Discerning the message and the medium

This week I finished reading The Life of the Body by Valerie Hess and Lane Arnold, the book we’ve been discussing this month at The High Calling. This final section covered the seasons of life, children, caring for the planet, and the conclusion.

As it is sometimes wont to do, kept moving away from these final chapters and toward another thought altogether (but there is a connection).

I kept thinking about where we get our information from. Are we as Christians discerning as we listen to news, watch entertainment, or read books (not to mention everything online), or do we let the culture saturate us as it saturates social, political and spiritual life around us?

Twenty years ago, for reasons related to work and my first surprising experience with electronic communications, I began to read about communication theory. I read writers like Walter Ong (Orality and Literacy), Kathleen Hall Jamieson (Eloquence in an Electronic Age), and a host of academics who were beginning to grapple with the electronic word and what it meant. I also reread Marshall McLuhan (The Medium is the Message), Neil Postman (Technopoly and Amusing Ourselves to Death), and Jacque Ellul (Propaganda).

What came of all of this reading and reflection was a sensitivity to both words as content and media as means to communicate those words/content. (Today we say “content” to collectively include text, photos, art, audio and video.)

Most of us, me included, usually focus on the words or content – the “message.” What we understand less is how different media, or channels, favor some kinds of content over others, and how these channels actually shape the message that’s sent and/or received.

Video, for example, like television programs, movies, network news reports, and uploads to YouTube, appeals to the emotions, the feelings. This is even true for documentaries. To fit the channel of video, a communication has to be shaped in a particular way if it’s to be effective.

This isn’t a complaint or regret, more a statement of what is. Watching a TED talk is not the same thing as listening to a speech, because the screen itself frames the talk, favoring certain kinds of content over others.

The world I currently inhabit for work is that of social media. And it’s a world that’s changing our ideas of authority – who has it, who we listen to, and who is believable or credible. Twitter and Facebook, for example, expand our understanding of authority to include our friends and networks. They increasingly give us filters on news. This can be good (accuracy checks on news media) and bad (205,000 people follow Roseanne Barr on Twitter and consider her a credible source of information on news and public policy).

On Twitter, everything you need to know has to be crammed into 140 characters. Talk about minimalist communication. Nuclear disarmament, or understanding international terrorism, in 140 characters. Or less.

This is how many of us get our information on issues, controversies, and news – and “many of us” includes Christians. Someone says something on a blog or Facebook, someone else tweets it or pins it on Pinterest, and it’s considered of equal importance and weight to what a Ph.D expert who’s spent decades researching and studying has to say.

I’ve taken issue with a few things in The Life of the Body, but to be fair, I’ve seen similar sentiments in Christianity Today, blogs belonging to respected Christians, and Christians posting and commenting on Facebook. We readily accept anything if someone we like or trust says it. Or we google a topic and learn everything we need to know by simply scanning the first page of search results.

Greater discernment is crucial. We live in a time when virtually nothing can be taken at face value. Just because it’s a trending topic on Twitter doesn’t mean it’s true. Even something seemingly authoritative as a scientific journal has to be examined. Did you know that there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of “peer-reviewed” scientific journals whose definition of “peer review” is a Visa card?

Retweets on Twitter and shares and likes on Facebook are not measures of truth. Volume does not equate to truth. Truth isn’t a popularity contest – the prime example of that being the life of Jesus.

We’ve been discussing The Life of the Body at The High Calling, even if I went off the track today and discussed it by not discussing it. Check The High Calling for the main post and comments.

Photograph by Fran Hogan via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Deconstructing the Culture

I watch very little television – virtually nothing on network TV, except for one or two shows on PBS (Call the Midwife! and Masterpiece Mystery). And I watch virtually nothing on cable, so I’ve missed out on all the hoopla over Duck Dynasty and Iron Chef.

My reasons are various – time, little that I find interesting, too much network programming given over to political correctness and agendas. I haven’t disengaged from TV culture, but I do keep it minimal.

But even with what I do watch, and beyond television, what I read and view online, I do something that suggests a larger confinement and disengagement from popular culture. I deconstruct what I watch, what I read and what I see.

Deconstructionism is a term and literary process originally popularized by post-modern academics like Jacque Derrida. The text is everything, and everything is a text – you have to closely examine each text, take it apart, and see what it says about such things as power relationships.

I use the term much more loosely – I “deconstruct” texts, movies, programs and other aspects of the culture by asking certain questions. (If it sounds complicated, it’s not; once you start it becomes like second nature).

Instead of “deconstructing,” what I do is closer akin to “filtering the bull.”

I’ll consider a TV show, a magazine article, a movie, a book (especially non-fiction), a review, a political ad, a statement by a politician, a company or an organization – and ask myself a few questions.

What’s the point? What are they trying to communicate?

Are “agenda statements’ slipping in disguised as something else?

What isn’t be said? What’s being left out?

Could it be better said another way?

Is this only entertainment, or is it something else?

What aspects of my own prejudices or worldview does this appeal to or offend?

We have a movie reviewer for a local newspaper who prefers R-rated, and often violence-filled, movies. He panned the movies “Lincoln” and “Les Miserables.” He’d prefer a movie like “Pulp Fiction.” So we’ve learned to see his reviews as some kind of personal agenda-setting, and not simply his view of what movies should be.

Political ads are easier to deconstruct. Generally, I avoid them. I’m appalled by “advertising by assassination. My philosophy of voting is that a candidate is only as good as the worst attack ad he or she authorizes.

Even the church isn’t free from cultural influences, say Valerie Hess and Lane Arnold in The Life of the Body. Music, teaching and preaching are all subject to influence by the culture. The issue of “worship wars” has been with us for some time.

This doesn’t mean that culture permeates the church, and there’s no recourse other than everyone sitting there accepting it or going to war over it. Not all cultural influences are bad. Not all influences can be escaped.

But we are surrounded by the culture; we intellectually bathe in it every day. But once we’re aware, can learn how to discern and understand what is happening in the culture, especially in the entertainment media.

Led by Laura Boggess, we discussing The Life of the Body over at The High Calling. Today, Duane Scott takes up the third section of the book – with a focus on what the culture tells us our bodies should look like.

Photograph by X posid via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Body and Spirit – Aspects of the Same Thing?

We’re starting a new book discussion over at TheHigh Calling today, reading The Life of the Body: Physical Well-Being and Spiritual Formation by Valerie Hess and Lane Arnold.

As I read the introduction, my first reaction was something close to dismay. It almost seemed that the book was going to be a spiritually correct (translation: political correctness with a veneer of theology) approach to obesity, slow food, and other aspects of the current food movement.

But I trust Laura Boggess, our discussion leader, and I kept reading today’s assignment – the introduction and first two chapters. So far, my first impressions were incorrect.

The Life of the Body is focused on the connection between the physical and the spiritual – our spiritual life and our physical (bodily) life. And there is a connection – Jesus took on the physical body of a human being from conception to death. And we are part of the body of Christ in both physical and spiritual senses.

We’re told that the body is a temple, a picture of the the body of Christ. Paul uses the metaphor of the body to describe the church, with Christ as the head. We know we will have redeened bodies in heaven.

The point of Hess and Arnold is that there’s a strong connection between our physical and spiritual selves. They’re not identical, but they are strongly connected, and perhaps to the point of being interwoven.

Outside of scripture, we know that regular exercise is a good thing, not only for our physical well-being but for our mental and emotional well-being, too. We know emotions can wreak havoc on our physical bodies – anger, stress, and upset can affect is in powerfully physical ways.

Our physical and spiritual well-being is not an either/or proposition but a both/and reality. We can’t neglect either one.

One of the exercises the authors suggest at the end of Chapter 2 is to look at yourself in the mirror and note what you see – and critically examine what the physical might say about the spiritual.

So this is what I see when I do that,

I see someone who needs to get back on his bike, if he could inspire himself enough and if it would stop raining on weekends. About 15 to 20 pounds need to be shed.

I see someone who is physically stronger than he was a year ago, helped by twice-a-week appointments with a personal trainer.

I see someone whose eyes reflect almost three months of non-stop stress at work, who’s doing way too much and needs to let even more things go.

I see someone who is very tired.

We’ll see where The Life of the Body takes us. So far, the journey looks hard and soul-searching. It also looks necessary.

To see the discussion and posts by others, please visit The High Calling.

Photograph by George Hodan via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.