Wednesday, August 18, 2010 3:36 p.m.

I didn't know that I would write so much about this topic, so as not to overwhelm you all, I am dividing it up into three posts.


Notice that I didn't entitle this post "Image Matters", but rather "Images Matter".  Images are powerful and have an effect on our brains that can easily eclipse that of the written word.  For several years I have noticed this, and this idea has remained in my brain as I have observed and analyzed bits and pieces of information that appear to corroborate my own theory on this.  We have all heard the expression about a picture being worth a thousand words.  Let's extrapolate this to:

If one picture equals one thousand words;

then, potentially, one video equals one thousand pictures, or one million words.

How many words are in the Bible?  How many videos does it take to cover them all?

Growing up Catholic, I never had cause to think much about the Lord's second commandment, but in recent years, now that I am part of a Reformed church, I have given more thought to this commandment.  The commandment is:


God gave us this commandment because He knows what is good for us, and He knows what He is talking about.  He also gave this commandment to His people long before there were such things as cameras, video cameras, cinema, television, the internet, etc.  In fact, at the time of the commandment, the only method the Lord's people would have had to create an image would have been to craft one through sculpture, painting, or architecture.

Now in the past, I would have thought that the second commandment had only to do with the overt worship of statues; i.e. did I worship that crucifix or that saint’s statue or not?  Of course I wouldn’t do something silly like that!  I thought that the commandment strictly meant to forbid such specific acts of worship.  But recently, I came to realize that this commandment has a much broader application.  Firstly, there is potential danger for us in portraying God, or the things of God, using images in a frivolous way.  Secondly, we need to be wise and thoughtful about exposing ourselves (and especially our children) to image-based media in general.  Not that all such images are sinful in themselves, but we need to be thoughtful about the effect that images have on our spiritual lives.

Now what does this have to do with technology?  My point is that images, and image-based forms of information delivery, make imprints upon our brains that can overwhelm, or annihilate, other impressions that our brains have previously received through the written word.  The Lord knows this because He created our brains and He knows how they work, and the effects of various life stimuli upon our brains and our hearts.  And if these effects are apparent in our adult brains and hearts, then the effects are all the more amplified with those of our children.  The Lord reveals His Truths to us through the written word, scripture, as well as through Creation.