Tag: image

Being Human — Chapter Six — A world of (im)pure imagey-nations

This is an adaptation of the sixth talk from a 2022 sermon series — you can listen to it as a podcast here, or watch it on video. It’s not unhelpful to think of this series as a ‘book’ preached chapter by chapter. And, a note — there are lots of pull quotes from various sources in these posts that were presented as slides in the sermons, but not read out in the recordings.

How does this image make you feel? Is your stomach rumbling?

What about this one? Are you salivating just a little?

And what about this one — can you imagine sitting in this lounge room?

How about this kitchen? How does it make you feel about your house?

It’s interesting — isn’t it — the way images work in our minds to create desires.

I could have shown you images of beautiful people — but I’m trying to keep things PG and these pictures of food came from the #foodporn and #houseporn hashtags on Instagram.

It’s not just Instagram that stokes our desire for food or furniture — you can have your senses tantalised on MasterChef, or My Kitchen Rules — and you can cultivate dissatisfaction with your kitchen appliances on The Block.

The Block had extra drama in 2022, with a couple bailing after one episode; because it wasn’t on-brand for them — it didn’t mesh with their image; Elle Ferguson’s in the image business… she’s a world-famous Instagram influencer. Being an influencer is a desirable new career path; the ABC is even reporting on children becoming professional influencers — and how powerful these influencers are.

It’s a tricky life. Aussie academic, Nina Willment, says influencers live with the constant threat of not being seen; if they don’t keep making content they might be punished by the machine overlords — the algorithm.

“The threat of invisibility is a constant source of insecurity for influencers, who are under constant pressure to feed platforms with content. If they don’t, they may be ‘punished’ by the algorithm – having posts hidden or displayed lower down on search results.”
Nina Willment, The Dark Side of Content Creation

But it’s not just influencers who reduce themselves to images and perform for a machine-like audience; in the age of expressive individualism, Instagram’s on hand inviting you to express yourself with the tools they provide.

Image making is part of being human; it’s what God does, and it’s part of images made in the image of an image maker (Genesis 1:27).

The catch is, when we live as images in a world where we have cut ourselves off from God — where we’re “buffered” — we’re not sure what image it is we’re meant to be like, and so we often end up choosing other people… And often it’s not just our parents, in our visual culture it’s celebrities — or, increasingly, influencers.

Christopher Hedges wrote the book Empire of Illusion, about life in a world dominated by images that are produced to manipulate us and keep us playing along with the image makers; the celebrity-making machines, and he says when we turn to celebrities — or influencers — as idealised forms of ourselves, it ends up impacting us; instead of being fully real, or fully self-actualised, we’re never sure who we are.

“Celebrities are portrayed as idealized forms of ourselves. It is we, in perverse irony, who are never fully actualised, never fully real in a celebrity culture.”
Christopher Hedges, Empire of Illusion

Maybe we’re not buffered selves, but buffering — always trying to become who we are more fully, but never quite finished and ready to go.

With the sheer volume of evolving images how could we feel whole? We’re perpetually looking for the next image — whether that’s a meal, a house design, a holiday, a relationship, or some visionary version of ourselves.

In an article updating the argument in his book after Donald Trump’s election — Hedges says we’re worshippers of the electronic image — our modern-day idols shape our fantasies; our hearts and our lives. Even our interactions with others are shaped by all sorts of pixelated pictures, whether that’s through interacting on screens; or spending our time seeing people’s bodies in pixelated form.

“Electronic images are our modern-day idols. We worship the power and fame they impart. We yearn to become idolised celebrities. We measure our lives against the fantasies these images disseminate.”
Hedges, Worshipping the Electronic Image

Hedges reckons Donald Trump’s reality TV instincts made him a perfect politician for the digital image world — he’s mastered the cultivation of political images — we saw this in this image during a series of FBI raids.

Bizarrely Trump seems to be the embodiment of all the vices from Colossians (Colossians 3:5), but his image-making machine controls the Republicans, and about 80% of people who identify as evangelical Christians in the US — and we might feel a world away, but consider how much of the imagery in our culture and on our screens is pumped out from the US…

Trump’s image-making is catching — those following his playbook can look like images in a live action role playing game, or like they’re playing multiple characters at once.

This isn’t new; we’ve always been shaped by images — once it was stained glass windows, and paintings that told the story about an enchanted cosmos, what’s new is the medium; and it’s much cheaper to make a digital photo than a stained glass window; today our icons are the pictures flashing across our screens.

“In the Middle Ages, stained glass windows and vivid paintings of religious torment and salvation controlled and influenced social behavior. Today we are ruled by icons of gross riches and physical beauty that blare and flash from television, cinema, and computer screens.”
Hedges, Empire of Illusion

And it’s not just foodporn, obviously — porn itself is embedded in our culture and our imaginations — our image making. Both as an image maker and in the way its norms flow into the way human bodies are presented in advertising and entertainment.

Hedges is a lapsed Presbyterian minister who became an award-winning war correspondent — his book has a whole chapter on porn — and it’s like he’s covering a war; it has way too much information to be comfortable reading — he reckons porn both shapes and mirrors the violence, cruelty and degradation in our society the same way war can; and that porn is producing a loss of empathy by reducing human beings — and human bodies — to being commodities.

“The violence, cruelty, and degradation of porn are expressions of a society that has lost the capacity for empathy… It is about reducing other human beings to commodities, to objects.”
Hedges, Empire of Illusion

He suggests porn is part of a society that kills both the sacred and the human, replacing empathy and human desire — eros — and compassion with power, control, force and pain — and the idea that we are gods, and others will literally bend to our fantasies…

“It extinguishes the sacred and the human to worship power, control, force, and pain. It replaces empathy, eros, and compassion with the illusion that we are gods… Porn is the glittering façade… of a culture seduced by death.”
Hedges, Empire of Illusion

And we’re seeing the costs of this society in our society — in our schools even — I read this news story about how young boys raised on porn are sexually assaulting their classmates in record numbers.

Melinda Tankard Reist from Collective Shout wrote about the impact of porn not just in assault, but in the expectations placed on teen girls in dating relationships a few years ago where she said the culture, for teens shaped by porn, is that sexual conquest and domination are untempered by the bounds of respect, intimacy, and authentic human connection — that young people are learning cruelty and humiliation not intimacy and love — this is what happens when we’re just bodies ruled by desire, or see each other just as pixelated images in the flesh, where our desires have been shaped by dehumanising images.

“Sexual conquest and domination are untempered by the bounds of respect, intimacy and authentic human connection. Young people are not learning about intimacy, friendship and love, but about cruelty and humiliation.”
Melinda Tankard Reist

The culture we live in that commodifies people by turning them into images isn’t just happening in Instagram, or porn, it’s shaping dating — our relationships are increasingly mediated by digital images. One third of all new romantic relationships now begin online, it’s the most common way people get together.

And platforms like OkCupid — who promise dating for every single person — that’s clever — and who can even cater for niches like “people who like kissing while sitting in pie.”

Success on these sites requires cultivating an image that’ll make you attractive to others. And pictures create heaps more interaction than words; they have run studies.

David Brooks — who writes for the New York Times — wrote an article about online dating in 2003, celebrating how it was reintroducing a formal structure and ritual to dating, which he thought had been lost:

“Online dating puts structure back into courtship. For generations Americans had certain courtship rituals.”
David Brooks, Love: Internet Style, New York Times, 2003

He reckoned these platforms were all about love…

“But love is what this is all about. And the heart, even in this commercial age, finds a way.”
Brooks, 2003

In 2015 he wrote another piece — and he had changed his tune — he noticed something about the way these platforms worked — when we go to an online dating site on the same browser they use for their online shopping, we inevitably bring the same mindset — we shop for human beings. He says these platforms commodify people particularly by reducing people to a picture.

“People who date online are not shallower or vainer than those who don’t… It’s just that they’re in a specific mental state. They’re shopping for human beings, commodifying people.”
David Brooks, ‘The Devotion Leap,’ New York Times, 2015

And this process is more or less the opposite of love.

“Online dating is fascinating because it is more or less the opposite of its object: love.”
Brooks, 2015

Things have become more complex since 2015 — dating sites like OkCupid have lost market share to apps focused on instant gratification and immediate availability; where even the rituals of the old web dating have been deconstructed with a swipe of the finger, and where image is everything.

Photography itself is interesting — it has rapidly evolved as part of everyday life since the mechanisation of camera production in the 70s; before then most people didn’t spend time taking photos; even then cameras had built-in limits — like film — but the jump from mechanical to digital means we now have a seemingly unlimited capacity to capture every moment — and then see everything on our screens.

Susan Sontag wrote a famous essay ‘On Photography‘ in the 70s where she was worried then that to capture and shoot images was an act of aggression — think of the words “capture” and “shoot.”

“There is an aggression implicit in every use of the camera.”
Susan Sontag, On Photography

Photographers, she says, are “always imposing standards on their subjects,” and objectifying them.

She saw the need — once families had cameras — to capture every moment as an addictive aesthetic consumerism.

“Needing to have reality confirmed and experience enhanced by photographs is an aesthetic consumerism to which everyone is now addicted.”
Sontag, On Photography

She suggests industrial societies turn their citizens into image junkies, and this bombardment of imagery becomes an irresistible form of mental pollution.

“Industrial societies turn their citizens into image-junkies; it is the most irresistible form of mental pollution.”
Sontag, On Photography

This was before the smartphone. Imagine how she would feel about the digital society…

Have you thought about it this way? The idea that images are polluting our brains, and shaping our desires, and reshaping our bodies — but we’re bombarded with images and these images shape our desires and produce reactions in our bodies; and we’re being discipled by our digital society — even by algorithms — to interact with images and present ourselves as images… and normally as images that keep making people more money, by stoking more desires and selling us the answer.

God made us as image bearers to see… to imagine… and to make images.

God made beauty.

He made fruit that was pleasing to the eye and good for food (Genesis 2:9); but this visualising — our capacity to imagine — either leads us to or away from God. “Pleasing to the eye” and “good for food” is how Eve sees the fruit she’s been told is not good to eat too (Genesis 3:6). Then this pattern of seeing and desiring and being led to destructive sin repeats — it’s the same story with the Nephilim (Genesis 3:6, 6:2), and with David and Bathsheba (Genesis 3:6, 2 Samuel 11:2-4).

This relationship between sin and desire is also caught up in idolatry — so the Ten Commandments include a command not to make graven images of God (Exodus 20:4-5); and Deuteronomy commands Israel to watch themselves carefully and to avoid making images of living things to worship them (Deuteronomy 4:15-18), because those images will profoundly shape our vision of God and our life in the world.

What do you think Moses would have said about Instagram?

It’s interesting, though, that Israel’s holy spaces — the tabernacle and temple — involve man-made images of trees and fruit (Exodus 25:36); Israel’s eyes and bodies are meant to participate in worship — and making beautiful images of things God made can be part of that — but you won’t find carved images of God; or of animals, or of men or women — images of images of God, because Israel weren’t to worship images; they’re to be images… as soon as we reduce God to an image, or make an image our god, we’re working with a false picture of God; a God who is an image of our making.

This tendency to turn images into gods is pretty ingrained — Ezekiel talks about idols being set up in our hearts; the seat of our desires and loves (Ezekiel 14:4-5)… That’s where images go… Isaiah re-tells an idol making session with someone cooking food over one half of a chunk of wood, then carving an image of a god with the other (Isaiah 44:15), and he says something those of us who live with our phones wedged into our hands with our eyes hunched over giving all our attention… “Is not this thing in my right hand a lie?” (Isaiah 44:20).

Are not these images that bombard me, and keep me looking down, and that shape my desires — aren’t they built on the same lies; the same call to misplace our desire, that the serpent used with Eve… Won’t they leave me always dissatisfied? Humans have always been fixated by images.

The New Testament church lived in an image-saturated world — there were statues of the emperors and the Roman gods everywhere; temples on every hill and corner in a city — they also lived in an age of spectacle that upheld the imagery; the degradation of human bodies in blood sports and sexual immorality — and this presented a major challenge for the early church;

They were pretty serious about Jesus’ commands on lust and the heart, and the idea of your eyes causing you to stumble (Matthew 5:28-29), and about his teaching on the eyes and the heart being linked (Matthew 6:21-22). For them, even attending the Roman spectacles; these games, was seen not simply as renouncing your Christian faith, but as announcing you belonged to the ancient empire of illusion. They wanted to cultivate a way of seeing the world that helped them see God, and so live as his images.

Two Aussie theologians — Ben Myers and Scott Stephens — co-wrote a paper about disciplining our eyes in a visual culture; they reckon we also live in a society of spectacle and one of our great moral challenges is deciding what images to look at.

Christians today live in a society of the spectacle. Our lives are dominated to an unprecedented degree by images and by the moral act of looking at them.

Without minimising the damage that sexual imagery does to us; they suggest all imagery is essentially pornography.

“All images today are pornographic: they arouse—but without danger, obligation, or contamination.”
Myers and Stephens, ‘The Discipline of the Eyes: Reflections on Visual Culture, Ancient and Modern,’ in HTML of Cruciform Love: Towards a Theology of The Internet

We’re so conditioned to objectify and worship — that imagery in ads and in social media streams arouse us without the danger of embodied commitment; without creating obligation, or without the complications that come when we actually use our bodies. And the spectacle shapes us.

And I know that some of us are here and we’re struggling with lust; with addiction to porn, and I’m not wanting to minimise that by saying that most of us are struggling with image addiction, in a machine world where the algorithms are geared towards ruining us by making us consumers — I don’t want to minimise it, but maybe I want to reframe the conversations about porn so that you see it as part of a dehumanising world that has objectified and commodified everything and everyone, where we’re taught that a fulfilled life is one where we satisfy our every longing and desire and that we can do this just with imagery — and maybe I think the rest of us should be confronting our own addictions too…

It’s easy for us to look across the ocean and judge the image-driven life of American politics; but ours is the same. It’s easy for us to throw stones at churches built on image, where that goes wrong — like at Hillsong’s New York campus where the image cultivation machine was operating in overdrive. But what about in our church? How do we go about avoiding the worship of images — whether that’s online, or the way we express ourselves?

This is something I’ve been pretty aware of as someone who lives online in an image-soaked world — I’ve resisted selfies, I don’t post or scroll on Instagram, I do scroll Facebook, and find myself comparing and contrasting to all sorts of people — especially other pastors. The sin of comparison will kill you just like any other. One of the ways I compare myself is that I hate when churches post photos from within a church service, especially of preachers — in a way that just creates a sort of #churchporn. Where are you engaged in image-based comparison? What spectacles can’t you turn your eyes from? What online images are shaping your hearts?

We aren’t going to think our way out of idolatrous practices that shape our desires; our loves; our worship — we actually need a new way of life; a new sort of worship and a new image to pursue.

How do we become worshipping images, where images — even the pictures on the screen — help us worship God rather than conforming our imaginations?

This, I take it, is what Paul is teaching the Colossians to do in their own world of idolatrous spectacle; he starts his letter by introducing Jesus as the image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15-16). Jesus is the one worthy of our worship, because in him and for him all things on heaven and earth were created; and because he has redeemed us and is reconciling us to God…

And then he calls his readers away from idolatry by calling us to lift our eyes; not focusing on the images we’re inclined to worship; but because we’ve been raised with Jesus and because he’s seated at the right hand of God in heaven, and that’s our future and what should be our desire; we should fix our hearts and minds on things above (Colossians 3:1-2); and this’ll mean cultivating a new way of looking at the world.

Because we’re called to take off the old self — with its practices (Colossians 3:9-10), that’s going to include practices of seeing, as we put on a new self with new practices of seeing and worshipping, so that we’re renewed in the image of its creator — which Paul says back in chapter 1 is not just the Father, but Jesus as well.

We’re to put to death what belongs to our earthly nature (Colossians 3:5-6) — a nature shaped by worshipping earthly stuff — seeing, desiring, and taking — by how we approach sex, lust, desire, and greed — which is idolatry — and I reckon Paul’s saying the stuff that belongs to our earthly nature is idolatry — these are paths to death; to God’s wrath. So kill them.

And take up new life — clothing ourselves with compassion and kindness and humility and gentleness and patience, and forgiveness — seeing others the way God sees them — and ourselves as God sees us — and over all this; love — the virtue that binds them all (Colossians 3:12-14).

When Paul talks about practices in the world — and with others — and these virtues — these practices have to include new ways of looking at the world, and at others — we can’t look at the world, and others, as objects to be consumed — lusted after — desired. That’s deadly idolatry. That’s what porn is; it cultivates death in you — your eyes, your heart, your body are all being aligned to death — but it’s also what any idolatrous image making and image-viewing does for us; instead we should be looking at others and at the things God made in order to learn compassion and kindness and humility — self-denial — gentleness and patience — these are the virtues opposite to pornworld and the age of instant gratification; and when we embrace these new patterns of looking it should transform our community so that we are images who look like Jesus in compelling and truly human ways.

The sort of practices we’re going to need are — like last week — ascetic — cultivating the discipline not to look; to self-deny — and aesthetic — cultivating an ability to look through the goodness and beauty of created things; and to use our desires and our eyes in ways that throw us towards the one in whom all things are made and reconciled.

But we need a third practice; too — one of keeping Jesus — keeping heavenly realities before our eyes, and shaping our hearts — so that as we say no to idolatry and yes to beauty our hearts are being governed by the image we worship; the image of God. This’ll be what stops us being buffered — closed off to God — and buffering — never fully human — we become fully human as we worship God who made us, and are renewed as his image bearers.

In terms of saying no — you might need to do an audit of your image viewing; being confronted with images in an age of spectacle is inevitable, but what can you do to not just turn your eyes, but keep your eyes looking where they should be. What apps do you need to delete? Delete them now. Just say no. What social media platforms or TV shows or games or magazines are cultivating your idolatry? Step back from them until you can step into them as an image bearer captivated by Jesus.

Job has that famous line about making a covenant with his eyes not to look at a woman lustfully (Job 31:1-2) — and there’s an app you might use to fight porn called Covenant Eyes, but if all imagery is pornographic — maybe we all need to make commitments not to look lustfully at sex, or violence, or food, or symbols of wealth, or whatever it is that turns our heart… and the word lustfully here is key; it doesn’t say don’t look at beautiful people or things God made; it’s about our hearts.

Ben Myers and Scott Stephens reckon we need to — in community — cultivate visual disciplines; periods of asceticism — where we put the screens down — as necessary parts of our spiritual life.

“Do Christian communities still believe it is possible to cultivate visual disciplines, and periods of visual asceticism, as necessary parts of the spiritual life? Do we recognize the moral value of providing havens from the dominance of the image, while also nourishing alternative traditions of perception?”
Myers and Stephens

They reckon this sort of discipline is necessary to give our eyes a break.

This is one of the reasons we do so little on social media and the web as a church — there are other reasons, like not wanting to put church forward as an “image” thing to be consumed — but you don’t need your screen. And we need to cultivate other ways of using our eyes; our perception as well.

Myers and Stephens remind us that we can see one another — the faces of living saints — as part of being shaped by images, but also suggest works of art might play a part. In Christian traditions other than ours; like the ones with stained glass storytelling; people’s imaginations were formed — catechised — using pictures; art.

“Do we offer catechesis in the use of holy images, whether these are works of art or the faces of living saints?”
Myers and Stephens

We Protestants tend not to have an aesthetic, or a sense of the place of art and beauty — both making and appreciating it — in our lives as a form of discipline or disciple making; art is a life-giving alternative to the death-taking imagery of porn and advertising…

And here’s where we might cultivate what Alan Noble calls an aesthetic life as a disruptive witness to the world — a life that values and even collects beauty because beautiful things — art, poems, flowers — create an allusionary sense that the world is enchanting, in a world of illusionary images, we need these allusionary images — images that allude to the beauty and character of God as creator.

“What makes a work of art, a poem, or a flower beautiful is the way it suggests more, the way it opens up possibilities, the way it alludes to other things in creation.”
Alan Noble, Disruptive Witness

He reckons this approach to aesthetics resists commodification — recognising beauty and the creatureliness or createdness of people and things reminds us of the creator; and reminds us we’re not just commodities where nothing matters — the world doesn’t just exist for our grasping; but is shot through with meaning that we’re meant to probe, as humans.

“Aesthetics reveals an irreducible universe — a universe that resists our attempts at totalizing and controlling it, that is always just out of grasp, that always offers us a little more meaning.”
Noble

This might even involve how we decorate our homes, and the food we serve on our tables — not just with images from Instagram; where people are trying to cultivate a sense of self through performance, but images that have a more artistic and allusionary quality that pull us towards the enchanted world; it might also involve practising noticing beauty in creation without taking photos at all, connecting with God’s world — and your body — and receiving beauty with thanksgiving.

Paul’s big solution to guide us as we do this is that we let the message of Christ dwell among us richly as we teach and admonish one another — with wisdom — contemplation of God’s world and how to live in it — through creativity; through poetry — through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit — songs we humans create as temples of the Spirit in response to setting our hearts on things above, and through engaging our voices and hearts as we sing to God — with gratitude in our hearts.

And his goal is that whatever we do — whatever images we make or see — as we live as renewed images — whatever we do we’re to do in the name of the Lord, giving thanks to God the Father through him. If you can’t do that when you encounter or create an image, then there’s a good chance it’s an idol (Colossians 3:15-17).

September 3, 2025 Add Comment

What would Jesus snapchat? 10 tips for using social media (other than Facebook) as a Christian

Would Jesus use social media?

If he did, what would he post?

If we’re followers of Jesus how should we think about social media? How do we keep tabs on how teenagers are using stuff like Instagram, Snapchat when we can’t even figure Facebook out?

These are, of course, the questions of our age.

I’m going to answer them a little here by making a certain assumption, that I’ll put up front. I’ve written plenty about this elsewhere (including how people who are leaders in churches might help the people they lead think about this stuff). I’m going to assume that we, people, as God’s image bearers, are God’s social media. That God’s people have a track record, beginning in the Old Testament, of using communication mediums to tell people about God, while avoiding the dangers that come from deadly communication mediums (like idol statues). We’re naive when we assume mediums don’t matter, but we’re over-correcting when we assume mediums that can become dangerous shouldn’t be used. Creation itself was meant to reveal God’s divine character and invisible qualities, the fact that we turn God’s creation into images of things he made, and worship those images, isn’t a problem with creation as a communication medium, but with us (see Romans 1:19-25).

There’s been plenty in the news the last few weeks about how people are using Instagram — from models swearing off social media, specifically the ‘crafting’ of an image that isn’t real on social media, to models swearing at their social media followers for not doling out enough likes on their posts.

“I have created an image of myself that I think others feel is unattainable, others look at as a role model, others look at as some type of ‘perfect human’.” — Essena O’Neill

If you believe what teenagers tell you about social media, Instagram is where the action is. It’s where people are crafting an image of themselves for others to see, and where people are finding images to follow — to worship — and to be shaped by. Snapchat, another image based service, is equally interesting, and equally ignored by Christians who talk about this stuff.

“Snapchat is where we can really be ourselves while being attached to our social identity. Without the constant social pressure of a follower count or Facebook friends, I am not constantly having these random people shoved in front of me. Instead, Snapchat is a somewhat intimate network of friends who I don’t care if they see me at a party having fun… If I don’t get any likes on my Instagram photo or Facebook post within 15 minutes you can sure bet I’ll delete it. Snapchat isn’t like that at all and really focuses on creating the Story of a day in your life, not some filtered/altered/handpicked highlight. It’s the real you.” — Andrew Watts, A Teenager’s View on Social Media

One of the interesting things about Instagram and Snapchat, apart from their use of images, is that they don’t rely on the same algorithmic sorting of information that Facebook and Google use. They provide a stream of content unfiltered by an algorithm; except of course for the photos, which are ‘filtered’ first in terms of what images are shared and not shared, and ‘filtered’ in the sense of being made to look good via tweaking, often tweaking via the application of a pre-designed filter which applies an algorithm of effects to a photo. This content comes from people who people have chosen to follow, or, in the case of Instagram, content sorted via hashtags or location from newest to oldest.

Perhaps this shift to these new platforms, by our younger generations, is built on a cynicism about algorithms, and the desire to really be in control of one’s media experience.

“…a squirrel dying in your front yard may be more relevant to your interests right now than people dying in Africa.” — Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, describing the Facebook newsfeed philosophy

I think this, in itself, is interesting because it means the reason we’re not confronted with pictures we don’t want to see — or the reason we’re confronted with pictures that cause us outrage — is not down to an algorithm that controls what you see, but is down to your choice in who to follow.

Anyway. Here are ten tips I’m giving to a bunch of teenagers for how to use image-driven social media — mostly not thinking about Facebook — as Christians.

1. Remember that you are God’s Social Media

We were made in God’s image to represent him in his world. That’s what images of God in the ancient world did. We, from the beginning, were meant to be God’s media. That was true for Adam, true for Israel, and is true for us in Christ. God should be made known through us, and through our connection with him and with others. We’re his representatives in his world, re-created in Christ to re-represent him.

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.

— 2 CORINTHIANS 3:3

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

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!

— 2 CORINTHIANS 5:17

We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.

— 2 CORINTHIANS 5:20

2. Don’t worship, or become an image of, anything else.

Our human tendency is to make ourselves images of anything but God. Our first inclination is to want to be images of ourselves, rather than dependant on God. To be the pattern for life. That’s basically what Essena admitted above in the words “I have created an image of myself”… in replacing God, we actually end up worshipping ourselves, or some dead thing — an idol — and we become what we worship, and we become disconnected from the one who gave us a pattern for life.

All the stuff we know about media and the brain confirms what the Bible says about idolatry. Our brains are shaped by the things we consume, including the mediums we use to consume things. There’s a saying that’s popular in a particular branch of media studies that looks at the effects of different communication mediums being introduced into society: “We shape our tools, and then, they shape us.” Add this to the line that sums up much of what we know about how our brains take shape “neurons that fire together, wire together” and we find that it’s not just the things we present in our media, but the mediums themselves, that shape us. It’s true that we become what we worship — the objects we fix our sight, imagination, and desires on.

… Idols are silver and gold, made by human hands. They have mouths, but cannot speak, eyes, but cannot see… Those who make them will be like them, and so will all who trust in them.

— PSALM 115:4-5, 8

Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

— ROMANS 12:2

3. Share Jesus.

If we are communication mediums for whatever we worship, then the way we use mediums will reflect who we are, and communicate what it is we worship. If someone looked at your social media accounts, who would they say you worship? Our job isn’t to try to make images of God, or of things we worship, but to point people to God via our lives, and via what God has made (and how we use it). God’s handiwork — the stuff he makes, including the people he remakes in Christ — should point people to him, which for us means our ‘good works’ that he has prepared for us to do, as a subset of his creative acts, should show who we are “in Christ Jesus.”

For 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, so that people are without excuse.

— ROMANS 1:20

For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

— EPHESIANS 2:10

4. You must decrease. He must increase

Our human tendency is to want to be at the centre. It’s the experience of being creatures whose lives are projections of our own subjectivity — our thoughts, our imagination, our desires, are projected through our actions. The Gospel calls us to re-centre ourselves, and our lives, and our thoughts about others to make Jesus the subject, and the centre of reality, and to point people to him, not ourselves. I like the way John the Baptist describes this experience as he is confronted with the truth about who Jesus is.

He must become greater; I must become less

— JOHN 3:30

This runs counter to the way people in our world use social media to project either ourselves as the ultimate subject of reality, or to present our idols as the subject of our lives and worship.

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

— PHILIPPIANS 2:3-4

In a practical sense, this changes the sort of stuff we tend to want to share/project into the world so that we’re not crafting an image of ourselves, but seeking to serve others (which will always, in some sense, involve sharing something of yourself). This Venn Diagram from Wait But Why’s post on 7 Ways to Be Insufferable on Facebook pretty much nails it. Instagram and Snapchat work a little differently to Facebook, but the question is who are your photos pointing to? You? Or Jesus? Who are they serving? You and the image you craft as you ‘worship’? Or Jesus, and others?

5. Don’t Fight.

Nothing looks worse on social media than you arguing with, and grumbling about, other Christians. We’re actually called to be God’s image bearing ‘social media’ together, in and through our relationships with each other as we, together, find our identity in Christ. And arguing and grumbling undermines and so destroys this ‘image’… When we want to fight, Paul’s answer is to “have the same mindset as Christ Jesus,” whose approach to status and power is described in Philippians 2, where Paul follows this instruction, and his description of Jesus’ example, with:

Do everything without grumbling or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, “children of God without fault in a warped and crooked generation.” Then you will shine among them like stars in the sky as you hold firmly to the word of life.

— PHILIPPIANS 2:14-16

We’ll stand out on social media as ‘shining stars’ if we make social media a place where we’re not living for our own name, or glory, but for the sake of others — and where we demonstrate this by not fighting or grumbling.

6. Online is great. Offline is greater.

Heaps of people, mostly old people, are super-negative about social media because it’s disembodied. You’re talking at people through a screen. You stare at screens rather than ‘doing life’ in a very present sense. The place you are physically put is definitely part of reality when you are a finite creature, but we’re called to hold our physical reality in balance with the eternal spiritual reality we’ve become part of. As a Christian, you’re connected to the people in your immediate vicinity, but, paradoxically, you’re also connected with God, by the Holy Spirit, and ‘in Christ’ — and through this connection you’re, in a real sense, connected to every other Christian who has ever lived, and who currently lives. Virtual connections are a pointer to this reality, and a great substitute for the physical presence we will enjoy for eternity. If this is a little too abstract — virtual, online, connections are also a way to overcome some of the limits of being finite, in order to have real and significant relationships. They’re a brilliant new way to make space and time less of an impediment for relationships with people, they become dangerous if they stop us ever being really present with the people in our lives, or if we never anticipate coming face to face with those we ‘commune’ or ‘communicate’ with via these channels.

In the old days, like the Bible days, people wrote letters to overcome the limits space and time place on our communication with others. John wrote letters like this — and they’re obviously valuable because they’re in the Bible and have continued circulating for almost 2,000 years since. He saw the value of letters, but placed a greater relational value on presence, and his letters anticipated this presence.

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

What are some ways we can use social media to anticipate or invite face to face contact, even if they’re global relationships? One way is to look forward to, or anticipate, a shared eternity through a shared connection with Jesus.

7. God’s Word is the best media.

Everything God made is, in a sense, media. In that it reveals something about him to us. It helps bridge the divide between creator and creature, or writer and audience. God is most clearly revealed in Jesus, who is most clearly revealed, for us, in the Bible, which is all about him.

Whatever media practices, or social media practices, we cultivate will be best, or at least will relate best to our created purpose, if we start with media practices centred on God’s media. Not our own. And these practices are, at least significantly, to occur within our ‘social network’ as God’s people — we’re not called to plug in the headphones and focus on God as individuals as though we’re an island.

Check this out. This is a fairly famous passage from Colossians. It definitely already has a corporate sense in that the ‘dwelling among you richly’ all relies on things we do together. But our tendency is to think this is speaking particularly to us as individuals. That it’s a set of instructions for personal godliness.

“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 3:16-17

But this is a problem, at least a little, because we don’t use youse. Everything about these verses is corporate. Let’s play it again, while breaking all sorts of rules — well, one — about english.

“Let the message of Christ dwell among YOUSE richly as YOUSE 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 YOUSE do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”

We need to focus on the message of Christ, via multimedia practices, in relationship. God’s media is media we’re to use socially. And this should both come before we pick up ‘social media’ from the world, and it might inform how we use social media. Not in that it will make us boring regurgitators of random Bible verses, but because this message of Christ should soak everything we do and say as Christians.

How can social media help you, and your ‘network’ have the message of Christ dwell among you richly?

8. Prayer is the best social networking

Prayer is how we express that we have become part of the ultimate social network — that we have, in a profound way, been united with the God who made the universe. That we have been brought into the eternal, self-giving, community of the Trinity, and invited to communicate with God, our Father, in a way that is enabled by Son and Spirit. The prayer of Jesus in John 17 is an incredibly profound demonstration of prayer, and explanation of the privilege we now have as pray-ers.

“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.”

— JOHN 17:20-21

We are members of this incredible social network, and with that, comes the privilege of communicating in this network — but also the responsibility to pray for those in every other one of our networks. There is not a person you are connected with on social media who you are not instructed to pray for. We’re called to pray for our enemies (Matthew 5:44), for our fellow Christians (which Paul models in Ephesians 1:15-18, and then instructs us to do in Ephesians 6:18-20).

How might social media help you to pray for the people in your life?

9. Use your new imagination to share Jesus on new mediums

There are plenty of pitfalls with adopting new mediums without thinking. But we’ve been adopted into a new ‘network’ in a way that gives us great freedom to act as people with renewed minds, who are being transformed by God’s media. We are creatures of imagination, and we’re invited to use these in creating and participating in media, as God’s media. Giving people a bunch of rules and regulations for how to be ‘good’ social media users is a guaranteed way to make people un-imaginative and inauthentic on social media. It’s a pitfall most social media experts fall into. The formula for success is to be generous, interesting and authentic. So. How might we use snapchat or instagram? Be creative. Tell stories. Throw attention onto others. Celebrate.

I had a great coffee with my mate Dave Miers this week and picked his brain about how he — very intentionally — uses check-ins and hashtags to share bits of what he believes with strangers on Instagram. He’s even had someone come to his church because they started following him on Instagram because he uses relevant local hashtags, and tags photos in excellent local places, while sharing snippets of what he’s thinking or reading in God’s word, or in books he’s reading in those cafes.

10. Tell real(ly thankful) stories

This follows the above. People love stories. We are creatures who live by stories as we create stories. Social media thrives on stories. Most people craft stories that are boring and self-seeking, or tap into some story that we want to imagine ourselves living. I love stuff like the 365 Grateful project that encourages people to cultivate gratitude.

And I reckon gratitude is fantastic. But I think we, as Christians, are called to appropriately direct our gratitude beyond the great people in our lives, and past the ‘universe’ which conspires to give us great experiences — and we’re called to cultivate thankfulness to the God who makes excellent media, who has re-created us to be actors in his story. That’s how we give God’s world its purpose back — how we stop falling into the trap of living for ourselves, or making the mistake of worshipping God’s great media instead of God as the imaginative creator of great media.

For everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, because it is consecrated by the word of God and prayer.

— 1 TIMOTHY 4:4-5

We cultivate thankfulness in the same way that people are trying to practice gratitude. By expressing it. In real ways. By being thankful for the big things, and small things, God has made. And by using social media to do that — to be thankful for what God has given us, in this world and in Jesus, and by being thankful for the people he has given us as part of our networks. That’s a natural way to soak your life in the message of Christ, and to be God’s workmanship, rather than building your own image via the things you share online.

November 13, 2015

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.

²⁶Then 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.”

²⁷So 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. ²He created them male and female and blessed them. And he named them “Mankind” when they were created.

³When 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).

⁷Then 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.

⁸Now 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.

³He asked me, “Son of man, can these bones live?”

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

⁴Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones and say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! ⁵This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. ⁶I 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.’”…

¹¹Then 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.’ ¹²Therefore 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.¹³Then you, my people, will know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and bring you up from them. ¹⁴I 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.’”

²⁵They 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.²⁶I 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. ²⁷My dwelling place will be with them; I will be their God, and they will be my people. ²⁸Then 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. ²⁵I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. ²⁶I 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. ²⁷And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws…

³²I 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.³⁴The desolate land will be cultivated instead of lying desolate in the sight of all who pass through it. ³⁵They 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.” ³⁶Then 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…

¹³Later they sent some of the Pharisees and Herodians to Jesus to catch him in his words. ¹⁴They 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? ¹⁵Should 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.” ¹⁶They brought the coin, and he asked them, “Whose image is this? And whose inscription?”

“Caesar’s,” they replied.

¹⁷Then 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:

¹⁵The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. ¹⁶For 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. ¹⁷He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. ¹⁸And 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.¹⁹For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, ²⁰and 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…

²¹Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your mindsbecause of your evil behavior. ²²But 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…

²⁴Now 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 church. ²⁵I have become its servant by the commission God gave me to present to you the word of God in its fullness— ²⁶the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the Lord’s people. ²⁷To 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.

²⁸He 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,¹⁰so 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, ¹¹being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, ¹²and 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)…

⁹You, 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. ¹⁰But if Christ is in you, then even though your body is subject to death because of sin, the Spirit gives life because of righteousness. ¹¹And 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…

¹⁴For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God.¹⁵The 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.” ¹⁶The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.¹⁷Now 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.

²⁸And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. ²⁹For 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.³⁰And 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.

May 12, 2013

Self-promotion in Rome and now…

Here’s a paragraph from a book I’m reading about the power of images in the Roman empire. People were pretty much using images of themselves doing cool stuff (cooler than their neighbours) to establish their own brand. Their own significance. Their own place in the great pecking order of life.

The disintegration of Roman society created individual rivalries and insecurity that led to exaggerated forms of self-promotion even among people who had nothing to gain by it. What began as a traditional agonistic spirit among the aristocracy denigrated into frantic displays of wealth and success. But the scope of opportunity for such display was often still rather limited. P. Zanker, The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus, 15

Sounds a lot like now. Except we have Facebook.

Image: A screenshot from Facebook’s “Timeline” page

Using Facebook to glorify something other than yourself and your curated life is pretty hard. Even the links we share about stuff that we’re passionate about tends to be stuff that tries to make us look good. Check out this TechCrunch article that may as well be titled the hypocrisy of our use of the Internet, but is actually titled “Sex is more popular than Jesus on Google” (for some depressing confirmation – try going to google and watching the autocomplete results for “I’m 10 and” and then adding a number until you get to your 50s, 60s, or 70s…).

The TechCrunch article features this series of snippets from a presentation the guy who made buzzfeed (Jonah Peretti) gave at a conference today.

When you look at google searches, he says perhaps unsurprisingly, “sex is more popular than Jesus on google.” Compare the search terms “diet pills” and “Arab spring,” diet pills win. Obviously, this isn’t what Larry and Sergey had in mind when they started Google.

We use Google to search for secret things, to investigate what other people are saying about our deepest darkest secrets, interests and curiosities. Google Image search is filled with pictures of pets doing hilarious things, while Google search serves up results on the great ocean of porn out there on the Web.

Facebook, on the other hand, is a projection of our social relationships and behavior. Together, they generally represent and are a metaphor for the two ways we use the Internet. On Facebook, the same person who is looking at stories involving nude pics, is also looking at and sharing inspiring stories about victims overcoming disabilities and so on, along with politically-motivated stories.

My goal for the next little while is to practice something like the 80/20 rule – where 80 percent of the stuff I post isn’t about me and how great my coffee life is – but about how thankful I am for Jesus, and how thankful I am for other people. And the other 20 percent of stuff is authentically me – not the curated me. I’ll try to be interesting, and not just reflect on my toast (unless it’s a really cool instagram shot of my toast. No wait. That’s doing it again).

April 30, 2013