The problem with images

Chuck Colson relays this critical observation by Neil Postman, author of Amusing Ourselves to Death (emphasis is mine) :

"Postman’s thesis is that different media encourage different ways of thinking. The printed word requires sustained attention, logical analysis, and an active ima gination. But television, with its fast-moving images, encourages a short attention span, disjointed thinking, and purely emotional responses.

Postman says he first discovered the connection between media and thinking in the Bible when, as a young man, he was struck by the Old Testament words: “You shall not make for yourself a graven image.” Postman says he realized that the idea of a universal deity cannot be expressed in images, but only in words.

As he put it, “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.” This is the God Christians worship today—a God known principally through His Word and incarnate."

Men, let's prayerfully consider the TV watching in our homes. Let's work to ensure that we and our families are good thinkers, and not taken in by sound bytes and pixels manipulated by those who do not know God.