Chuck Colson has an interesting little bit today about how the emphasis on symbols may be contributing to overall illiteracy. The example he focuses on is how automobile dashboards are increasingly covered with symbols, pictures and no words describing the function of this or that button or switch. As someone who currently works in education I find that a point of interest - how kids who do not read well have difficulty in every other area of education and how well meaning educators from time to time have emphasized other ways of learning to accommodate those kids, only to find that they sacrifice long-term essentials for short term gain.
But this is the quote that really struck me...
As the late Neil Postman wrote in his book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, the medium of communication actually helps shape the way people think. The printed word requires sustained attention, logical analysis, and an active imagination. But television and video games, with their fast-moving images, encourage a short attention span, disjointed thinking, and purely emotional responses.
Postman says he first discovered this connection when reading the Ten Commandments. He was struck by the words: “You shall not make for yourself a graven image.” He realized that the idea of a universal deity cannot be expressed in images but only in words. As Postman writes, “The God of the Jews was to exist in the Word and through the Word, an unprecedented conception requiring the highest order of abstract thinking.”
Christians are meant to have an ongoing conversation with God. We address Him in the language of prayer, and He addresses us in the language of Scripture.
Today, missionaries in non-literate societies reduce the native language to writing and teach people to read by reading the Bible. But here in the West we are in danger of coming full circle: The visual media, and our increasing reliance on images in everyday life, may ultimately undermine literacy, transforming us back into an image-based culture.
Think about this for a moment, in relation to the post-modern approach to faith. There is a popular argument floating around, one which the late Robert Webber took note of and mildly encouraged, that our culture has a distrust of language and is immersed in symbol. Hence many po-mo churches are taking to emphasizing symbol over word. There is a distrust of texts, of preaching and thus an emphasis on the use of icons, visuals, a different type of communication.
If Postman is correct, however, Christianity stands in a countercultural position in relation to postmodernism, because it is a faith built on language. God's first act of creation was a spoken word - "Let there be light". His revelation to Moses included words carved in stone. Over and over in the Old and New Testaments we find phrases like "write this on a scroll" and "it is written".
There is an old fear, justified by some documentation, that during the battle with communism a generation ago, one communist strategy was to control the presses, to dumb down the populace, because an educated citizenry is the most likely to resist propaganda. Perhaps if Lewis were alive today he would have Screwtape discussing this strategy with some young pupil. Can we really shift from a word-based faith to a symbol-based faith without losing faith altogether? I don't think so.
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