ESCHEW IMAGE V: Engaging Image with Image. An Unholy Accident?

In contrast to a conscious media holy war, a more pertinent and prevalent situation exists. The church, unaware of the dynamics and perils of image, unwittingly stumbles into the realm of image. Image is no respecter of persons. Whether one has entered image by choice of by accident, all rules apply. The rules are not dictated by malicious people, but by the construct, the epistemology of image, the intrinsic nature of the media edifice our society has produced.

Image, being anathema to the Gospel, does not bear the Gospel well. Unaware of the intrinsic perils of image, the church feels betrayed by those who operate in the sphere of image and media construct. The church does not realize the caretakers of image are merely operating within the prescribed limitations of media, and so the church blames "them" and leaves the media construct unquestioned. Thus the church marginalizes itself, affirms its powerlessness, and leaves the construct uncriticized and untouched.

The construct actually brings about a reciprocal straw-man attack which serves to distract and deflect on both "sides" of the Christian divide. As noted, the Church's attack on "them" deflects and distracts from a critique of the construct. Conversely a populace, also uncritical of the construct, is deflected and distracted by a negative image of the church, never encountering the church as it is. (How prepared the western Evangelical Church is for an authentic encounter is a completely separate course of investigation. The point here being, the good which does exist is not allowed an authentic encounter.)

This is the heartbreak of an unintentional engagement of image with image—that even one person would miss an authentic encounter with the reality of Jesus Christ because they first encountered a shallow image constructed by the chruch. It is particularly heart breaking when the church itself, however well intentioned, manufactures and facilitates the shallow image. It is further shame that the church, unwittingly caught up in image, unaware of the realities of image, is unable to provide an antidote to image.