; it has hallowed them, especially the “happy ending.” The Christian has still to work, with mind as well as body, to suffer, hope, and die; but he may now perceive that all his bents and faculties have a purpose, which can be redeemed. So great is the bounty with which he has been treated that he may now, perhaps, fairly dare to guess that in Fantasy he may actually assist in the effoliation and multiple enrichment of creation. All tales may come true; and yet, at the last, redeemed, they may be as like and as unlike the forms that we give them as Man, finally redeemed, will be like and unlike the fallen that we know.

Facebook is messing with your head: Four ways to fight back

This is part 4 in a 5 part series on what social media does to our brains. It uses Facebook as a case study – but it’s not just about Facebook. In fact, it’s just as likely to apply to people who use smartphones… A study from the University of Winnipeg found:

“The values and traits most closely associated with texting frequency are surprisingly consistent with Carr’s conjecture that new information and social media technologies may be displacing and discouraging reflective thought.”

Part 1 established that there is good reason to believe that the communication mediums we use change the way we communicate and relate (media ecology), and thus change the way we think, in turn rewiring our brains (neuroscience and neuroplasticity), and that there is good evidence that this is consistent with a Christian view of the world. Part 2 considered how we might approach this emerging consensus about the impact of social media from the perspectives of media ecology and neuroscience. Part 3 considered how this fits in with a Christian view of the world – in these posts the conclusion was the same – mediums aren’t neutral, they contain powerful “myths” that conform their users to a particular way of operating and thus thinking – but forewarned is forearmed. If we bring our own deliberate framework to the party we’ll probably be able to avoid the power of these myths…

Christians have extra motivation to do this – we have a social network that is conforming us into a different image. We are participants in the body of believers, the church. United with Christ, by the Spirit, as God’s children. Being conformed into the image of Jesus – while avoiding competing patterns.

“Do not conform to the pattern of this worldbut be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is–his good, pleasing and perfect will.” Romans 12:2

The insights from media ecology and modern neuroscience aren’t teaching us anything that Christian theology didn’t already know – we are shaped by what we think about, and by how we receive and process information. If we’re going to avoid being manipulated by the media we use, and the myths they carry, we need to think hard and deliberately about how to avoid the patterns they try to imprint on our thinking – and the changes they make to our brains. There’s nothing wrong with your brain changing – that’s natural. But being in control and having your mind “renewed” is the goal.

This post, with some practical steps, will be particularly focused on a Christian approach, but hopefully the principles will be able to be extrapolated (because they’ll also draw from media ecology and neuroscience).

 

facebook brain

As I was reading stuff for this post, and as I was writing it,  I read a stunning book on approaching communication mediums as a Christian. I’ve read a bunch of these – and this is absolutely the best out there. This post took so long to write that the book got its own separate review – if you want to read a whole book, rather than an 8,000 word blog post, please check out Andy Byers’ TheoMedia: The Media of God and the Digital AgeYou won’t be disappointed.

1. Bring your own ‘myth-busting’ narrative (and deliberately be multi-medium)

To recap previous posts – the reason mediums aren’t neutral tools, the reason they can subtly change how we think and act as we use them, is that communication mediums come pre-loaded with myths that shape how we use them, and this shapes our thinking, which rewires our heads.

Media aren’t just channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. – Nicholas Carr, The Shallows

“When we go online, we, too, are following scripts written by others—algorithmic instructions that few of us would be able to understand even if the hidden codes were revealed to us. When we search for information through Google or other search engines, we’re following a script. When we look at a product recommended to us by Amazon or Netflix, we’re following a script. When we choose from a list of categories to describe ourselves or our relationships on Facebook, we’re following a script. These scripts can be ingenious and extraordinarily useful, as they were in the Taylorist factories, but they also mechanize the messy processes of intellectual exploration and even social attachment. As the computer programmer Thomas Lord has argued, software can end up turning the most intimate and personal of human activities into mindless “rituals” whose steps are “encoded in the logic of web pages.”  – Nicholas Carr, The Shallows

“First, like the telephone, the function of social media is to connect physically distant people. But any time people are connected through a medium, that connection happens within the rules of the medium. Our question then should not be “Is it real?” because connecting online is just as “real” as talking on the phone or sending a letter. The better question is, what are the rules of the medium and what are the underlying messages and patterns that emerge from those rules? – John Dyer, From the Garden To The City

Dyer has this to say about Facebook’s mythic messages and their impact on our thinking…

“Blogger and web developer Leisa Reichelt uses the term “ambient intimacy” to describe this background connection. She writes, “Ambient intimacy is about being able to keep in touch with people with a level of regularity and intimacy that you wouldn’t usually have access to, because time and space conspire to make it impossible. In order to achieve ambient intimacy, friends need to continually post things about themselves—what they are thinking, feeling, and doing—for their friends to read about. To maintain this pattern, we have to regularly think about what we’re thinking, feeling, and doing and then decide which of those things to communicate. In other words, when we do community online we have to think about ourselves much more than when we do community offline… This feedback loop of thinking about oneself is why many people conclude that the Internet makes us narcissistic… As far back as Cain’s city, we’ve said that our flesh will do whatever it can to make technology an idol of distraction. In the online world, the great danger is that we are constructing an idol of ourselves and becoming distracted with our own beauty… We are continually tempted to construct a Tower of Babel unto ourselves rather than work together on being the people of God, conformed into the image of his Son… Those born into Internet culture and those who feel comfortable in it will need to spend more time challenging it in order to avoid subtly giving in to its negative tendencies.”

These tendencies come in the embedded values, myths, or narratives surrounding and promulgating a platform, so, for example, Facebook’s is that by using Facebook you are more connected to your friends and the world.

As Christians, we already have a paradigm shaping narrative, the Gospel, a story that not only transforms our minds – but transforms our approach to media. What does this mean when it comes to Facebook? It means, firstly, that we’ll be suspicious of the narrative Facebook brings, but our use of Facebook will also be governed by priorities about our thinking, relationships and use of time that come from our understanding of who we are in Christ, where we’re heading, how we’re meant to live, and who it is that shapes our lives. Peter may as well have been writing about Facebook when he wrote these words…

Therefore, with minds that are alert and fully sober, set your hope on the grace to be brought to you when Jesus Christ is revealed at his coming.  As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do;  for it is written: “Be holy, because I am holy.” – 1 Peter 1:13-16

And this actually works. Having a controlling narrative robs little narratives of their power. Here’s how Andy Byers sums up some pretty similar advice in his most excellent TheoMedia, he also appreciates the opportunity social media presents for Christians to live like Jesus – to be “incarnate,” to carry our message to mediums that lower the barrier between medium and messenger (which is one of the features of profile-driven social media platforms, we naturally become part of the medium), but more on that later…

“Social media companies are providing us with a platform. It is not their job to police poor grammar or correct bad theology promulgated through their channels. As media platforms, Twitter, Tumblr, Blogger, and WordPress offer remarkable opportunities for conducting God’s mediated voice into the cybersphere. I just think it is important for us to recognize that behind the graphics on the screen are corporations with budget goals, profit plans, marketing strategies, and other business-oriented agendas. These are not necessarily corrupting influences. But they are there, barely perceptible in those imperatives (“just write”) and questions (“what’s happening, Andy?”). Responsible use of media technology means we that rely on more authoritative voices to govern our online activity than those coming from executives poised in their corporate suites. As Christians, we take our theological and technological cues from elsewhere… ”

… as media and religion specialist Heidi Campbell points out, there is the assumption in the extreme, distilled version of this more cautious perspective that media technology use will always shroud and distort human culture, so that we are left only with the ability to respond to its power or educate ourselves against its control. This approach often allows only for acceptance or rejection of technology in light of religious values. It does not leave room for considering how religious values may lead to more nuanced responses to technology or the creative innovation of aspects of technology so they are more congruent with core beliefs…

Heidi Campbell has proposed a more nuanced approach for understanding religion and media: “the religious-social shaping of technology.” She has found in her extensive observations that although communication technologies have the capacity to influence their users, religious groups often resist those influences and bring their theological traditions to bear on how they use them. In other words, although religious folks may indeed be shaped by the technologies they employ, at the same time they exert their own influences on media, incorporating communications technology within their existing conceptual grids and forcing some degree of theological compliance. As John Dyer succinctly puts it, “Technology should not dictate our values or our methods. Rather, we must use technology out of our convictions and values.” – Andy Byers, TheoMedia

I’m going to go a step further than simply suggesting that we use each technology, separately, within our existing value system, and suggest that using multiple platforms, deliberately (ie with thought and thinking about how to use them differently), dilutes the pull of particular narratives and the power of different platforms to completely shape your thinking. This deliberate mastery over multiple platforms will stop single platforms mastering you, and hijacking your head. It’ll help you notice the distinctives of different platforms, which is a shortcut to spotting a “myth”…

Choosing your narrative, and using tools and mediums according to your existing values, is the best way to control the “shaping” that is happening.

Dyer, who wrote From the Garden to the City has a useful five-pronged approach to ‘mythbusting’:

1. Valuation: “We must begin by continually returning to the Scriptures to find our Christian values and identity. From that perspective we can evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of technology and determine what values will emerge from the tendencies of use built into its design.”

2. Experimentation: “Thinking about technology is helpful, but it’s difficult to discover the tendencies and value systems built into a technology without actually using it”

3. Limitation: “Once we understand the patterns of usage of a technology, the next step is to see what happens when we put boundaries on it. If we become convinced that spending too much time on social media sites invites narcissism and that reading online limits deep thinking, then a disciplined set of limits is necessary.”

4. Togetherness: “The previous three steps—valuation, experimentation, and limitation—will be rendered mostly useless if we practice them in isolation apart from the context of Christian fellowship.”

5. Cultivation: “we must be careful not to enter into a kind of inactive stasis where we talk about technology but fail to support those who are actually doing technology in service of what God has asked of his image bearers: to cultivate and keep his creation and to make disciples of all nations. In recent years, Christian communities have been rediscovering the importance of cultivating and nurturing artists, and I think the time has come for us to begin doing the same with those working in technology. We already spend time and resources developing and encouraging business people and politicians, yet it is the technologists—the men and women creating the next generation of tools—who are often implicitly making important decisions about health care, energy, Internet regulation, privacy, weapons availability, biomedical advances, and so on.” 

2. Keep your head and hands ‘active’ inside and outside of social media

Most of the people who are worried about what the internet is doing to our head – those like Nicholas Carr – are quite fond of the effect books have on the head, Christians, who are people of the book (or at least people of words, people shaped by a story, if we don’t want to get to medium bound) should also probably into books – or at the very least reading long, coherent, literature presented in a logically linear form. Here’s a little ode to the book (and its effect on the brain) from Carr’s The Shallows. 

“Readers didn’t just become more efficient. They also became more attentive. To read a long book silently required an ability to concentrate intently over a long period of time, to “lose oneself” in the pages of a book, as we now say. Developing such mental discipline was not easy. The natural state of the human brain, like that of the brains of most of our relatives in the animal kingdom, is one of distractedness… Reading a book was a meditative act, but it didn’t involve a clearing of the mind. It involved a filling, or replenishing, of the mind. Readers disengaged their attention from the outward flow of passing stimuli in order to engage it more deeply with an inward flow of words, ideas, and emotions.”

“In one fascinating study, conducted Washington University’s Dynamic Cognition Laboratory and published in the journal Psychological Science in 2009, researchers used brain scans to examine what happens inside people’s heads as they read fiction. They found that “readers mentally simulate each new situation encountered in a narrative. Details about actions and sensation are captured from the text and integrated with personal knowledge from past experiences.” The brain regions that are activated often “mirror those involved when people perform, imagine, or observe similar real-world activities.” Deep reading, says the study’s lead researcher, Nicole Speer, “is by no means a passive exercise.” The reader becomes the book. The bond between book reader and book writer has always been a tightly symbiotic one, a means of intellectual and artistic cross-fertilization. – Nicholas Carr, The Shallows

This ‘incarnate’ relationship between book and reader – at least in the mind – is pretty interesting territory to explore, theologically, but for the purpose of the current exercise we’ll simply note that books seem to do desirable things to our head, and If it’s true that the “reader becomes the book” then books are arguably every bit as dangerous, if not more dangerous, than social media in terms of warping your mind… Reading books from one author, or on one topic, will skew your head and your thinking, potentially to a greater extent, than simply relying on one social media platform. The same advice “forwarned is forearmed” applies here as it does for social media – we should be aware of what is going on for our brains, and trying to exercise and stimulate them in multiple ways, not getting them addicted to a particular fix. So reading widely is probably important for a well rounded mind.

By the by, I love this advice and concept…

“Read at Whim. I learned this principle from the essayist and poet Randall Jarrell, who once met a scholar, a learned man and a critic, who commented that he read Rudyard Kipling’s novel Kim every year. Jarrell’s response: The critic said that once a year he read Kim; and he read Kim, it was plain, at whim: not to teach, not to criticize, just for love—he read it, as Kipling wrote it, just because he liked to, wanted to, couldn’t help himself. To him it wasn’t a means to a lecture or article, it was an end; he read it not for anything he could get out of it, but for itself. And isn’t this what the work of art demands of us? The work of art, Rilke said, says to us always: You must change your life. It demands of us that we too see things as ends, not as means—that we too know them and love them for their own sake. This change is beyond us, perhaps, during the active, greedy, and powerful hours of our lives; but during the contemplative and sympathetic hours of our reading, our listening, our looking, it is surely within our power, if we choose to make it so, if we choose to let one part of our nature follow its natural desires. So I say to you, for a closing sentence, Read at whim! read at whim!” Alan Jacobs, The Pleasure of Reading in an Age of Distraction

For every person who loves a good book – there are those, like Plato (see previous post), and Schopenhauer, who were worried about what books do to free thought and one’s ability to think outside the box, or books…

“The difference between the effect produced on the mind by thinking for yourself and that produced by Facebook is incredibly great… For social media forcibly imposes on the mind thoughts that are as foreign to its mood as the signet is to the wax upon which it impresses its seal. The mind is totally subjected to an external compulsion to think this or that for which it has no inclination and is not in the mood… The result is that much web browsing robs the mind of all elasticity, as the continual pressure of a weight does a spring, and that the surest way of never having any thoughts of your own is to log on to Facebook every time you have a free moment.”  (NOTE: The Facebooks, social media, and web browsing in this quote originally referring to the reading of books), – Freney, citing A Schopenhauer, Essays and Aphorisms

Be it Facebook, or books, there is something to be said, given our developing knowledge of neuroplasticity, for the concern that too much of a thing will shape your head into the image of the thing. But Carr actually thinks (and I’m with him on this bit), that reading well might spur us on to think better.

The words of the writer act as a catalyst in the mind of the reader, inspiring new insights, associations, and perceptions, sometimes even epiphanies. And the very existence of the attentive, critical reader provides the spur for the writer’s work… After Gutenberg’s invention, the bounds of language expanded rapidly as writers, competing for the eyes of ever more sophisticated and demanding readers, strived to express ideas and emotions with superior clarity, elegance, and originality. The vocabulary of the English language, once limited to just a few thousand words, expanded to upwards of a million words as books proliferated. – Nicholas Carr, The Shallows

I’d suggest – and I think Carr agrees, though he sort of beats around the bush a little – that taking various streams of data from multiple mediums and platforms – and integrating them, produces a more balanced brain and better thinking too.

Book readers have a lot of activity in regions associated with language, memory, and visual processing, but they don’t display much activity in the prefrontal regions associated with decision making and problem solving. Experienced Net users, by contrast, display extensive activity across all those brain regions when they scan and search Web pages. The good news here is that Web surfing, because it engages so many brain functions, may help keep older people’s minds sharp. Searching and browsing seem to “exercise” the brain in a way similar to solving crossword puzzles… – Nicholas Carr, The Shallows

There is an odd tendency (well, not really, it’s completely understandably given the vested interests) for writers of books to romanticise the reading of books as some sort of panacea for the changing brain. I don’t want to do that. Books, journal articles, long form essays… they’re all part of a healthy and varied diet of media. But I think the real key to having your brain is in charge isn’t so much in consuming the thoughts of others, without thought, it’s in thinking for yourself. In that sense I reckon the slightly paranoid (and reworked) Schopenhauer quote above is onto something. When we read something that someone else has written – that they have put a piece of themselves into, and when we make that connection where we put a piece of ourselves into their thoughts and let them occupy our heads, a sort of overlapping incarnation, we begin to think other people’s thoughts and have our heads shaped by their view of the world – now that’s fine if you want to think like your favourite author, but it’s a little bit scary. Just a little. And it’s enough to encourage me to make sure I read widely, but also to try to proactively think independently, and, perhaps, write my own thoughts down. Or type them. Creating your own words, deliberately, and putting them in mediums you choose, mindful of the myths involved in the platforms themselves, is probably the best way to stay in the driver’s seat when it comes to your brain that I can think of. It’s active rather than passive. And, in a post I wrote about TED a while back I discussed how I think it actually sort of works to help you integrate and process stuff. This effect is no doubt amplified if you do have an organising myth, or paradigm shaping narrative that helps you understand the world.

There’s a real circularity here where the media we consume is pretty important in terms of how we choose and identify a paradigmatic narrative that shapes our approach to life and helps us systematise and understand information, but the story also shapes that communication mediums we use and the information we encounter. This is particularly true for Christians, and I think it’s part of the reason the Bible simultaneously offers such effective advice (content) and is so effective at shaping our thinking (form/medium), by encouraging Christians to set their minds on a particular path via a regular dose of ‘TheoMedia’ the Biblical authors are deliberately shaping their readers’ thinking, and providing the thoughts.

It’s interesting how in both these passages – from Colossians and Philippians – which seem so apt to this sort of neuroscience meets media ecology exercise – link a healthy Christian mind to the concept of ‘peace’ in our hearts and minds…

Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory…

Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful. Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts. And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him – Colossians 3:1-4, 15-17

It’s also interesting how many hot-button neuroplasticity related activities Paul nails in this passage in Philippians 4. Prayer, thankfulness, mindfulness, focused thinking, and acting out one’s beliefs, are all incredibly powerful tools for shaping the mind. It’s possible that the “do not be anxious about anything” is followed by a neuroplastically sound approach to not being anxious. That actually works…

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.”

3. Be actively “Incarnate” on social media in order to lovingly accommodate – but don’t be a passive part of the machine

The last two points serve as something of a defence against letting Facebook take control of your head – but what if you want to take control of Facebook, using your head? I think there’s something to be said for modelling how we communicate to the world around us on how God chose to communicate and reveal himself to us, and I think there are two nice theological words that help.

Because God is infinite and completely without limit it would blow our little, tiny, finite minds to even begin to comprehend just a tiny bit of that vast gap between us without his help. There is now way we can really understand God as he really is without him revealing himself to us. We’d make up pictures of God (and people have, for as long as people have been around), but these pictures would all look kind of stupid compared to the real thing. God has to reveal himself in order to be made known – and in order to bridge the finite/infinite divide he has to accommodate himself to us. He’s the one in the position of dominance. He’s the one who needs to make the first move. And it’s like that with us – Paul says first, we only know stuff we know about God because God has revealed himself to us by the Holy Spirit, and second, people without the Spirit think we’re talking a load of rubbish…

“What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words. The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.” – 1 Cor 2:12-14

Then in 2 Corinthians 3 and 4 he talks about people who don’t know God having veils that stop them seeing God – they can’t see God without an act of accommodation. And we are the accommodaters. It is our job to try to take steps towards other people in our communication, to help them see things from our perspective by first understanding theirs. To speak the language of the people we love so that they’ll understand us, in the mediums they use.

The second part of God’s communication methodology is the incarnation – where his word, Jesus, became flesh. He didn’t become flesh and speak a crazy language that nobody around him could understand. He became flesh and spoke Aramaic, which was much more appropriate in first century Judea than it is in 21st century Australia. But that was God’s communication method from the very beginning – the Bible is a collection of literature produced in genres that were appropriate to carry particular truths about God to particular people, but also serve to communicate about God in a timeless way. The Bible is an incarnate text, produced by real people, for a God who uses incarnation as a communication methodology and expects us to do likewise…

Facebook is an opportunity for us to accommodate our message about Jesus in an incarnate way – especially if mediums change our head so that we become like the medium, this is the very essence of what incarnation is. It’s what I think Paul is thinking about when he writes:

“I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some.” – 1 Cor 9:22

This point isn’t necessarily going to protect our heads from outside influences like the first two points – in fact, it may involve you deliberately being reshaped by the medium (in this case, Facebook) in order to reach others. This becoming an “incarnate” representative of Jesus should guide our use of mediums and keep us connected to the master narrative of our lives, and to the ultimate social network – our union with Christ, and our participation in his body, the church. I wrote some stuff about using Facebook as a Christian a long time ago (in Internet years), and there’s not a lot I’d change – except that I’m much more cautious about wholeheartedly (or wholeheadedly) recommending jumping in without the caveats laid out above.

I do like this quote from TheoMedia on the way the Gospel story pushes us, as participants, to engage with the people of our generation using the communication and cognitive tools they’re engaging with…

Discerning what characterizes the socially constructed worlds people around us inhabit places us in a better position to address the generation God calls us to serve. Doing so, however, necessitates that we conceptualize and articulate Christian beliefs—the gospel—in a manner that contemporary people can understand. That is, we must express the gospel through the “language” of the culture—through the cognitive tools, concepts, images, symbols, and thought forms—by means of which people today discover meaning, construct the world they inhabit, and form personal identity. — Grenz & Franke, quoted in TheoMedia

The first sentence is a little difficult to parse – but what he’s saying is we have to think a little bit, and basically understand the myths – the stories that shape people’s lives – in order to speak to them. And this, increasingly, means doing some basic myth-busting media studies. So the exercise in the first point above isn’t completely self-indulgent and pointless after all.

Being incarnate always comes at a cost. It always involves becoming something that you weren’t before. Sometimes the cost might be a cost you pay because you want to embrace a change whole-heartedly (or whole-headedly), other times it might be a sacrifice. Sometimes you become incarnate in something without realising – and Facebook is particularly insidious when it comes to a passive form of being incarnate, it gets its energy from your narcissism. A bit like the robots in the matrix. If you’re not paying attention, Facebook consumes your time and resources, it keeps your eyeballs fixed to a screen, by getting you addicted to the chemicals that are released when other people pay attention to you. It turns you into a more self-seeking person. If you become incarnate on Facebook without thinking, it comes at a substantial cost. To become incarnate without paying that particular cost, where you are simply viewed as a human brain and set of relationship connections to be harvested by a giant advertising corporation, you need to be aware of what Facebook is trying to do, and you need to subvert it (which we’ll get to below). It may be that subverting this is to become thoughtfully incarnate and know that you’re paying a price in your interactions by deliberately looking for ways to pay the price.

It may be that being incarnate in this medium isn’t for you – perhaps the temptation to conform to Facebook’s world of narcissism and the endless siren call encouraging you to smash your time and energy against the pointless rocks of Farmville (or whatever the kids and empty-nest mothers are playing these days) is irresistible and you’re going to wreck your life – or at least your head. At this point it’s worth keeping those words from Romans 12 bouncing around in your head like a mantra.

“Do not conform to the pattern of this worldbut be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is–his good, pleasing and perfect will.” Romans 12:2

There’s a very close relationship between incarnation and idolatry – between being a person who is made in the image of the God who made them (and Jesus who remakes them), and being a person who carries the image of whatever idol they are consumed by. It’s human to reflect and promote the image of something – even if, and often, that something is you and your own glory. It’s all about the heart – and the mind. Whatever you are fixated on when you’re participating in a medium is shaping how you use it, and shaping you through your use of it.

You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everyone. You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts... And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. – 2 Corinthians 3:2-3, 18

 

By the by, this is why I get so excited about the implications of the image of God for communicating in our modern multimedia world – a world where images are everywhere and trying to sell something, trying to display what it is that makes our hearts sing, is a world not too far removed from the world where Genesis landed on the scene as a text, a world full of images-as-persuasion. A world where the image you projected told everybody who you were.

If you can’t log off a medium, if you’ve become so caught up in it that you can’t walk away without believing that you are doing significant damage to yourself as a person – then it has become an idol, and you’ve become a slave. Mediums with strong myths can do that. Marshall McLuhan, the Media Ecologist, loved to quote Psalm 115 when talking about the potential for mediums to unhelpfully become extensions of our humanity…

But their idols are silver and gold,
    made by human hands.
They have mouths, but cannot speak,
eyes, but cannot see.
They have ears, but cannot hear,
noses, but cannot smell.

They have hands, but cannot feel,
feet, but cannot walk,
nor can they utter a sound with their throats.

Those who make them will be like them,
    and so will all who trust in them.

4. Be the “Cruciform” Medium – communicate sacrificially, and through sacrifice

The Net commands our attention with far greater insistency than our television or radio or morning newspaper ever did. Watch a kid texting his friends or a college student looking over the roll of new messages and requests on her Facebook page or a businessman scrolling through his e-mails on his BlackBerry—or consider yourself as you enter keywords into Google’s search box and begin following a trail of links. What you see is a mind consumed with a medium. When we’re online, we’re often oblivious to everything else going on around us… The interactivity of the Net amplifies this effect as well. Because we’re often using our computers in a social context, to converse with friends or colleagues, to create “profiles” of ourselves, to broadcast our thoughts through blog posts or Facebook updates, our social standing is, in one way or another, always in play, always at risk. The resulting self-consciousness—even, at times, fear—magnifies the intensity of our involvement with the medium. – Nicholas Carr, The Shallows

I think the key to subverting the power of the medium of Facebook – but this is true for every other platform I can think of – is having a narrative that shapes your life that is built around an incredible act of subversion. A narrative that is built not on building yourself up, but on dying to self out of love for others. When it comes to using the incarnation as a model for thinking about participation in a social network like Facebook, what can be a better control of how we ‘incarnate’ ourselves than the climax of God’s own incarnation in our world, in Jesus. The cross.

Most properly Christian engagement with the world is an act of subversion. Because it will be shaped by the ultimate act of subversion. Shaped by the cross (paradoxically, if these acts are consistent with the character of God, as it was revealed at the cross, it’s not subversion at all, but consistent with the approach to life humans should have had from the very beginning).

Just as Jesus subverted the most powerful propaganda medium, and the most powerful myths, of the Roman empire – by turning the crucifix from a symbol of humiliating domination into a symbol of liberating hope, rather than imperial power – we are, as we take up our crosses to follow Jesus, called to subvert the values of systems and platforms that want to glorify ourselves or our idols.

But the subversion thing probably needs some fleshing out. When it comes to the me-soaked world of social media which is about your profile. Your status. Your likes… the challenge is to make Facebook simultaneously authentically you (which is a little subversive), and not about you at all… channeling John the Baptist…

“He must become greater; I must become less.” – John The Baptist, John 3:30

This is hard on Facebook, it is hard beyond Facebook – it’s, as David Ould and I discussed recently, equally challenging for bloggers – one way I tackle this one, personally, is almost never ever checking my stats – and feeling dirty and craven when I do, I want so much for blogging to not be about me, while realising, paradoxically, that the very nature of a blog is that it is.

This means, when it comes to Facebook, for the Christian, it’s not about us. We can’t play Facebook’s me game. It’s not just about making it about Jesus so that you drive your non-Christian friends nuts – I’ve had to pull myself up on this front a little lately. We have to make Facebook about actively and sacrificially loving others, in a way that is real and unexpected – not just by hitting like on their status or telling someone they look nice in a photo. Being sacrificial and incarnate on Facebook might actually mean doing something loving in the real world. The medium you use to communicate says something about the level of sacrifice you’re willing to make in the act of communication. Part of both accommodation and incarnation involves taking costly steps to close a gap between communicator and recipient – be it on God’s part, or ours as we communicate about God. Being subversive communicators, more broadly, might mean adopting a more sacrificial medium than expected. Or approaching a medium in a more sacrificial way than intended. As a little bit of proof that mediums matter, check out this quote from one of John’s letters, and then these thoughts on it from John Dyer.

“I have much to write to you, but I do not want to use paper and ink. Instead, I hope to visit you and talk with you face to face, so that our joy may be complete.” – 2 John 1:12

 

“The great temptation of the digital generation is to inadvertently disagree with John and assume that online presence offers the same kind of “complete joy” as offline presence. Our problem is not that technologically mediated relationships are unreal, nor is the problem that all online communication is self-focused and narcissistic. Rather, the danger is that just like the abundance of food causes us to mistake sweet food for nourishing food, and just like the abundance of information can drown out deep thinking, the abundance of virtual connection can drown out the kind of life-giving, table-oriented life that Jesus cultivated among his disciples. Social media follows the device paradigm in that it masks the long, sometimes arduous process of friendship and makes it available at the press of a button – John Dyer, From the Garden to The City

Relying on Facebook to sustain your friendships cheapens your friendships, just as relying on Facebook for communication cheapens your communication. If you communicate using other mediums, there’s the added bonus that Facebook isn’t rewiring your brain all on its lonesome.  

Being incarnate, and being properly subversive, means knowing something about the system you are infiltrating. Jesus didn’t come to first century Israel speaking English. That would’ve been stupid. And he wasn’t crucified by accident. Becoming incarnate requires some deliberate attention to detail, an understanding of the world or platform you are operating in. You’ve got to know the language of the people in order to converse – and you probably need to have some idea about how the systems and algorithms and business imperatives underlying these platforms shape what they present to the average user. So, for example, Being incarnate on social media doesn’t mean being a Super-Christian who nobody wants to hear from (like John Piper on Twitter or Mark Driscoll on Facebook) – in fact, as someone who knows a little bit of how Facebook works – that’s a shortcut to only having your posts seen by other super-Christians who already think exactly like you do. Facebook thrives on giving people exactly the information they want. And people aren’t necessarily on Facebook jonesing to be smacked in the face with a bit of Jesus. Facebook will, by the magic of its algorithm, filter your posts out for those who aren’t already into Jesus, and show your posts to the choir. Which might well be edifying… but it’s not effective.

This all sounds completely irrelevant to the task at hand – protecting your mind from the clutches of Facebook – but being subversive is a surefire way to not have your mind controlled by the system. Just watch the Matrix. Think of yourself as Neo, Morpheus, Trinity and the gang – and Facebook as the brain sucking machine driven empire and you won’t be far wrong… But those guys wouldn’t have got far, certainly not past the first movie, without knowing how the machines they were fighting against worked, or without actively fighting against them…

I really like this stuff Paul says in 2 Corinthians about his approach to sacrificial communication – the methodology we choose says something about the message we speak.

But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may also be revealed in our mortal body. 2 Corinthians 4:7-11

And I like Paul’s reflections on how the incarnation of Jesus – and the cross – shape the way we treat one another in our social networks, and the way we think. This is the purple passage, I think, for approaching Facebook through the lens of the cross. How much better would relationships on Facebook be – and our heads be as a result – if this was our approach…

Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.

In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross! – Philippians 2:1-8

I was going to write a fifth point – about making sure you’re participating in the ultimate social network – a relationship with God, and with his people, through prayer, real world relationships in church communities, and by consuming TheoMedia – but this ultimately would just be a rehash of the first four points – it’s only as someone decides they want to participate in that social network that they become suspicious of the myths peddled by all the other social networks, it’s only by consuming TheoMedia that the narrative of the Gospel starts to not only shape our thinking (points 1 and 2), but also how we use other mediums (points 3 and 4) (note – by TheoMedia I’m referring to the concept described in the book of that name, but this includes reading the Bible, appreciating how God speaks through his world, spending time reflecting on who God is by singing, reading, mediating on the Bible, praying, reading theological books, reading blogs, following interesting Christians on Facebook or Twitter, and generally being stimulated to think about God).

Book Review: TheoMedia: The Media of God and the Digital Age

This is the book I would write about how we think about media as Christians if I was going to write a book about how we think about and use media as Christians.

It is exceptional, and if you have any respect for how I’ve approached this sort of topic on this blog over the past however many years I’ve been banging on about this stuff – you should stop reading this review and buy the book, its title, in full, is: TheoMedia: The Media of God and the Digital Age.

I’m glad Andy Byers has written it for me, and for others. I will be effusive in my praise of this book (though I think there are definitely stones left unturned should I ever actually want to write a book). I will praise it to the hills because I believe it is essential reading for Christians who want to take the Gospel into new mediums using new technologies with a strong theological foundation.

It is methodologically sensible, theologically invigorating, and practically stimulating. It is the best book on thinking about the intersection of theology and media studies that I have read, and I have read all the others. Well. Maybe not all the others. But lots.

Like any book – this one should be assessed on its own terms. So Byers says:

“The conviction underlying this book is that Christian scripture is not only the best source for understanding Jesus but also the best source for understanding Google.”

And later…

“This book is a hermeneutical project in the church’s wider efforts of trying to understand the technological mediascape of the twenty-first century. The purpose is not to offer a how-to guidebook to help churches incorporate communications technology into their worship and witness. I am hoping to provide something more foundational. The point is to make some headway in constructing a theological frame of reference for understanding and appropriating media in the digital age and in the ages to come.”

His argument is:

“First: if God himself creates and employs media, then there must be a theological logic that can guide how we produce and use media and communications technology today. Here is the second claim: Christians are called to media saturation, but the primary media that are to shape, form, and saturate our lives are the media of God—TheoMedia, the communicative and revelatory means God employs to share himself and to influence humankind as his image bearers.”

His treatment of the unfolding Biblical saga is exceptional, and the touch points he selects and unpacks in this story are spectacular. His definition of media is broad – anything that is a “means to communicate” – and that is how I think it should be. Just about every ‘thing’ can function as media. His definition of TheoMedia is equally broad.

“… although there is such a thing as “new media,” the actual concept of media is as old as the hills. This is true literally, because the hills themselves are a form of media. God’s media. Or, we could say, “TheoMedia.” Media production began with God. The aesthetic media of God’s creation was produced by another form of divine media. The slope of the valleys and the rise of hills beneath glorious sky blue all came about through the medium of holy speech. Divine words addressed the primordial cosmic blankness, and ever since “let there be…” sounded in the dark, creation has served as a means of divine revelation and divine self-communication.”

I’m increasingly convinced that something akin to media studies is vital for good exegesis – knowing how a type of text functioned in its context is as important for interpretation as figuring out how the content of the text would have been understood in its context – indeed, you can’t do one without the other. I love how Byer’s approach to the question of media is driven by Biblical Theology – by unpacking how the media of God develops over the trajectories of the Biblical story.

“So to retrain what we think about “media,” we are going to make a pilgrimage of sorts throughout the entire biblical saga, tracing the narrative plotlines of the epic story of Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Re-Creation to show that the idea of media is a central theme of the church’s most sacred text.”

His understanding of this story is Christ centred, so his conclusions are also Christological, which, again, I think makes this book a must read.

The Good

I’m especially thrilled at his anthropology – his understanding of the role communication plays in what it means to be human. It’s all about humans being made in the image of God. More than any other work in this area, Byers gets that bearing an image involves communication (I’m pretty passionate about this).

“The most fundamental vocation of humanity is a media vocation, that of divine image bearing. Though the rest of creation reflects divine glory and beauty, Adam and Eve were endowed with an even more intrinsic capacity for conveying God’s character and intentions in the world.”

Byer’s description of how sin smashed this function, and how it is ultimately dealt with, and restored for us, in and through Jesus, is great. It is the theological basis for our participation in media use.

“Originally destined as the bearers of God’s image in the world, humanity—both Gentile and Jewish—had become shaped by the world’s unwholesome images and untruthful words. The once uninterrupted interaction with God was now clouded; the transmission was lost in the distracting white noise of worldly media. Such a disastrous media situation required a media “eucatastrophe,” to borrow a term coined by J. R. R. Tolkien. That media “eucatastrophe” (an event of catastrophically good proportions) finally took place. It was the Incarnation. The TheoMedium of God’s Word became flesh. The public announcement of what Jesus has done on our behalf as the God who took on flesh is called “gospel.” It is a media term. In the genre of a eucatastrophic newsflash, the TheoMedium of the gospel is the breaking news that our King has arrived and conquered, that the mediated distance between humanity and God is to be bridged through the work of the Incarnate Christ, a new Mediator who has come from offstage as abruptly as that serpent of old. And this Mediator is hailed as the untainted “image of the invisible God” (Col 1:15)… In the wake of bloodied cross and vacated tomb, a new TheoMedium was formed. Indwelled by the Spirit, that society we call “church” was created as a new TheoMedium in the world in the sense that we as the church are now being restored as bearers of God’s image.”

Byer’s is sensitive to the function of images in the Ancient Near East – a big part of my Masters Thesis, so very exciting for me. In the Ancient Near East kings held on to political power by building images of themselves as gods, fusing the royal with the divine – such imagery (which was later applied to coins and all sorts of multi-media) functioned as a powerful communication tool. Images of God-Kings communicated just by being. So did idols in a temple – which were ‘activated’ by a mouth washing ceremony by a river in a temple so that they would ‘speak for’ the god (just like Adam in Eden in Genesis 2 if you buy the theory that Eden is a proto-temple).

These images communicated something – by being representatives of the god-king. Byers shares this quote:

“Social space—the areas in which life was lived—for pagans was thus in a sense alive with images, mythologized. The statues in the temples and around the cities, the reliefs on the altars, the busts and statuettes of the home, etc. all, with varying degrees of intensity to be sure, figured the divine or, better for ancient polytheism, the divinities. The notion of a secular, separate realm devoid of religious penetration is of course a modern invention (if not itself a fiction). For ancient pagans, space was religious.” — KAVIN ROWE

But these images of god-kings and gods didn’t speak – nor did the gods behind the purely religious images. Image bearers of the God who does speak also speak, but we also communicate by being representatives of God, scattered around his world. Byers notes – from Israel’s history – that the media we soak ourselves in will end up shaping us.

“Choosing God’s words crafts us into a certain type of person. Choosing idolatry turns us into a vastly different sort of person. Media preferences alter who we are. Moses finds this painful story of the stone words and the metal calf to be gravely instructive for the Israelites who are about to make their fateful river crossing. They are a people shaped by certain media that cannot abide certain other types of media. The program of Canaan’s media displacement must therefore begin immediately. Hence the charge to physically mark their entry into Canaan with those plastered rocks. Think of the contrast in media form and content that will instantly take place once God’s people set foot onto their new land. Rather than images carefully crafted through metallurgy and woodworking, Israel will pile up twelve rocks and cover them with script. Stone words.”

We communicate by doing – but as people made in the image of the God who speaks, we represent him best when we bear his image (in what we do) and we use words. We need words to truly bear God’s image. Because God speaks. That’s what gives words priority. But words can never be separated from how they are delivered. This slight distinction plays out in Byer’s application – which seeks to resolve what I think should be a dichotomous tension – suggesting that TheoMedia makes words a priority. This is probably the only weakness I see in TheoMedia, and one of the coolest things about the Christian bookosphere overlapping with the Christian blogosphere is that we’ve been able to chat about my questions over email. I love that. It makes reading books so much more relationally connected.

Byer urges Christians to learn from the way God dealt with an increasingly complex media landscape for Israel – who were confronted by images (idols and temples) wherever they looked as they left Egypt and fought their way to the Promised Land. So he sees the shema as profoundly important. The idea that in a media saturated world we should spend our time soaking ourselves in God’s media, in order to approach other media from a more healthy perspective.

Here’s what he says about the shema…

“The words of God were to saturate the daily grind of the Israelite family. They were to feature orally in conversations in the fields and in the home. Bound to the hand, stuck between the eyes, and emblazoned on the entranceways of the home, the TheoMedia of God’s words were also to occupy the visual space of God’s people. In a world rife with unauthorized media sources, the Israelites were commanded to esteem their God as their primary media source, holding fast to the TheoMedia of divine words, embracing a life saturated by holy speech.”

And later…

“The greatest commandment in scripture—the highest demand on our lives—encourages a set of media practices by which our lives are saturated with verbal TheoMedia. The Shema should be recognized as a central text as the church negotiates twenty-first-century media. It is a passage that reminds Christians in the digital age and every age that we are called to media saturation, but the media that are to so thoroughly permeate every dimension of our lives are the media of God.”

Byers argues that we should prioritise ‘word’ media over all other forms – in part on the basis of the Shema, but because he’s serious about Biblical Theology this is a thread he carries through into the New Testament (more below).

“If oral and textual TheoMedia are indeed prioritized, then it is incumbent on us to retain and strengthen the skills of hearing and reading. If the burden of the previous chapters on the sights and sounds of God was to argue that TheoMedia are various and multisensory, the burden of this chapter and the next is to show that they are subordinate to logocentric media, that is, the word-oriented media of prophetic discourse and holy text.”

But first – my slight critique.

Words never occur in a vacuum – they always come with the context provided by the speaker – even in creation itself, when God spoke into the void (arguably, literally, a vacuum) – it was who was speaking that made stuff happen.

Byers is well aware of the trouble with dichotomies – he spends significant time showing that there’s often a false dichotomy presented between the idea that Scripture functions propositionally vis a vis narratively, when it should be both, held in tension.

When it comes to the verbal v visual dichotomy he acknowledges the multimedia nature of God, so he’s already pretty nuanced in his approach to the dichotomy, I just don’t think he should resolve it.

“We have seen that God is a multimedia God and that his words are also multimedia in nature. Like fire in the prophet’s bones, they are hard to contain, bursting the limits of our dichotomies and bursting the limits of every media format that would communicate them. Verbal TheoMedia cannot be safely locked within ink or confined within chiseled inscriptions. They are living words, words that can be seen as well as heard, tasted as well as touched.”

The big problem I have with his treatment of the Old Testament – and it’s only minor – is that I don’t think you can actually separate the words of the Shema from the visual communication effect that the Shema being carried out was intended to have on both people in Israel, and the nations. You can’t split cause and effect in this way by placing the emphasis on cause – because the effect is necessary, and part of the intended function of the law.

I like what Wenham says about the performance aspect of the entirety of Torah:

But not only is the Old Testament ritual law central to theological understanding of scripture; I also want to suggest it is a model of modern communication technique. For a long time Christians have imagined that communication between God and man is essentially verbal, merely a matter of words. God speaks to man through the prophets or through the Bible: man replies in prayer. We view communication with God as a sort of two-way radio. But God does not restrict himself to words, he uses ritual such as sacraments: ritual is more like colour TV than radio. Ideas are made visible… Educational psychologists tell us that we remember 10% of what we hear, 30% of what we see but 70% of what we do. Modern preachers put most of their effort into teaching by hearing, though 90% of what they say will be forgotten. Moses put his main effort into teaching through ritual, a wise move if he wanted the people to remember such fundamental truths, for ritual is a kind of doing and therefore sticks in the mind much better than words…But I believe we should go further: not simply act out the ceremonies of the Old Covenant, but in our post-literate age devise dramatic rites that teach the fundamental truths of the new covenant as effectively as the Pentateuch teaches those of the old. This will require imagination and sensitivity, but I think would be worth the effort.”

If Wenham’s correct – part of the power of the Shema was in the doing, and part was in the watching – more than in the hearing (even if doing involved speaking the words). My argument is these things are so interconnected it is silly to try to prioritise one aspect of the communicative act above another aspect of the same part, and in this case, the communicative act is “image bearing for the God who speaks”… Anyway. This is a minor criticism and has only relatively small real world applications (except that it doesn’t undermine the humanity or worth of people who can’t use words as well as others).

The Gold

Byers presents his argument in a theologically rich and thoroughly engaged way… I love the way he speaks about the Incarnation. God entering the stage, tearing the sky apart…

“And now we come to the point in the Bible’s salvation-history when the sky gets ripped apart. The Bible opens with what appears to be a calm, peaceful scene: “The Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters” (Gen 1:2). The Gospel of Mark opens in similar fashion. The Spirit is portrayed as a dove hovering above the waters of the River Jordan. This violent puncturing of the sky is a decisive moment in the biblical plot of redemption for Mark. It is the moment when it becomes clear that our God will tolerate no longer the divine-human alienation, when he will content himself no more with the mediation of prior centuries: “In Mark, then, God has ripped the heavens irrevocably apart at Jesus’ baptism, never to shut them again. Through this gracious gash in the universe, he has poured forth his Spirit into the earthly realm.” It is not just the sky that gets torn in Mark. The verb schizō reappears at the end of the Gospel, forming what biblical scholars call an inclusio, the dual use of a word or theme that encloses or bookends a larger body of text to serve as an interpretive frame. Mark is to be read within the frame of divine-human boundaries being torn and ripped apart: “Then Jesus gave a loud cry and breathed his last. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom” (Mark 15:37–38).”

So good.

I love his use of John the Baptist as a model for using mediums that are wired to try to turn you into the centre of attention.

…Jesus called him the greatest man born of a woman (Luke 7:28; Matt 11:11). It makes good sense to give a little attention to the man Jesus himself called the greatest. But what we find when we look to John is that the all-consuming vocation of the greatest man born of woman was to point to someone greater, and then fade away: “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30). There was absolutely no self-orientation to John’s celebrity status in the fourth Gospel (or in the other Gospels, for that matter): “In order that he may not be in any sense the object of his own preaching and action, he disowns every kind of movement towards himself.”

What a guide to participating in the online world. But Byer’s conviction (and mine) is that it’s Jesus who is the best model for participating in media.

“In all his flesh and blood reality, we could say that Jesus is the “Multimedium of God.” We could also understand Jesus—speaking, touching, imaging, embodying—as the most significant and the most multisensory TheoMedium of all… Just as the medium and message of the gospel informs our media practices, so also does the Incarnation of Christ.”

He suggests one of the implications of the incarnation is that we value presence over mediated absence, which is a handy tip, but he also suggests we should be seeking to take that presence wherever we can, wherever it’s needed…

“We should honour Christ’s Incarnation by infiltrating multiple communications realms but with a high valuation of embodied presence, refusing to treat social media as a fitting replacement for face-to-face interaction, but enjoying its capabilities for enabling interaction with those who are not across the table or in our living room.”

The climax of the incarnation – the cross – is equally important in framing how we participate in media.

“The cross of Christ opposes self-orientation in any and every setting, online or offline. The motivations behind my status updates are often suspect. My heart vainly flutters a bit when there is a sudden spike in the traffic on my blog. At times I resonate a bit too happily with that exclamation mark when Twitter informs me, “You were mentioned in a Tweet!” The point here is that Christ’s call to selflessness, visually depicted in the cross, extends to any and all realms, even the new realm of the Internet. We need to carry the determinative force of the optical medium of the cross symbol into that realm and comport our media practices accordingly”

This is another point where I feel like TheoMedia may have been strengthened slightly, if the emphasis wasn’t placed on word ministry quite so much, but included the possibility that visual image bearing was a factor in the acting out of the written word (beyond the sacraments). It’s a quibble, but here’s a worked example…

“I am suggesting that the church understand media through the person of Jesus and through the ancient media practices his saving work encourages. Our verbal interactions are to be informed by the verbal proclamation of the gospel. And if we are going to inhabit a visual culture, then we should draw on the visual media legacies of the cross. Some sort of cross-visuality is affirmed when Paul writes to the Galatians that “it was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly exhibited as crucified” (Gal 3:1 ESV). Now, the Galatians were not present at Golgotha on that fateful day. But Paul’s prior preaching ministry had presented such a “vivid, verbal portrait of the event of Jesus’ crucifixion” that the scene could be understood as having occurred “before your eyes.””

I don’t think Paul just uses vivid spoken words for this – but his scars and suffering too… I think there’s a link between 2 Corinthians 4, (and Paul’s list of suffering for others in 11), and Galatians 6.

We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may also be revealed in our mortal body.” – 2 Corinthians 4:10-11

“May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is the new creation. Peace and mercy to all who follow this rule—to the Israel of God. From now on, let no one cause me trouble, for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus. – Galatians 6:14-17

This potentially expands his conclusion – but only slightly, because his conclusion is tops (I’m running out of superlatives and trying not to sound like an Apple product launch).

“We ourselves are TheoMedia. The church comprises fractured image bearers who are being restored to the image of Jesus, the perfect image of God. By the indwelling presence of Christ’s Spirit, every Christian is now a communicative means by whom God communicates within the church and reveals himself to the world.”

The control he suggests, for not being overwhelmed by the communication mediums of the world, and competing messages, is to soak yourself in TheoMedia… which, usefully, combats the “myths” packaged up in the mediums we use (as we’ll see when I finally write part four of my unfinished series on Facebook/social media and your brain).

“When it comes to spiritual gifts, the source of communication is God himself. When it comes to spiritual disciplines, we are giving God our attention and asking how he wants to influence our thoughts and alter our actions. There is this simple little policy I try to abide by after I wake up to face a new day. Before opening a screen, my plan is to open my Bible; and before listening to any voice online or on TV, I want to listen out for God’s voice through prayer… As the page has turned to this concluding chapter, my hope is that we are now dripping wet with biblical ink. In order to understand media in the digital age, we have plunged into the sacred texts of the church with the hope of having our perspectives reoriented around biblical wisdom. Reading scripture trains us for certain “habits of thought—habitual ways of viewing or making sense of the world.” This immersing of ourselves in the Bible’s theological vision cultivates “cognitive skills and sensibilities, and hence the ability to see, feel, and taste the world as disclosed in the diverse biblical texts.”

I don’t want to turn you off buying the book by giving away the ending – because 90% of the joy is in the journey to get there… but Byer’s conclusion is so sensible and theologically coherent that it seems obvious.

“We need to be drawing on cultural studies, research data, personal experiences, and practical wisdom for faithful living in the digital age; but not without our sacred “script” as a foundational resource. Here is the second overarching thesis: Christians are called to media saturation, but the primary media that are to shape, form, and saturate our lives are the media of God…we need an external media source to crack the soundscape and penetrate our field of vision. We need TheoMedia, the revelatory and communicative means of the One who is the wisest and best.”

He provides a summary of the argument of the book in eight thesis, and this is where the spoilers stop. Buy it. Read it. Give it to anybody who wants to use new mediums thoughtfully to communicate the Gospel. Get this book out there.

Tweet, oh people of God. Blog, text, and type status updates. But linger in the TheoMedia domain of the church and cling to the media legacies of Christ’s Incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection, Ascension, and return. Hear the gospel. Look to the cross. Feel the embrace of brothers and sisters. Smell the aroma of bread broken and taste the sweet wetness of wine outpoured. Preach and baptize. Exercise spiritual gifts and practice spiritual disciplines that poise our senses before the media of God. – Andy Byers, TheoMedia

 

Facebook is messing with your head: what to think about this as a Christian

This is part 3 in a 5 part series on what social media does to our brains – it uses Facebook as a case study, but sustained use of any communication medium will have a similar effect (though Facebook is extra specially designed to addict you).

The first post showed that the mediums we use do shape our thinking and rewire our brains. The second post was about how one might process this fact drawing on insights from media ecology and neuroscience.

In this post we’ll consider what insights might be gained here for Christians who want to use mediums like Facebook to communicate about Jesus and share their lives authentically with their friends while steering clear of the down side of having your brain changed in ways you don’t want.

This post is less about why a Christian should use Facebook (though it deals with that briefly), and isn’t so much about what steps to take to use Facebook well (which will be dealt with a little in post four) – it is more about what to think about the power our communication mediums have over us.

facebook brain

The Theological Framework

I’m speculating a little here – and it’s possible that you can’t simply equate the Biblical concept of “mind” with the neuroscientific understanding of what the mind is. But I think there are some important Biblical and theological touch points to consider when it comes to social media and our brains. Some of these are also covered in John Dyer’s excellent From the Garden to the City – Dyer approaches the question of communication technology as a Christian theologian and media ecologist. His journey through the Biblical narrative hits similar points – as does this old post.

Briefly – according to the guy who kickstarted a lot of the neuroplasticity stuff, Daniel Siegel, people’s well-being involves a combination of brain, mind, and relationships – the “mind” is the process that regulates the flow of energy and information through the brain, which is the physical “neurocircuitry,” relationships are how energy and information is shared between people via communication. When it comes to the Bible – the mind and heart are closely linked with how people think and act. I’m working on the assumption that these are roughly equivalent and related.

The God who speaks (from the ultimate hive mind)

“In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son…” – Hebrews 1:1-2

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made… The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth…No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known. – John 1:1-3, 14, 18

Theological projects – like this – are best served by starting with who God is. God is the ultimate ‘hive mind’ – one God, in three persons, acting with one mind. There’s a word bandied about in theological tomes – perichoresis (wikipedia) – which describes the interpenetration of the persons of the Trinity. There is no act of God the Father that doesn’t  involve unity of purpose and action from God the Son and God the Holy Spirit because each person of the Trinity is so thoroughly ‘networked’ to the other. The Trinity is the ultimate social network – or perhaps, in a less theologically dangerous way – social networks are what we get when humans made in the image of God, for relationship, use our meagre, broken, selves to try to act out that relational aspect of our humanity.

It shouldn’t really surprise us, in this sense, if our attempts at forging communication networks end up with something like a hive mind. Relationships are about connection.

Here are a few paragraphs from my project – you can read the whole thing if you want to see the footnotes.

As ethos, pathos, and logos, are necessary elements of persuasive act, so the “perichoretic” contribution of Father, Word, and Spirit is necessary in divine communicative acts. There is no act of God that is not produced by the three divine persons, acting in concert, so it should be impossible to speak of any work of Father, Son, or Spirit separately, just as it is impossible to produce a spoken communicative act that doesn’t inherently contain the three persuasive proofs: ethos, logos, and pathos.

Moon (2010) suggests the Triune God is a Divine “communicative system” that employs the perfect media – the Word and Spirit, to produce communicative acts both internally (ad intra), and externally (ad extra) through “coupling with creaturely media.” Moon suggests the primary part of “the distinct form of divine operation is communication,” because divine action is consistently depicted as speech, or alongside divine speech, and God is described as “word.” The divine communication system is the “ground of communicative/meaning systems” so that human communication is “grounded in divine communication,” or, as O’Donovan describes it “from God’s true speech flows all possibility of true human speech.”…

…I suggest that divine communicative acts are persuasive acts, containing the three proofs, analogously aligned to the persons of the Trinity. Each divine communicative act involves the inextricably perichoretic contributions of each divine person, yet one might describe those acts in terms of the ethos of the father, being demonstrated in the incarnate logos, with the Spirit moving the hearts and minds of the audience as divine pathos. So, as a communicative act of God, consistent with his character, the incarnation of the logos, and his death on a cross express the ethos of God, who also works in the hearts of the recipients of his communicative act to produce appropriate emotional responses (either hardness or softness of hearts) as divine pathos. In communicating through Scripture, to and through people in particular times and places, using appropriate and common mediums and genres, and through the incarnation itself, God “aptly” accommodates himself to his audience and situation.

Basically, all our communication, true or otherwise, is a reflection or refraction of the way God communicates and uses mediums. This is especially true when one considers the incarnation of Jesus – and what that does with humanity as a medium. Which we’ll get to below. First we’ve got to look a little bit at what humanity, especially the ‘mind,’ is and to do that we’ll do a little run through the Biblical story…

A Biblical Theology of Personhood: Heart, Mind and Image

The best way to develop a theological framework for something like what it means to be a person with a changing brain, is to start with Biblical Theology – and see how the idea of personhood develops – I think there are three interesting ‘human’ threads – the heart, mind, and image – that we can pull together to help us understand what the Bible thinks about your mind being rewired into an externalised social hive like thing (I don’t want to use brain and mind completely interchangeably – a lot of the neuroplasticity stuff out there makes a slight distinction between them).

The Bible talks of personhood in a whole heap of ways – but the ones that are particularly pertinent for this little exercise are to do with the state of our hearts and minds (a sort of overlapping mishmash of desires, objects of worship, and the thinking that frames our actions), and the image we present to the world as we live out those desires.

The first thing we learn about humans is that we’re created ‘male and female, in God’s image’ – made in the image of the God who is a plural (he says “let us”), but a singular entity as people who are designed to relate to each other (Genesis 1). Humans were then given a job to do. Adam and Eve were to be God’s images – his representatives (and probably something like his ‘idols’) in his Garden Temple. There’s a really nice thread in the Bible that starts at Eden, weaves through the Temple, and ends in the New Creation – that involves a Garden, flowing water, precious stones, and God’s people. Adam is also meant to “work and take care of” the Garden – and the Hebrew words used in Genesis 1:15 are later used of the priests in the Temple. Part of his job – presumably where he is showing that he’s a chip off the old block – is speaking to name the animals, just like God spoke to make the world and create the animals. Communication is part of what it means to be made in the image of God – and being made in the image of God means we have a function that communicates something about God as people look at us. Images are mediums. People are mediums. We all carry messages about the things we live for – the image that is imprinted on our hearts as we live and relate to other people.

The things we think about and the way we think shape our lives. Contemporary neuroscience is catching up with thousands of years of Christian (and Jewish) theology. We shouldn’t be shocked – as Christians – to learn that we can alter our brains by the way we live, and alter the way we live by altering our brains. We should expect it. It’s foundational – we’ll see in the next post that many of the ways we might go about deliberately changing our brains for the better are also part and parcel of a Christian way of life.

At the heart of humanity’s rejection of God’s rule, in the events of the Fall, is the desire to be like God ourselves – not to bear God’s image, but to bear our own image, to shape our own lives. The serpent’s deception cunningly attacks the very heart of our created being.

“For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God…” – Genesis 3:5

Adam and Eve were already created to be like God, the desire the serpent awakens is the desire to set the communication agenda for one’s self.  The result is a breaking of the ability to carry God’s image – Adam’s son is made in Adam’s image (Genesis 5:3), and a darkening of the human heart so that it’s “only evil all the time” (Genesis 6:5).

Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. – Romans 1:28

I think Paul, in Romans 7, is talking about the frustration of being someone made in the image of God who lives with this darkened heart brought about by sin.

“So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law;  but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!

So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.” – Romans 7:21-25

Our minds – as created – long to break free of the shackles of our broken human nature. When a bunch of people whose humanity is broken like this, get together as broken humans, with darkened hearts, in social networks, using the language they were created to use as people made in God’s image – they no longer work to point people to God, like they were created to, but to their own images and interests. So we get Babel.

“Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there. They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar.

Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”

But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.” – Genesis 11:1-7

The people who went to build this tower – using new technology they had created (bricks and mortar), and the language that united them – tried to turn themselves into gods and use their created technologies that were new and mythically permanent to try to make a name for themselves, but their plans were shattered and they were scattered.

“Rather than using their creative powers to honor God as Noah did, the people of Babel wanted to bring glory to themselves. Rather than live in dependence upon God (as Abraham will in the coming chapters), they tried to achieve complete autonomy from him… At Babel, we find humans creating a city as their anti-garden and a tower as an image to themselves.” – John Dyer, From the Garden to the City

We shouldn’t be surprised that as we interact with created things that have the potential to either serve our idols, or become idols themselves, those things rub off on us a bit.

“We are molded and formed into the image of whatever shapes us. Here wisdom warns us that not all technologies are created equal in this regard.”

“The things we create can—and will—try to become idols in our hearts. Though they enable us to survive and thrive in a fallen world, the very aid they provide can deceive us with a false sense of comfort and security, hiding our need for God and his grace.” – Tim Challies, The Next Story

The problem with being conformed into the image of something hollow and empty is that it leaves you hollow and empty, and it never quite lives up to the promise. David Foster Wallace gave a famous speech This Is Water to a bunch of college graduates. In it, though he wasn’t a Christian, Foster Wallace said:

“Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship–be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles–is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.

Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they’re evil or sinful, it’s that they’re unconscious. They are default settings.

They’re the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that’s what you’re doing.” – David Foster Wallace, This Is Water

The connectivity that Facebook offers – the boost to your ego that keeps you coming back – it’s the same hollow and empty shadow of Christian relationships, or the eternal self-giving relationships in the Trinity. The effect it has on your brain is a shadow of the effect that participating in those social networks has. And participating in those social networks – the church, and being connected to Jesus via the Holy Spirit – is possible because of how the Triune God employed communication mediums. It’s this social network that should reshape our brains, and help us to avoid having them reshaped by other stuff as we manage to be in the world but not of it.

Jesus’ prayer in John 17 is pretty useful for thinking about how we share in a deeper social network if we follow Jesus.

“My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified.

“My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

“Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory,the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.” – John 17:15-24

That’s a nice bookend to John’s prologue, quoted above. Jesus – God’s word made flesh – became a human. Truly human. Sharing all of humanity’s potential pitfalls and foibles. Entering a broken world, and yet he managed not to be broken by sin, while choosing to be broken for us.

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. – Hebrews 4:15

Jesus became a communication medium, he used communication mediums, and rather than being conformed into the messy “myth” or narrative of the human condition – he transformed the narrative and rewrote the myth – so that if you want to be human like Jesus was human – through the cross and sharing in his death – you too can be transformed. This has to change the way we use communication mediums – and I’ll suggest that it does. In the next post.

The story of the Old Testament, and the promise anticipated that is fulfilled in the New, revolves around broken humanity’s inability to focus mind and heart on God, as they should.

Israel was called to be a nation of priests – a nation that represented God to their neighbours – and the tool they had for doing that was the Law. God’s word.

Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words you are to speak to the Israelites.” – Exodus 19:5-6

See, I have taught you decrees and laws as the Lord my God commanded me, so that you may follow them in the land you are entering to take possession of it. Observe them carefully, for this will show your wisdom and understanding to the nations, who will hear about all these decrees and say, “Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.” – Deuteronomy 4:5-6

Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. – Deuteronomy 11:18

That didn’t work so well. So God had to intervene… first with a promise…

“The days are coming,” declares the Lord,
“when I will make a new covenant
with the people of Israel
and with the people of Judah.
It will not be like the covenant
    I made with their ancestors
when I took them by the hand
    to lead them out of Egypt,
because they broke my covenant,
though I was a husband to them,”
declares the Lord.

“This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel
after that time,” declares the Lord.
I will put my law in their minds
    and write it on their hearts.
I will be their God,
    and they will be my people. – Jeremiah 31:31-33

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. – Ezekiel 36:26

And then he intervened again with the Holy Spirit – which does something profound to the hearts and minds of those who follow Jesus – and works to conform them into his image.

“After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly. All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had – Acts 4:31-32

Paul shows how the renewing work of the Spirit as a result of Jesus’ work on the Cross, and our union with him – which brings us our justification and sanctification (makes us ok by God, and works to make us like Jesus), brings about a new humanity – a new link between heart, mind and image.

“Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace. The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God.

You, however, are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ. But if Christ is in you, then even though your body is subject to death because of sin, the Spirit gives life because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you… the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God… For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.

We become part of the ultimate mind-rewiring social network . Our hearts and minds are rewired to match up with the heart and mind of God. Suddenly we’re able to communicate with God again.  This is the ultimate socially networked ‘hive mind.’ The Holy Spirit has incredible power to connect us with other people to make us more like Jesus.

Romans 12 is, I think (along with Philippians 2), an incredibly prescient passage for this whole idea that your brain is altered by the company you keep and the mediums you use to keep it. It, along with the incarnation of Jesus, provides an important framework for responding to competing influences on your head, but it also spells out what the ideal Christian social network looks like… people acting as one. Sacrificially giving of themselves for the sake of others. Just like Jesus does as, a person of the Trinity, at the cross.

Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. – Romans 12:1-2

Here’s why Christians should be a little wary of the impact Facebook can have – the world we live in isn’t neutral. It has a pattern that we are naturally conformed into – a pattern of behaving and communicating – culture – created by people whose lives are consumed by things that aren’t God. Who bear the image of things that aren’t God. People who are broken. Facebook is part of the “pattern of this world” – it promotes and rewards self-seeking behaviour. Facebook isn’t neutral because the world isn’t neutral. But that doesn’t mean Christians shouldn’t use it – in fact, in the next post I’ll argue that we should, using Jesus becoming human as the framework.

As Christians – we shouldn’t be surprised that groups of people work together to rewire our brains, and that communication mediums play a part in that – but we should be careful about what the communication air we breath in our hyper-connected world is doing to us.

We should be careful about what happens when a bunch of people gather with a common language to share a platform that is designed to bring glory to people, not God. Forewarned is forearmed.

We should be excited about being part of an incredible network of relationships – joined with God, by his Spirit, as his children, being transformed into the image of Jesus, and joined with other Christians, by the Spirit, as brothers and sisters united around the ultimate act of self-sacrifice – and that excitement should be something we seek to spread to others.

Here’s Paul’s solution to avoiding being conformed to the patterns of the world – living sacrificially and chasing humility has always been counter cultural…

“For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you. For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.” – Romans 12:3-5

Or, restated in Philippians 2…

“Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.

In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus – Philippians 2:1-5

Paul’s hope for the Roman church was that they’d be a social network with a hive mind… changed by God to do what people were created to do – not what the broken world made them do…

“May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you the same attitude of mind toward each other that Christ Jesus had, so that with one mind and one voice you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” – Romans 15:5-6

Interestingly – this sort of integration between mind and relationships is a pretty highly sought after type of neuroscientific “well-being” – we’re much more likely to be able to make deliberate changes to our brains if we’re part of such a network where people are committed to each other and to a set of values – in this case being sacrificially loving like Jesus. The Spirit has a big role to play in changing our thinking – because naturally we’d never focus on God – but Christianity, as described in the New Testament, works from a neuroscientific framework.

Paul was basically a neuroscientist before neuroscience existed. Probably because neuroscience is simply describing the way God created us to function, and the way we function as image bearers of whatever it is that we focus on bringing glory to with our minds, hearts and lives.

 

 

12 propositions about image-bearing being at the heart of the Biblical Narrative

Everywhere I turn these days, in the pages of the Bible at least, but also in some thinking about media and communications stuff I’m blown away by how significant the “image of God” is in the storyline of the Bible. It is vastly unrelated as part of the narrative.

You can basically chart how well humanity is going at being human by how near or far they are from carrying out their function as image bearers. What their hearts are beating for. The heart functions as something of a yardstick for measuring imageness.

Like the whole story of the Bible, it culminates in Jesus.


Here are some of the things I keep noticing.

1. Bearing an “image” is about representation, not just replication. Images have always had an incredible power to communicate and change others. And have been used as communication tools by nations and religious organisations since Genesis was written. Idols in ancient near eastern temples were made alive by a ceremony where their mouths were opened. Once they were “alive” – they were believed to manifest, and speak for, the god they represented. Eden is a temple. Adam is God’s image in the heart of his temple. The word image in Genesis 1-2, and its near eastern cognates (words that sound like it in other similar languages), is almost universally used for these idols of gods and god-kings (kings who presented themselves as divine representatives).

2. We all bear the image of something – at the heart of Adam and Eve’s rejection of God was a decision to promote their own image. You can’t not bear an image of the god you worship – even if the god is yourself and your picture of success. I think it’s telling that while Adam was created in God’s image, Seth was created in Adam’s…

5 “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” – Genesis 3

 

When God created mankind, he made them in the likeness of God. 2 He created them male and female and blessed them. And he named them “Mankind” when they were created.

3 When Adam had lived 130 years, he had a son in his own likeness, in his own image; and he named him Seth. – Genesis 5.

 

3. The image we bear is closely related to the things we turn into idols. The things we get excited about. The desires of our hearts. Our hearts no longer desire God. They are broken.

“The heart is deceitful above all things
and beyond cure.
Who can understand it?” – Jeremiah 17:9

 

Son of man, these men have set up idols in their hearts and put wicked stumbling blocks before their faces. Should I let them inquire of me at all? – Ezekiel 14:3

 

The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. – Genesis 6

4. Part of the brokenness we feel, and the longing we naturally have is to do with trying to recapture the image we were created to bear. This supplies the narrative tension in the Old Testament.

But if from there you seek the Lord your God, you will find him if you seek him with all your heart and with all your soul. – Deuteronomy 4:29

 

Then in the nations where they have been carried captive, those who escape will remember me—how I have been grieved by their adulterous hearts, which have turned away from me, and by their eyes, which have lusted after their idols. They will loathe themselves for the evil they have done and for all their detestable practices. – Ezekiel 6:9

 

“But as for those whose hearts are devoted to their vile images and detestable idols, I will bring down on their own heads what they have done, declares the Sovereign Lord.” – Ezekiel 11:21

5. We can only recapture that image if God re-creates us.

Therefore speak to them and tell them, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: When any of the Israelites set up idols in their hearts and put a wicked stumbling block before their faces and then go to a prophet, I the Lord will answer them myself in keeping with their great idolatry. I will do this to recapture the hearts of the people of Israel, who have all deserted me for their idols.’

6. The residual image of God in our humanity gives humans dignity and value, even if the image of God is no longer fully realised. It also enables us to know what “good” is, even if we can’t do it. I think this is the tension Paul is reflecting on in Romans 7 (which leads to Romans 8, which culminates in Romans 8:29).

7. We become, and bear the image of, the idols we behold. Part of the damage sin does to what it means to be human is that we can’t behold God the way we were made to. Our idols work because they shape our lives around our desires.

Those who make them will be like them,
and so will all who trust in them. – Psalm 115

 

For their hearts were devoted to their idols. – Ezekiel 20:6

 

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. – Ezekiel 36:26

8. The tools we use shape us as much as we shape things with them. Nothing is neutral. The things we choose to use and make part of our lives rub off on us. We should try really hard not to become beholden to the things we hold or methods we use.

9. We can’t re-image God without a change of heart – the whole narrative of the Old Testament, culminating in becoming New Creations in Jesus, by God’s Spirit – can be understood as telling the story of humanity’s repetition of Adam and Eve’s attempt to make a name for themselves, not God (ie build their own image), and our inability to properly bear God’s image, even in our best moments. The promise of the new covenant and new hearts is a promise to restore the image of God and its communicative function in humans.

The Lord your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants, so that you may love him with all your heart and with all your soul, and live. Deuteronomy 30:6

 

I will give them a heart to know me, that I am the Lord. They will be my people, and I will be their God, for they will return to me with all their heart. Jeremiah 24:7

 

7 The path of the righteous is level;
you, the Upright One, make the way of the righteous smooth.
8 Yes, Lord, walking in the way of your laws,
we wait for you;
your name and renown
    are the desire of our hearts. – Isaiah 26

10. Jesus being “the image of the invisible God” is hugely anthropologically significant. Especially when we are being conformed into his image. This transformation isn’t just restoration, it’s renovation.

11. The image of Jesus is at the heart of Paul’s imitation of Jesus – especially, this is the image of Jesus on the cross as described in Philippians 2. It’s also at the heart of the ethos bit of our communication as Christians – people who bear the image of Jesus and become more like him through the transformation of our hearts.

12.The mission of God, and thus the mission of the church, is to see the image of God restored in people, by the Gospel of Jesus, through the Holy Spirit. These people become communicative agents of God as they represent God through their changed humanity and heart.

“How to vote” (or do politics) as a Christian in 2013

I have never been more disillusioned about politics in Australia. There are policies I like from all the parties, but policies I abhor more from each platform. Navigating this election is going to be tough.

Here’s what I’m thinking through, personally, as I try to cast my very valuable vote – let’s not forget that being able to take part in the political process where you’re choosing between least bad options is an incredible privilege, globally and historically speaking.

One of the things I’ve become convinced of as I’ve developed and tried to articulate what I think is a Christian approach to the political world here on this blog is that a Christian approach to politics is an approach to politics that is framed by the gospel and that presents the gospel. How you vote is part of how you live as a Christian – how you vocalise your participation in the democratic process on Facebook or at the water cooler is part of your communication of the gospel (provided people know you are a Christian).

So here’s my snapshot to how to vote as a Christian:

Have your vote shaped by Jesus’ actions at the cross, and use your vote to testify to Jesus as the true king.

Can you do this by voting for any or every Australian political party? On the one hand, no. Sadly, I don’t feel like there’s a party platform that ticks all the boxes, so it really is a matter of picking what your policy priorities are. But can you in good conscience pick any major party in the Australian election, or many of the minor parties, and articulate why you’re voting for that party in a way that demonstrates that you belong to Jesus? I think you can.

I’ll explain a little more.

The Bible Stuff

There are, I think, four passages that shape my approach to thinking about this election.

This passage from Matthew 22 is something of a “purple passage” for Christians when it comes to politics. It’s one I’ve turned to time and time again to push for a strong separation between church and state, it’s led me to be pretty libertarian, pushing for a government that doesn’t intervene in private affairs. And while I think there’s validity to that thinking, I think there’s something even more profound at play that has changed how I think about our participation in the political process as Christians.

15 Then the Pharisees went out and laid plans to trap him in his words. 16 They sent their disciples to him along with the Herodians. “Teacher,” they said, “we know that you are a man of integrity and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. You aren’t swayed by others, because you pay no attention to who they are. 17 Tell us then, what is your opinion? Is it right to pay the imperial tax to Caesar or not?”

18 But Jesus, knowing their evil intent, said, “You hypocrites, why are you trying to trap me? 19 Show me the coin used for paying the tax.” They brought him a denarius, 20 and he asked them, “Whose image is this? And whose inscription?”

21 “Caesar’s,” they replied.

Then he said to them, “So give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”

22 When they heard this, they were amazed. So they left him and went away.

I think Jesus is making a huge claim here, based on Genesis 1.

27 So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.

Jesus isn’t just saying obey Caesar – he’s claiming ownership over those who are made in God’s image. If you wanted to speculate a little further you might make a link between “inscription” and the law being written on the hearts of those who have the Holy Spirit. But that’s a pretty interesting jump to attempt.

If you can be bothered reading my thesis you’ll see that I think our capacity as image bearers is functional – it describes how God made people to function. As images that point people to him (there’s a pretty convincing argument that Eden is a temple, images in temples represented and manifested the God who made them – there’s a cool jump from that to Jesus being “the image of the invisible God” in Colossians 1). So part of this political theology, I’d argue is participating in the church-state relationship in a way that shows that we are images of God. It’s not just the temple thing – coins, with images, functioned as political communication tools – every transaction in Rome, and the value of the coin, was guaranteed by the emperor’s head, and the other images and inscriptions celebrated and communicated the emperor’s achievements.

So how do we function as images of Jesus in the political process in modern Australia? That’s what I reckon is the big question to answer when deciding how to vote.

I’d say, as Christians, we’re not just images of God where that’s an abstract thing and we have to guess at what we were created to be based on the first two chapters of Genesis – as Christians we have something more concrete to shape our lives around. Jesus.

Here’s passage 2… Romans 8:28-30.

28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. 29 For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. 30 And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.

And not just Jesus. But the incarnate and crucified Jesus. The Jesus who became a human – observable and touchable, and who spoke out against the problems with broken political systems by claiming to be God’s promised king. But who was also put to death by the hostile state – a nice combined effort from the Jewish religious establishment and the Roman political machine. I’d suggest that “taking up your cross” or “imitating Paul as he imitates Christ” is part of what it means to be conformed to the image of Jesus.

So the question then, is how do we vote, as Christians, in a way that takes up our cross – where our decision in the voting booth is shaped a desire to bear the image of God through self-sacrifice for the sake of others (and who is the other?).

Here, I think, is Paul’s paradigmatic account of the “image of Jesus”  I think this based on verses 1 and 5 – I think our union with Christ is a big part of our image bearing function. and the Christian life based on the cross, from Philippians 2. This is how you show that you belong to Jesus.

Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, 2 then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. 3 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, 4 not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.

5 In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

6 Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
7 rather, he made himself nothing
    by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8 And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!

So I’d say voting as a Christian means putting aside your own interests – maybe your own economic comfortability or security – your own upwards progression in the world, your own interests for the sake of others.

Shaped by the way Jesus did that when he  lowered himself to become human and die on the cross. Humiliated.

Here’s what Cicero, a Roman statesman, said about crucifixion.

“The very word ‘cross’ should be far removed, not only from the Roman citizen, but from his thoughts, his eyes and his ears… the mere mention of such a thing is shameful to a Roman citizen and a free man.” Cicero, Pro Rabiro

The cross involved giving up a huge amount of status – being humiliated – for the sake of others. How do we vote like that?

I think Paul uses the Philippians 2 framework in Romans 12, and throughout his letters to the Corinthians. I think Romans pivots on chapter 8. Up to chapter 8 Paul establishes what it means to be human in the light of the gospel (I think Romans 7 describes being a sinner made in God’s image with the capacity and desire to do good, but inability to do it). In the following chapters he deals with what it looks like to live a life transformed by the Gospel. He works through the ethical (and political) implications of the cross and the transformed minds that come through being united with Jesus.

Transformed minds must necessarily lead to transformed votes.

In Romans 12 he seems to be echoing Philippians 2 (especially when it comes to life in the church) – but I’d say it also means thinking about how to live visibly, as God’s image bearers shaped by the cross…

Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. 2 Do not conform to the pattern of this worldbut be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

3 For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you…

9 Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. 10 Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves. 11 Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. 12 Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.13 Share with the Lord’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality.

14 Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. 15 Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. 16 Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited.

17 Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone.18 If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. 19 Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. 20 On the contrary:

“If your enemy is hungry, feed him;
    if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.
In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.”

Christian living – and a Christian approach to politics – then involves sacrificial living. It involves being counter-cultural – deliberately. And it involves using our transformed minds to “test and approve” God’s will. But, we get a pretty good clue for what living according to God’s will looks like in the verse before, and the verses after… the sacrificial love for others.

Just for a little bit more pushing this image of God/death of Jesus thing – check out 2 Corinthians 4…

3 And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. 4 The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. 5 For what we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. 6 For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ.

7 But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. 8 We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; 9 persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. 10 We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. 11 For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may also be revealed in our mortal body. 12 So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you.

Peter has some pretty good stuff to contribute too. Check out 1 Peter 2 and 3.

2:11 Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul. 12 Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.

13 Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every human authority: whether to the emperor, as the supreme authority, 14 or to governors, who are sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right. 15 For it is God’s will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish people. 16 Live as free people, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as God’s slaves. 17 Show proper respect to everyone, love the family of believers, fear God, honor the emperor.

3:13 Who is going to harm you if you are eager to do good? 14 But even if you should suffer for what is right, you are blessed. “Do not fear their threats; do not be frightened.” 15 But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, 16 keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander. 17 For it is better, if it is God’s will, to suffer for doing good than for doing evil. 18 For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit.

 

Implications for voting (or politicking) as a Christian

Here are some of the implications that I’ve drawn from the above Biblical data (and some other bits) – they’re not the only relevant bits of thinking. We’ve also got to figure out how we participate in the process in a post-Christian world that will be increasingly hostile to the gospel. And part of my thinking is drawn from a commitment to the idea that not only is the way we live (ethos) part of our testimony, but the way we speak about how we live and why (logos), is also part of the narrative we weave while bearing God’s image – so I’m in favour of talking about the political process. I’m also keen not to alienate people who disagree with the particular stance I take, and keen to love and respect those who are willing to enter public office.

Bear Jesus’ image and take up your cross with your vote and in how you talk about it

I want people to know that I’m weighing up the issues involved in this election based on a “transformed mind” – but ultimately based on the sacrifice Jesus made on my behalf, even though I was his enemy. And I really want to actually authentically be doing that – not just putting it on. Self sacrifice is paradigmatic for me. I’m keen to not look to my interests, but the interests of others – especially those who can’t vote.

Love others and “do good” with your vote

Love for others is the motivation behind Jesus becoming flesh, and the motivation for Christian living. Loving others and “doing good” is also part of how we bear witness to Jesus, and bear his image.

Be “Incarnate” as foreigners…

Jesus became part of the world. Join a political party. Participate in the process. Meet candidates. Call talk back radio. Blog. Discuss policy on Facebook. Become human. Get a sense for why the people you’ve grown up not voting for prioritise the things they do. Remember that as a Christian you’re a citizen of a different kingdom that transcends national borders and patriotism, but that you live in Australia so loving Australians is a good place to start.

Be wise with your vote (be informed)

Voting is an amazing privilege. And an amazing opportunity to live out the gospel in front of others – but it’s complicated. Life is complicated. It’s going to involve compromise. It’s going to involve self-sacrifice. It’s inevitably going to involve choosing a least bad option – and that will look different for different people. There is no party with a monopoly on the Christian vote or the voice of God. Not even Family First.

The Bible Society has put together a nice (though limited) guide to the election and the ABC’s political compass is worth having a go at to weigh up your priorities and see where that leaves you.

Go beyond doing your duty to Caesar to do good

I think this is part of the tension Jesus articulates with the taxes thing – we are called to be good and dutiful citizens and to obey the law and vote and stuff. But our vote is not where our contribution to public life ends. If refugees are your thing – join a refugee group, get to know some people who have arrived by boat (or even by plane – it’s more likely you’ll come across them). If the environment is your thing then figure out how you can make a positive contribution to the environment that goes beyond the political process. It can be pretty easy to think our government and its policy limits what we can do in particular areas, and to outsource that sort of care. But this relates back to the incarnation thing.

Witness to office bearers (and other people who are interested in politics

I love this bit in Acts 26, where Paul is appearing in front of Roman authorities, on trial – and he tells his story and the Gospel – and gets this response:

28 Then Agrippa said to Paul, “Do you think that in such a short time you can persuade me to be a Christian?”

29 Paul replied, “Short time or long—I pray to God that not only you but all who are listening to me today may become what I am, except for these chains.”

I hope that in any political discussion be it with office bearers in the capacity of advocacy (I’m on a committee for the Pressy church that does this stuff, but I’m thinking about the letters/emails I send to politicians in my personal capacity as well) that there’s a real chance that the gospel will be clearly seen in the positions I’m advocating. That’s why I think it’s almost untenable for Christians not to be pro welcoming asylum seekers – you can’t tell the story of the gospel while saying we should close the doors to paradise because people might be evil or we might be full, or they might be taking something of ours…

Honour current, future and potential office bearers

Romans 13 is a pretty good place to go on this one – I reckon one of the differences between empire and democracy is that the people you slam today might be your leaders tomorrow, so it pays to respect anyone in office, and anyone running for office. Because they are willing to give their time to governing.

13 Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. 2 Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. 3 For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and you will be commended. 4 For the one in authority is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. 5 Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also as a matter of conscience.

6 This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, who give their full time to governing. 7 Give to everyone what you owe them: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor.

I suspect real damage has been done for the Christian voice through immoderate speech about those who have been characterised as political opponents – I can’t imagine, for example, the Greens viewing Christian voices with much charity if they hold the balance of power in the senate. But this no doubt works on a local level with your local member, as much as it does on the party level.

There is of course the tension that some rulers are doing things that don’t honour God or carry out his will. But that’s not a new dilemma.

Pray for current, future, and potential office bearers

So I’d say the answer here is 1 Timothy 2. We should pray for those in authority. It seems the prayer is linked to the above.

I urge, then, first of all, that petitions, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for all people— 2 for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. 3 This is good, and pleases God our Savior, 4 who wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. 5 For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus, 6 who gave himself as a ransom for all people. This has now been witnessed to at the proper time. 

At the end of the day – whatever the outcome in the election – the sky isn’t going to fall in. Christians will still be free to live good lives, freely, among the pagans as a witness to Jesus. God will still be in control, and prayer will still work. Perspective is important.

My reflections on the Australian political landscape and this election

I mentioned above that I’ve never been more disillusioned with the political scene. And it’s true.

If I was voting out of economic self-interest I’d vote for the LNP. I think they tend to produce prosperity better. Or I’d vote for Labor – fast internet for the rest of my life is something that excites me, and the Coalition is just asinine on broadband policy.

But I’m asking what it means to vote for others – what it means to vote for the vulnerable. The voiceless. The future generations. It’s a complicated balancing act – do I prioritise abortion – and lives lost there (probably the Coalition, definitely not Labor)? Do I prioritise Asylum Seekers (the Greens, definitely not the Coalition or Labor)? Do I vote on indigenous issues? Foreign Aid? Economic management or environmental management – for the sake of future Australians?

It’s hard. It takes wisdom. It takes prayer. And it takes speaking out and participating in the public discussion from a renewed mind shaped by the cross.

Or joining a party. The only way for Christians, who are serious about the cross, to become less disenfranchised with the the political process is to speak into the policy making process. Joining a party won’t be for everybody – I’m not sure it’s all that healthy for people who want to speak apolitically to all parties, and lovingly to other Christians who are strongly affiliated to a party to join a party, but it’d be very healthy for the parties to have a Christian voice speaking out during the process.

My vote and articulating why I vote on issues like Asylum Seekers – or abortion – are opportunities to demonstrate the transforming of my mind, and my priorities. I’ve had a go at articulating this in previous posts – but check out David Ould’s attempt to show how the gospel shapes his thinking on Asylum Seekers.

Imagine a country which operates a radical asylum seeker policy. Instead of waiting for people to arrive on airplanes or even on boats as they do in Australia, this imaginary country charters boats and planes at great expense and sends them to countries where they know there is a desperate need for people to be rescued…

But that’s the gospel pure and simple. God the Father sends the Lord Jesus Christ into a world which opposes Him (John 1:103:16). Jesus willingly dies for those who are His enemies (Col. 1:21Rom. 5:8). This is the amazing, and dare I say it, ludicrous nature of the good news of what Jesus came to do.

 

Image is everything

Here’s some stuff I’m thinking about for my project (in the absence of any ability to think about or process anything that falls outside of this sphere at present project tidbits are going to have to do for content in these parts)…

The basic premise at the heart of my project is that from the opening pages of the Bible, God’s people have been “plundering the Gold of the Egyptians” to explain God to God’s world.

That’s a famous quote from Augustine, he uses it to talk about learning to preach from orators.

The Ancient Near Eastern background to the Genesis account is pretty well known – the Biblical account seems to be setting the record straight about a few things when it comes to the nature of God, the nature of man, and the nature of nature. Whether this was just meant to stop Israel running off to foreign gods, or was a global account is an interesting question… but there’s some stuff that comes to life (even more) when you read the Bible against its cultural backdrop.

Here are the verses I’m particularly interested in, from Genesis 1.

26 Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

27 So God created mankind in his own image,
    in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.

There’s all sorts of theological implications from man being made in the image of God, the fancy Latin is imago dei. People have had all sorts of ideas about what the relationship between man and God is. From walking on two legs to being moral beings. People have all sorts of ideas about what happened to this image a couple of chapters later – when Adam and Eve turn their backs on God. Is the image broken? Fragmented? Wiped out? Unchanged?

I’m suggesting that at least part of the image of God relates to communication. Our ability to communicate – perhaps, but mostly our function. God created man to represent him – and by the time people are first reading Genesis, a long time after the fact, when Moses or a final editor handed over the finished first edition of the Pentateuch, representing God meant representing God to other people. Even if it didn’t for people 1 and 2 (“male and female he created them”).

Incidentally – I think there’s a big clue this image function was broken at the fall – though not wiped out – and I think there’s more to it than communication, I think Romans 7 suggests that part of being made in God’s image is having some idea what God wants, and our broken, sinful, nature means we don’t do what we want to do. Romans is part of the reason I think there’s some residual image – but the reason I think it’s broken is where Genesis goes in chapter 5.

“When God created mankind, he made them in the likeness of God. He created them male and female and blessed them. And he named them “Mankind” when they were created.

When Adam had lived 130 years, he had a son in his own likeness, in his own image; and he named him Seth.”

Adam’s image. That is. Not God’s. This image thing is partly related to family lines. The image is carried (we’ll get there with Romans 8 too).

Anyway. Here’s the cool bit (one of them).

One of the fun things people have noticed about the relationship between Genesis and other creation accounts from the Ancient Near East is that the creation of the world is almost always told in relationship to the creation of a temple. These temples have gardens, sanctuaries, flowing water, fruit… and priests – all sorts of language that Genesis 2 picks up. The Temple reflects the cosmos.

These temples had images in them. Images of the gods of the other nations. Images that were seen as living, breathing, manifestations of these gods who needed feeding. Images made from dirt. Images brought to life with a ritual involving “mouth washing” and “mouth opening”… The word used for “image” in Genesis 1 is the Hebrew version of the word for idol – that’s what it is used for in the rest of the Old Testament.

Kings were also “images of god” – as, occasionally, were priests. And sometimes there were idols made of kings who stood in front of their gods. There’s a strong sense in Genesis 1, and 2, that part of being the image of God is ruling as God’s representative – so the command that follows the statement:

so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground

It’s interesting that for the earlier part of Genesis 1, God has named all the things he has made – but he doesn’t name the animals. Adam does, in chapter 2. There are heaps of scholars who think chapters 1 and 2, because they’re different, come from different traditions in Israel and have been lumped together. Those scholars are running after a naked emperor, telling him how nice his clothes are.

Even the dominion thing has communication implications, with chapter 2 taken into account – because as God exercised authority by speaking things into creation, and naming them – man names the animals.

But lets get back to the idol bit… These dirt idols started manifesting the gods they represented in ANE theology when mean played around with their mouths. The Genesis creation account flips it. Man doesn’t make God and get him going by washing his mouth – God makes man, and gets man going by breathing into him (his nose – but presumably God uses his mouth).

Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed.

Yeah. Cop that idol worshippers! We’ll come back to the “breath of life” bit soon…

So man is like a walking, talking, image of God. Placed in the garden-temple. With king-priest functions. You could, I think, make the case from this alone that part of being the image of God – representing God – is communicating about God.

Images are incredibly powerful forms of communication now – and were in the Ancient Near East. Images, in a largely illiterate time, were the vehicle for propaganda – especially cult images. Where a nation’s legitimacy largely depended on the legitimacy of their gods.

Ezekiel basically picks up this image theme and runs with it in the exile – there’s heaps of idol creation language going on, and this bit in chapter 37 is pretty cool with huge echoes of Eden, and huge promises for what’s to come.

He asked me, “Son of man, can these bones live?”

I said, “Sovereign Lord, you alone know.”

Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones and say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to lifeI will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the Lord.’”…

11 Then he said to me: “Son of man, these bones are the people of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off.’ 12 Therefore prophesy and say to them: ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: My people, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them; I will bring you back to the land of Israel.13 Then you, my people, will know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and bring you up from them. 14 I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land. Then you will know that I the Lord have spoken, and I have done it, declares the Lord.’”

25 They will live in the land I gave to my servant Jacob, the land where your ancestors lived. They and their children and their children’s children will live there forever, and David my servant will be their prince forever.26 I will make a covenant of peace with them; it will be an everlasting covenant. I will establish them and increase their numbers, and I will put my sanctuary among them forever. 27 My dwelling place will be with them; I will be their God, and they will be my people28 Then the nations will know that I the Lord make Israel holy, when my sanctuary is among them forever.’”

The same mouth washing/opening deal happened whenever an idol was captured by an enemy and restored – and there’s a pretty good case to be made that Ezekiel is promising that for Israel when they return they will be image again – filled with God’s breath/Spirit (Ezekiel makes that more specific), in God’s temple/sanctuary. Alive again. Check out Ezekiel 28 for some more cool Eden language that makes these connections even more explicitly (but more specifically). Oh yeah. I forgot. Check out Ezekiel 36.

24 “‘For I will take you out of the nations; I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land. 25 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. 26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws

32 I want you to know that I am not doing this for your sake, declares the Sovereign Lord. Be ashamed and disgraced for your conduct, people of Israel!

33 “‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: On the day I cleanse you from all your sins, I will resettle your towns, and the ruins will be rebuilt.34 The desolate land will be cultivated instead of lying desolate in the sight of all who pass through it. 35 They will say, “This land that was laid waste has become like the garden of Eden; the cities that were lying in ruins, desolate and destroyed, are now fortified and inhabited.” 36 Then the nations around you that remain will know that I the Lord have rebuilt what was destroyed and have replanted what was desolate. I the Lord have spoken, and I will do it.’

Cool. Hey. It gets a bit cooler.

The whole “image as propaganda” thing kept going beyond the Ancient Near East (there’s also a good case to be made that Isaiah was familiar with some of the Assyrian royal propaganda – the picture he paints of foreign kings is often verbatim what the Assyrians claim about themselves. Rome took the Assyrian copybook and ran plays from it, and developed their own, becoming masters of sophisticated imperial imagery.

Especially the use of coins. Coins were a huge aspect of Roman propaganda. Carrying images of the emperor. Which is interesting in itself – but adds some extra coolness to this passage where Jesus is asked about taxes…

13 Later they sent some of the Pharisees and Herodians to Jesus to catch him in his words. 14 They came to him and said, “Teacher, we know that you are a man of integrity. You aren’t swayed by others, because you pay no attention to who they are; but you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. Is it right to pay the imperial tax to Caesar or not? 15 Should we pay or shouldn’t we?”

But Jesus knew their hypocrisy. “Why are you trying to trap me?” he asked. “Bring me a denarius and let me look at it.” 16 They brought the coin, and he asked them, “Whose image is this? And whose inscription?”

Caesar’s,” they replied.

17 Then Jesus said to them, “Give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.”

And they were amazed at him.

At the very least this suggests there’s some New Testament cognisance happening when it comes to what images mean and how coins are functioning… but what if Jesus is making a huge claim about “what is God’s” – Caesar’s image might be on coins. But God’s image is on people.

Especially people who follow Jesus. And receive the Spirit. People who follow Jesus, who Paul says:

15 The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation16 For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. 17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18 And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy.19 For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross…

21 Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your mindsbecause of your evil behavior. 22 But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation…

24 Now I rejoice in what I am suffering for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ’s afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the church25 I have become its servant by the commission God gave me to present to you the word of God in its fullness— 26 the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the Lord’s people. 27 To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.

28 He is the one we proclaim, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone fully mature in Christ.

Paul’s approach to following Jesus, the image of God, is to suffer for the sake of the church, and to participate in God’s mission of communication, so that Christ will be in people, that they may be “mature” in him. He takes up his cross.

Remember how Adam’s image thing was partly to do with sonship. Here’s some stuff from the start of Colossians 1. Compare verse 9 with verse 28

9 …We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives,10 so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, 11 being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, 12 and giving joyful thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of his holy people in the kingdom of light.

These people with the Spirit, who have been united with Jesus, have become people who, as Christ’s body, inherit the kingdom from God. Proclaiming Jesus is, it seems, the key to helping people receive the Spirit, and start bearing this image.

Here’s some final bits from Romans 8 (easily my favourite chapter in the Bible)…

You, however, are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ. 10 But if Christ is in you, then even though your body is subject to death because of sin, the Spirit gives life because of righteousness. 11 And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you.

There are some nice Ezekiel allusions there…

14 For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God.15 The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” 16 The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.17 Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.

28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. 29 For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.30 And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.

And this, friends, is why I’ve appreciated almost four years of enjoying the Bible, and why I’m excited about my project.

Where is Jesus in the Kermit Gosnell trial or the Boston Bombing?

On Sunday I followed up my previous talk in a miniseries called “Where is Jesus now?” with a look at how Jesus is visible in the here and now in images of him.

People. Those who have been transformed by Jesus. Into his image.

I feel like it was an adequate treatment of the question in that Jesus is visible in his church – but I feel like I pulled some punches in the answer that I gave.

It’s easy to talk about being Jesus in the small stuff. It’s easy to talk about being Jesus to other people when they’re moving house – or when you realise how broken you are, and they are… It’s easy to talk about being Jesus as something that’s a little intangible and hypothetical – it’s easy to say that people should be able to see Jesus in us. As we live transformed lives.

But it’s not so easy to see Jesus, here and now, in human tragedies.

The challenge for those who call Jesus Lord, who are being conformed to his image, and who are his image bearers – or ambassadors – is to know how to be Jesus in the awful extremities of life, not just in the every day.

Sure. Figuring out that bearing the image of Jesus means having a life shaped by the sort of sacrificial love Jesus showed at the cross will hopefully help us in big situations if we’re disciplined at living that way in the minutiae of daily life. But a big question we’ve got to answer – and account for, if we’re bearing Jesus’ image – is where is Jesus in tragedies.

Where is Jesus when bombs explode at the finish line of a popular marathon and maim hundreds?

The Westboro Baptists offer one answer.

It’s not a very good answer. There is no image of Jesus in this picture, or in these words. There is no Jesus in the words and lives of the Westboro Baptists. There’s as much Jesus in their ministry as there is in those pieces of toast that sell for thousands of dollars on eBay.

This sort of thing makes you wish that Anonymous would make good on their threats to remove the cancer that is Westboro Baptist… Even if that’s not real justice. And even if there’s a little of the hate (or at least the capacity for hate) that Westboro spew out in all of us… sometimes when we’re condemning them.

But Jesus is in the voices of people who are changed by him – who are called to be his ambassadors – joining together to call Westboro out for what they are. Spokespeople of evil. People peddling the sort of message that might have earned them the label “antichrist” from the guys who wrote the New Testament… Jesus is in the actions of the people who respond in love, rather than standing idly by – or worse – celebrating – when tragedies like this strike. Tragedies that are the result of human brokenness. Tragedies that unite us – tragedies that the world unites to condemn.

I read somewhere that the explosion left people with broken bodies and severed limbs – people who moments before had been taking part in a grand moment, sitting at the finish line of a marathon – the pinnacle of human athletic achievement. There’s something beautiful and pure about sport – it’s one of those parts of life, like music, love, and childbirth, where something magical happens. Something that puts the better aspects of our humanity to the fore… except when people cheat (or play country music).

That’s why it’s easy to spot the tragedy and injustice in this situation that has, as I write, claimed the lives of a handful of people, including a child, and seriously injured many, many others.

It’s easy to speak for Jesus in a situation where everybody is essentially saying the words, and offering the compassion, that those of us who follow Jesus want to be saying. You don’t stand out as different for wanting to see those who have been, literally, torn apart by those explosions, lovingly pieced back together – to have their lives stretch out for many years into the future with only small physical scars to show for this event.

It’s easy to be Jesus – to carry his image – when everyone agrees with what he says. When the media is trumpeting the story on front pages, and at the top of news bulletins, throughout the world.

It’s easy for those in leadership to sound like Jesus when they’re condemning evil and promising to deal with it, and deliver justice for the victims. It’s easy to be admirable and kingly – to be a voice of sacrificial authority and compassion.

But what about when the media is silent – by conspiracy, or just because an issue is deemed to be a non-issue?

Where is Jesus when tragedies are occuring in darkness – rather than in the prominence of an internationally significant sporting event?

Where is Jesus in the story of Kermit Gosnell?

Abortion is a horribly complex issue with all sorts of factors influencing a decision that often comes from a place of trauma and despair and leads to more trauma and more despair. This has never been more true than in the horrible shop of horrors case of Kermit Gosnell.

Where is Jesus in that million dollar backyard abortion clinic that ended the lives of mothers, and untold numbers of unborn babies – and worse – babies who were born. Live. During the abortion process. Only to be, literally, torn apart for the convenience of the mother and doctor. Using stationery. He’s on trial for killing seven babies and one mother – but it’s hard to tell the difference between a baby killed outside the womb at 30 weeks and a baby killed inside the womb at 30 weeks. It’s hard to tell the difference between these seven babies and the thousands of babies Gosnell has killed in completely legal (though horribly conducted) processes in his clinic. Which is why some ethicists argue that infanticide isn’t just ok, but the natural conclusion of legalising abortion. And is probably why pro-abortion reporters have a hard time demonstrating why Kermit Gosnell is a criminal anomaly rather than a participant in the status quo.

It turns out it’s much harder to be presidential when you’re talking about the potential legal murder of babies (Obama’s track record on this issue is pretty disturbing, I’m not expecting him to comment on a case that’s before the courts)… It’s much harder for the media to speak like Jesus in a story like this – as they try to balance their competing agendas. It’s harder to carry the image of Jesus into a situation like this – when people would much rather sweep the whole thing under a rug and forget it happened. It’s much harder to sound like Jesus when the mob is baying for a certain type of blood to match a certain style of lifestyle.

One of the tragedies of the abortion debate is that it’s the product of a culture that rejects the idea that some actions have consequences that we don’t want. If the debate was limited to early term abortions in the case of rape, or genuine threats to the life of the mother, there’d be a lot less heat. Even those situations aren’t black and white. But the goalposts have moved so far from those extremes to questions of convenience that we’re now in a situation where the long term mental health of the mother is said to justify the termination of a human life after the person has exited the mother’s body. It’s not about control over one’s body at that point.

Where is Jesus in infanticide? He’s in the voices of Christians who lovingly point out that we can do better – and who model a better way forward. A way that involves sacrificial love – not a voice of condemnation. A way that involves hope, not despair. A way that involves being Jesus not just to the unwanted babies – but to the mothers. To the legislators. To the doctors. We can do better. We need to do better.

It’s easy to speak for Jesus when what he’d say is obvious and requires no creativity. It’s easy to carry the image of Jesus into a situation where everybody agrees on a way forward.

It’s harder to speak for Jesus, and carry his image, when the way forward requires creativity and thinking outside the box in a completely counter-cultural way.

You can read Mike Bird’s excellent and persuasive piece on why we need to be thinking about infanticide now, not in three years, and I’d humbly submit this piece I wrote last year when those enlightened ethicists calmly essentially suggested that Kermit Gosnell’s actions be normalised as a useful companion piece.

Jesus is in those who speak out for the vulnerable. Who speak against the consensus that is driven by an ideology of “me” – an ideology that dehumanises other lives for my convenience. An ideology that knows nothing of sacrificial love – but only sacrifice of others. Of other lives. With scissors.

I’m sorry. But how did we get to this? We got here by rejecting the progress borne out of almost 2,000 years of people valuing life because Jesus valued life. Valuing life because human life is life made in the image of God with the potential to be life remade in the image of Jesus. You only get to humanism through Jesus.Humanism is that great modern “secular” doctrine which has somehow been white-anted by selfishness where “I” am valuable but fellow humans – including the unborn – are to be discarded when they become inconvenient and its within my power (or rights) to do so. Humanism is a product of Christianity. Cut out Christianity and the foundations for valuing life disappear. And we’re going to wear the cost of that.

We might see a bombing that takes the life of a handful of people – including a child – as tragic, and rightly so. It’s right for that story – that describes how human brokenness can affect something pure and exciting – to be front page news. But somehow the story of a man whose brokenness affected that other pure and exciting human event – childbirth – in bloody, heinous and unimaginably terrible ways – is only worth a mention five weeks into his trial as a result of a sustained outcry.

Somehow we need to be Jesus in situations like this.

Somehow we need to be Jesus to our legislators, and to parents – as Christians were in the pagan Roman empire where child exposure (infanticide) was a daily reality.

Here’s what Tertullian said about infanticide which was part of a Christian led revolution of the practice where Christians would take exposed children and raise them in loving environments – in a way that ultimately led to children being valued.

“But in regard to child murder, as it does not matter whether it is committed for a sacred object, or merely at one’s own self-impulse—although there is a great difference, as we have said, between parricide and homicide—I shall turn to the people generally. How many, think you, of those crowding around and gaping for Christian blood,—how many even of your rulers, notable for their justice to you and for their severe measures against us, may I charge in their own consciences with the sin of putting their offspring to death? As to any difference in the kind of murder, it is certainly the more cruel way to kill by drowning, or by exposure to cold and hunger and dogs. A maturer age has always preferred death by the sword. In our case, murder being once for all forbidden, we may not destroy even the fœtus in the womb, while as yet the human being derives blood from other parts of the body for its sustenance. To hinder a birth is merely a speedier man-killing; nor does it matter whether you take away a life that is born, or destroy one that is coming to the birth…”

Somehow we need to find creative ways to be Jesus to the mothers faced with the horrible prospect of terminating a life because they see no other way forward.

Somehow we need to be Jesus to those who would profit from the industry this produces.

Somehow we need to be Jesus to those who are legislating on our behalf so that people see that it’s ok to make decisions out of love for other people that come at personal cost. Like Jesus did. Somehow.

Somehow we need to help people rediscover the truth that people are made in God’s image, and of value – so that they might take the step to being remade in the image of Jesus, who after surviving an attempted infanticide when he was born, sacrificed himself for others.

It’s all well and good to pay lip service to living like Jesus – and at the end of the day I feel like I did a pretty good job of doing that on Sunday. Paying lip service to the idea that we should take up our cross and follow Jesus so other people see him in us. It’s easy enough to do it when everybody is up an arms. But what about when the rubber hits the road – what about in the face of tragedies and injustices that people aren’t really interested in knowing about?