Tuesday, December 06, 2005
Reaching Our Souls
Yesterday I blogged about the impending Narnia movie and said:
Think of the related issues -- Why did Jesus come 2000 years ago, instead of in this mass media age? Why did the Reformation come on the heels of printing?
This I know from my own exprience, movies or TV can wash over me largely undigested. In fact, it's not uncommon for me to be unable to tell you about something I saw unless it was really good or really interesting. I refuse to watch TV news, forget bias, the medium prevents enough information from being present in any story for it to be useful. But books, I always take something from books I read, even fluff.
Is our societal trend to the moving picture, be that film or television, problematic? I have thought it not so, but my critical faculties are somewhat better developed than in many people, as likely yours are if you are reading this.
Do words reach deeper into us than images possibly can. Most people would argue the opposite, but now I am wondering. I have been moved by images, but my life was changed by words, well actual The Word. What about you?
If Lewis was worried that a movie cannot communicate the complexity of his literary Christ analog -- how much more so is that true about the real and true God? After all, we are not to make images, but Christ was the Word. In our excitiment over this movie, it's still just a movie.Within minutes of reading that I read an Al Mohler post called - The Power of Words -- A Witness. Al's looking at and quoting extensively Michael Dirda's Review of "The Book of Common Prayer: The Elizabethan Prayer Book."
Against the modern depreciation of language, Dirda comments on his experience hearing the Christmas story read from the Gospel of Luke:Why is Christianity responsible for this richness of language? Jesus said:As a boy, I would hear these words spoken aloud toward the end of December, year after year, and they never failed to deliver a shivery thrill of pleasure. I used to wonder why. The sentences were utterly plain, both in diction and syntax. Neither did they possess any narrative excitement, since I knew the story already, indeed knew it far better than any other in all the world. But the language -- like that of so many other passages from the Bible -- enchanted me with what I now think of as its deeply felt seriousness.He explains:The solemn harmonies of such prose are largely ignored in these days of text-messaging and political newspeak. Even among our stylists, we prefer breeziness and irony, sometimes laced with snarky wit and street vulgarity. This "in your face" writing somehow feels personal and honest, more sincere or authentic than an elevated and poetical diction. No one wants epithets like "pontifical," "sermonizing" or "artificial" attached to his writing. Nonetheless, there are times when only the full organ roll of liturgical prose can match the glory or sacredness of the occasion.To his credit, Dirda recognizes the deep Christian roots of this tradition -- and the influence of Christianity upon the very development of the language itself:In English there are five main sources for this kind of religious eloquence: The King James version of the Bible, the Book of Common Prayer, The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan, the hymns of writers like Isaac Watts, Charles Wesley and others, and the classical traditions of oratory and homily. What links them all is a Shaker plainness and cleanness of diction, just barely covering profound spiritual conviction and emotion. This is, in short, the speech of men and women doing the Lord's work, honoring him and praising him with due reverence, ceremony and fervor.
Matt 18:7-9 - "Woe to the world because of its stumbling blocks! For it is inevitable that stumbling blocks come; but woe to that man through whom the stumbling block comes! "And if your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it from you; it is better for you to enter life crippled or lame, than having two hands or two feet, to be cast into the eternal fire. "And if your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out, and throw it from you. It is better for you to enter life with one eye, than having two eyes, to be cast into the fiery hell.Now, I don't want to get carried away here but when I reflect on passages like this and the observations I made in yesterday's Narnia post, and Dirda's thoughts I wonder if it is not genuine a part of God's plan that communication by oral or written language is clearly superior to visual communication like the movies?
Think of the related issues -- Why did Jesus come 2000 years ago, instead of in this mass media age? Why did the Reformation come on the heels of printing?
This I know from my own exprience, movies or TV can wash over me largely undigested. In fact, it's not uncommon for me to be unable to tell you about something I saw unless it was really good or really interesting. I refuse to watch TV news, forget bias, the medium prevents enough information from being present in any story for it to be useful. But books, I always take something from books I read, even fluff.
Is our societal trend to the moving picture, be that film or television, problematic? I have thought it not so, but my critical faculties are somewhat better developed than in many people, as likely yours are if you are reading this.
Do words reach deeper into us than images possibly can. Most people would argue the opposite, but now I am wondering. I have been moved by images, but my life was changed by words, well actual The Word. What about you?
