ESCHEW IMAGE VI: Rebuilding the Ediface

Having some understanding of our situation we arrive at what I believe is our best option. Eschew image. Do not willingly enter the realm of shallow images and appearances. By "image" we do not mean images. Indeed visual art, design, film and photography are all potentially powerful communicators of God's work in his creation. By image we mean instead the broader idea developed earlier; a marketing driven corporate identity, or a corporate branding strategy. Fundamentally the church is not about image, it is about substance, the active grace of Christ. As such the church needn't concern itself with "appearing to be" but simply with "being." However, the church does need to concern itself with image in as much as it needs to understand the dynamics and impact of image so as not to become an unwitting puppet of image. That is the least we can do.

Further, Children of the creator God should deeply understand what it is we offer as an antidote to the noise of marketing. Being a child of God is participation in a narrative of complexity and depth as initiated by the Master Poet of the Universe. It is authentic action as an extension of one's heart. It is an authentic spontaneous response of one person toward another, an honest moment. I see this as one of the most fundamental tasks of the church today, to operate in a construct radically separate from the dominant and homogenous construct of media driven image. Where image manipulates for gain, Children of Creator God shed agenda for the sake of grace. Where image ignores and is simplistic, Children of Creator God acknowledge and are complex. Where image hides in convolution, Children of Creator God bask in simplicity. Where image shouts polarization, Children of the Creator God whisper tension. Where image obfuscates out of expedience, Children of Creator God reveal despite difficulty. Where image mumbles, Children of Creator God speak. Where image moves toward the controlled moment, commercial exchange; Children of Creator God move toward the honest moment, mysterious grace.

The church must be situated in our creatureliness, a part of the world we inhabit, a world of image. At the same time the church must be situated in our createdness, separate from the world we inhabit, separate from image. To properly live in this tension the church cannot simply alter the message of a world of image, it must alter the world of image itself.

If the media construct is a tall shiny office building, the church cannot merely rearrange the furniture within the building. The church must begin dismantling the building, violating the intended purpose of various components of the building, and then reordering those various components so they now serve kingdom purposes. We can't wait for permission from the building managers. We have to start right where we are, in obedience to God. Is our allegiance to the big shiny building, it's order, it's immensity, it's appealing sense of solidity, it's effortless sense of entitlement, the security of it's status quo? Or is our allegiance to God? Do we care more for the people in the structure than the structure itself, as God does? Are we willing to violate the dictates of a world of image? Are we willing to begin dismantling our section of the building without asking for prior permission from the caretakers of the building? Are we willing to begin dismantling when we're not sure what we'll be building in it's place?

The caretakers of the building are more concerned with the building than the people in it. They will fight. They will say we are destroying the building. They won't understand re-ordering, nor kingdom purposes. They will say destroying the building is foolhardy, capricious, inhumane.

To properly live in the tension of creatureliness and createdness the church must feel the tension. Rearranging the furniture weighs too heavily on our creatureliness, we can become fairly confident and self sufficient in furniture arranging, therefore there is little tension. Dismantling and then rebuilding the only available residential structure because one has received orders to do so from an authority the caretakers of the structure do not acknowledge, while one remains living, along with the caretakers and all else, within the structure, is living in tension.