ESCHEW IMAGE IV: Engaging Image with Image. A Holy War?

Given this reality, one of the options available to the church is to embrace image. Do image better than anyone else. Create and manage an image that overpowers the current image already created. Unfortunately engaging image with image is fraught with peril.

On a pragmatic level creating a positive image that is superior and more ubiquitous than the current image while retaining control of said image would require complete independence from the existing media edifice. One would need to, in effect, create a "Christian" media empire greater in scope and reach than the existing media edifice. There are a number of chilling issues with such a scenario, some all too current and real. However, suffice it to say a simple logistical issue presents itself. Creating and managing an image more ubiquitous than the image offered by the current media edifice would require financial resources equal to or greater than all current film, television, newspaper and magazine production. Unless one is willing to posit self-interested advertising driven commercial exchange as the hallmark and duty of those professing the gospel—recognized as a chilling current reality—one will have difficulty envisioning philanthropy expansive enough to sustain a "Christian" media ediface set about to challenge an existing media ediface built and predicated on self-interested advertising driven commercial exchange. Simply put, the church cannot out media the media without eviscerating the gospel.

One may argue that while the church cannot overpower the media edifice, it could work within the existing media edifice toward improving the church's image. I would contend that any willful use of image is counter to the gospel. Image is detatched, impersonal, synthetic, constructed, pliable, appearance focused, concerned with verisimilitude rather than reality, unable to broach complexity and depth. Hardly a list one wishes to associate with the transcendent and immanent person of Jesus Christ.

Catch phrases and gimmicks are shallow, one dimensional and encourage fleeting engagement. If the church enters the realm of image it is bound by the epistemology of image. The medium is the message. Thus, if the church uses catch phrases and marketing gimmicks it encourages people to engage a simple catch phrase or marketing gimmick. People will bounce off of gimmicks and into Cartoon Christianity. That is, gimmicks won't lead people toward Christ, they will lead them toward a media constructed image of Christianity, Cartoon Christianity. They haven't encountered Christ.

Worse still, simple gimmicks are open to subversion. Easy catch phrases, simplistic symbols, marketing gimmicks will be subverted. It is what media does. To everyone. Media, and a very media savvy public, will co-opt shallow symbols and spit them back with an ironic smirk, no problem. Tradition, doctrine or even Christ himself won't have been engaged, therefore Tradition, doctrine or Christ won't have been subverted. A simple catch phrase will have been subverted. This happens all the time to virtually all catch phrases, regardless of content, regardless of who started them. One has little excuse to be upset when "Christian" catch phrases are skewered. "Simplistic" and "easy" are the argot of media. If you lob the simple ball, be sure you're going to get the kill shot bouncing back off your forehead. I would contend that when the church willingly enters the realm of image it encourages an assessment of itself based on image. This is an undesirable dynamic as the epistemological constraints of image are counter to the gospel.