I thought I’d tackle my first post here on something I know a little about, reading. I’ve been in love with reading since I was little; in fact, many car rides my head was immersed in my book rather than looking at the scenery. On long trips, I’d read with the headlights of cars behind me so I could finish the next chapter. Besides the Harry Potter phenomenon, I don’t think children today have the same sense of being lost in a book and adults tend to be more engrossed with the latest sitcom or reality TV show than works of fiction (or non-fiction).
As a gross generalisation, I think it’s safe to say that our culture views reading almost entirely as a means to an end – just take a look at advertising and a gossip column in a slick glossy magazine. Words are meant to inform, be witty at times and tell you how to lose weight and stay sexy. Like all ‘chicken and egg’ problems, it’s hard to know which came first, which is the cause or effect – is it the primacy of images over words which lead to the decline of reading and writing or is it that linguistic stories lost their appeal thus making way for visual stories? Regardless of which came first, today, language is often stripped of its complexity, its ambiguity, its sound and meaning. It becomes a mere machine rather than something that helps to create meaning and delight. Part of this ‘death of the word’ is due to the cultural onslaught of images -- from the millions who will go to the movies this weekend rather than pick up a book, to the child who lives in a ghetto and doesn’t know how to read. It’s very easy to blame our culture of immediate gratification and consumer capitalism, the advent and dominance of television and movies as well as the increasing secularisation of the Western world for the ‘death of the word’. (Neil Postman’s book, Amusing Ourselves to Death is a great one on this subject; Barry Sander’s A is for Ox tackles the subject of literacy nicely). Our culture does indeed pander to this loss of importance placed on the word and it is easy to become enmeshed within our visual culture; at the same time, it is also easy to be viewed as antithetical to our culture (especially if we shun TV in favour of books) and thought of as snobbish intellectuals.
It’s easy to point fingers and it’s easy to run away from all that we consider ‘bad’ in culture to preserve the ‘good’, to preserve by withdrawing; but this isn’t the gospel. “The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us,” John writes in his gospel. Jesus entered our filthy world and transformed it from within. He is not a theoretical Saviour who saved a theoretical world. He took part in the mess of human history and renewed it. However, the church, because it is full of sinners, has not been so successful (to put it mildly). Another reason that language has lost its fervour in favour of the immediacy of images, I think has to do with the church’s negligence or participation in the general cultural trend of images over Word (take for instance the increasing popularity for drama and videos during the Sunday service). By and large, our churches have lost the primacy of Christ in all things (the Word incarnate) and have lost the Reformers’ rallying call, sola scriptura. We have been more interested in a worship experience’ than truth, in ‘individual faith’ than an understanding of being the corporate, worldwide church and to the historic creeds and doctrines of the faith, in partisan politics and ‘the right to life’* than to the proclamation of the gospel and ministering to the poor. Some who have held strongly to the Bible, such as fundamentalists, have done so clutching their Bibles to them and beating off anything that smacks of “secularism” (playing into the false dichotomy of sacred v. secular) with a stick, while retreating back into a Christian enclave, thus holing themselves up in a Christian ghetto without seeking to transform their culture. We are happy to be completely in the world, sacrificing truth to convenience, or to be out of the world, neglecting to engage our culture, rather than being both in the world but not of it. We have not protected the sanctity of the Word and the cultural degeneration of words on the smaller scale has followed. We have not placed Christ at the centre of every sermon, Sunday service, or in our daily decisions. Thus, Jesus’ parables no longer surprise us; Paul’s syntax no longer causes us to rejoice that his every train of thought leads to praise, and the Psalms and Song of Songs have lost the beauty of their poetry. Of course this is not the case in all of our churches, but it is the case for many of them. Rather than focusing on the demise of good ol’ book-reading (which I am quite apt to do) may we first focus on transforming our pocket of the world through the power of the God “who makes all things new”. May we engage our culture on its own terms (for instance by our churches offering lectures and movie nights followed by discussion) while staying true to the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ, in whom we live and move and have our being.
*Please note I am in no way saying these issues do not matter, but when they become the only thing that sets us apart as Christians, something indeed is wrong.
