9.28.2003
Webber Meets McLuhan
In The Younger Evanglicals Robert Webber provides us with more old news. He tells us, “the idea that ‘the medium is the message’ holds important ramifications for the communication of the Christian faith.”
While this is a, “Duh!” in the best Bart Simpson style, I have to confess that I haven’t heard it applied too many times from the pulpit. I guess being raised fundy has its drawbacks. Webber takes McLuhan’s (by now pedestrian) idea and translates that into some practical applications:
• First, the real message of Christianity is not rational propositions but the person of Jesus Christ with whom a personal relationship is possible.
• Second, this personal relationship is communicated in a community – the church, his body.
• Third, to communicate a relationship with Jesus Christ, the church must be an embodied presence, an authentic and real community in whom the Spirit dwells.
• Fourth, the primary concern of the church is to communicate not dogma, though it does have its place, but faith.
• Fifth, the primary way of communicating faith is through a combination of oral, visual, and print forms of participatory immersed communication (or cultural transmission).
So what this means is the ancient First Century concept that God revealed his word to us in the person of Jesus Christ proves that God “gets” it. If the medium is the message and the message is Jesus Christ, then the medium today (and really always has been) is people.
We were shocked in the 70’s to find out that Soylent Green is people but missed the message of Jesus who said, “Take. Eat. This is my body which is broken for you.”
We caught the idea that TV shaped the culture but missed the message that we are the medium for shaping a culture for Christ.
Where did we miss the boat? How could we not have seen the tremendous implications in McLuhan’s words for Christianity today? As I’ve said before, the problem with us fundies is not that we don’t have the answers but that we aren’t asking the right questions. No one said (at least within the circle that was influencing me) or at least I wasn’t paying attention if they did say anything about this. The question that should have been asked nearly 40 years ago is, “If the medium is the message, what does this mean for us as Christians. What is our message? What is our medium? Are we communicating the message of God in the medium of His choosing or the medium of our choosing? And if we are, what has this done to God’s message?”
In The Younger Evanglicals Robert Webber provides us with more old news. He tells us, “the idea that ‘the medium is the message’ holds important ramifications for the communication of the Christian faith.”
While this is a, “Duh!” in the best Bart Simpson style, I have to confess that I haven’t heard it applied too many times from the pulpit. I guess being raised fundy has its drawbacks. Webber takes McLuhan’s (by now pedestrian) idea and translates that into some practical applications:
• First, the real message of Christianity is not rational propositions but the person of Jesus Christ with whom a personal relationship is possible.
• Second, this personal relationship is communicated in a community – the church, his body.
• Third, to communicate a relationship with Jesus Christ, the church must be an embodied presence, an authentic and real community in whom the Spirit dwells.
• Fourth, the primary concern of the church is to communicate not dogma, though it does have its place, but faith.
• Fifth, the primary way of communicating faith is through a combination of oral, visual, and print forms of participatory immersed communication (or cultural transmission).
So what this means is the ancient First Century concept that God revealed his word to us in the person of Jesus Christ proves that God “gets” it. If the medium is the message and the message is Jesus Christ, then the medium today (and really always has been) is people.
We were shocked in the 70’s to find out that Soylent Green is people but missed the message of Jesus who said, “Take. Eat. This is my body which is broken for you.”
We caught the idea that TV shaped the culture but missed the message that we are the medium for shaping a culture for Christ.
Where did we miss the boat? How could we not have seen the tremendous implications in McLuhan’s words for Christianity today? As I’ve said before, the problem with us fundies is not that we don’t have the answers but that we aren’t asking the right questions. No one said (at least within the circle that was influencing me) or at least I wasn’t paying attention if they did say anything about this. The question that should have been asked nearly 40 years ago is, “If the medium is the message, what does this mean for us as Christians. What is our message? What is our medium? Are we communicating the message of God in the medium of His choosing or the medium of our choosing? And if we are, what has this done to God’s message?”
