Word and image in a TV age

As a preacher, I am tempted to feel intimidated by the awesome professionalism of television. It has almost god-like qualities, doesn't it?

* It is omnipotent - or so it seems.
* It is omnipresent - its influence is all-pervasive
* It is omniscient - it has an air of authority and believability. 'Seeing is believing,' we say.
* It offers salvation - from boredom and loneliness.

My main concern over TV is not the content, but the medium itself. I have asked myself the question, 'What impact does the way that TV communicates have upon the message it communicates?' In a nutshell, I have come to the conclusion that the Bible does not just tell me what to say as a Christian preacher, but it also gives me clear guidelines about how to say it. For in the Bible, there is a close relationship between the medium and the message. Moreover, the method of communication is tied to the message.

There are basic issues of communication which are important.

TV communication today

Communicators speak of three 'channels' of communication:

* The verbal: the spoken word
* The para-verbal: the variables which affect how the verbal is understood (intonation, pitch, volume etc.)
* The non-verbal: this relates to things like eye-contact, touch, proximity, etc.

Obviously TV reduces the channels available. However, we are adding complications. For example, the proximity issue. The TV sits in my living room and for many people it is their closest companion... and yet it is mass communication. Similarly, I feel intimacy from my TV - Trevor MacDonald is reading the news to me! We feel we have a personal relationship with TV and its personalities, yet there is no real intimacy.

The preacher

The preacher is competing with this kind of communication. This, of course, is nothing new. Paul had to stand up against the eloquence and logic of epicureans and stoics, and a culture which reduced speech to an art form. However, because the best communicators around us are commercially orientated, the preacher has become a salesman, competing in a professional communication market. There is a danger that the church is now preoccupied with TV priorities - money, status, power - with potentially dangerous results.

Two church trends in an image-orientated culture

1. The congregation becomes a passive audience, in danger of dictating the content of the message (note Paul's warnings about 'itching ears', 2 Timothy 4.3). The result is that audience considerations become important. However, if the TV produces 'couch potatoes', it would be worrying if the church only produced 'pew potatoes'.

2. The gospel is presented as entertainment. We sometimes talk about 'entertainment evangelism'. But do those terms marry together well? Is the gospel entertaining - in the commercial sense?

These are trends, I hasten to add. But they are trends that we need to be concerned about. It is good that the church is becoming contemporary, but it is bad if we are becoming worldly. The shaping of our views of communication is subtle. 'If we cannot compete with the professionalism, glamour and impact of TV, we will give up,' we argue.

The tension between word and image wants to respond to that concern by addressing more specifically three areas of TV communication. Communication that is image-dominated is marked out by the following features:

1. Visibility

The image is everything. Our image, we are led to believe, is all-important. TV does not suggest to me that I should be healthy, wealthy or wise. Rather, TV encourages me to believe that I should be seen to be healthy, wealthy or wise.

Am I really the image I project? The TV tells me it doesn't matter. We are told that divorcing image from reality is not an issue, but the Bible calls this hypocrisy (Matthew 23).

Television is able to communicate 'suggestion' at an even more subtle level through subliminal advertising. The experiments carried out the 1960s proved that it was possible to induce desire for popcorn without the watcher being aware of where this desire had come from. Placing a single frame with the words 'Buy Popcorn' into a film was enough to titillate attraction below the threshold of reasoning. For this reason, subliminal advertising was banned in the 1964 Television Act(1).

However, the exciting and attractive images produced by the advertiser and public image of modern celebrities produces desire for more and better in the minds of television watchers. If the experiments with subliminal advertising taught anything, it was to reinforce the fact that we can be encouraged to want attractive things, even while our non-critical mind is digesting other information. The Bible calls unhealthy desire covetousness (Deuteronomy 5.21, 1 John 2.15-17).

2. Immediacy

The image enables us to see drama unfold around us. It is as good as instant.

'Vision works like a camera which provides me with dozens or hundreds of snapshots that are connected only if my mind relates them. And because of this information I can take part and involve myself in this reality by means other than sight. Sight has made me the centre of the world because it situates me at the point from which I see everything, and causes me to see things relative to this point...my sight is not really continuous, even when I fix my gaze on the same broom plant. I do not see it change, I see it; then an instant later I see it again, and the image is imperceptibly different.'(2)

Malcolm Muggeridge said: 'News becomes not so much what has happened, as what can be seen as happening or seems to have happened.'

TV news provides an eye on the world but no voice to interpret it. I can see long before I can understand or explain. Neil Postman talks about the 'context of no context'. Words have margins. Words create an interpretative framework. The image does not. And so we create a 'Now ... this' schizophrenia in which we dart from one scene to another, pandering to the fancies of our restless eyes.(3)

3. Triviality

My concern with television is not just that TV entertains. Rather, the issue for me is that everything on TV is entertainment, resulting in trivial reductionism and creating an unthinking audience. It is when television gives the impression that it is being serious that its harmful influence can be most subtle.

We need to bring a biblical framework to bear upon our crumbling culture.

Some biblical perspectives

We have thought about the sins of covetousness and hypocrisy. However, an even bigger theme in the Bible is that of idolatry.

'Temptation to idolatry is everyone's problem and often the worst temptations come from the best gifts. In order to let God be God, Christians must worship and love God alone ... There is one God, there is no god but God, and there is no rest for any who rely on any god but God.'(4)

We need go no further than the first two Commandments to illustrate this.

The exclusive relationship between God and Israel is hinted at in the first Commandment - God brought them out; rescued them from slavery in Egypt so that he could be their God and they could be his people.

But in the second Commandment, the issue is not so much to do with acknowledging Yahweh's uniqueness. Rather, it focuses on the way in which God is to be worshipped. Idolatry does not just relate to worshipping other gods, but also concerns worshipping the true God in ways other than he has ordained.

It is interesting to notice that the thing which ruptures that relationship is the introduction of images - the Bible is happy that God is represented verbally, but not pictorially. One particularly poignant illustration was the making of the golden calf which became a substitute god.(5)

God is closer to his people than even an image could make him - through his Word He comes close... a Word which addresses the mind and heart before the eye... .a Word which is to be examined and heeded.(6)

Through the Word, God creates (God spoke and it happened, Genesis 1); reveals himself (John 1.14, 18); and communicates ('logos' is used both of God's being, John 1.1; and the message of salvation, 1 Thess. 1.5).

The Word made flesh is the image of the invisible God (John 1.14; Colossians 1.15). For a time, the eternal God was made visible (although only the disciples saw beyond the signs to the God of whom they spoke, John 2.11). Word and image were united. But now? We come to faith, not by seeing, but by hearing the Word of salvation (Romans 10.17) and 'see' through the eyes of those who saw (John 20.29-31).

As I consider the issue of 'word and image', I have come to appreciate that there are profound theological issues at stake - indeed more than a short article can exhaust. There are also some practical issues relating to the relevance of preaching:

1. Preaching is multimedia communication

Martyn Lloyd Jones's famous statement about preaching is important. For preaching is to be 'logic on fire'. It is 'truth mediated through personality'. Biblical preaching involves the live interaction between congregation, preacher and the living God. There is indeed 'presence' and 'interaction' between speaker, hearer and message.

My plea is that we may not be so intimidated by TV communication that we forget the sovereign dynamic which God initiates when his Word is proclaimed.

2. Good preaching engages modern hearers

I hope that I have demonstrated that there is an inextricable link between communication and understanding; and between form and content.

To be sure, the modern preacher has to contend with his congregation's poor concentration and ease of distraction. However, I believe that we should be encouraging preachers to work on their communication as well as on the content. They cannot be glibly separated as if the packaging had nothing to say about the product.

Of course, for engagement to happen, listeners need to react and respond to the Word preached. Expectancy, encouragement, obedience, worship and non-verbal signals communicate back to the speaker that the Word is doing its work in the hearts of the hearers.

Let's pull the plug on a culture which proclaims image without word ... for we are made in the image of God, the eternal Word, and that which God has joined, let no man separate!

Simon Vibert is the minister of Trinity Church, Buxton, and Secretary of the Fellowship of Word and Spirit.

For further reading:

Simon Vibert, The Church in the age of the TV Image - Dare we still preach? Orthos 12, published by Fellowship of Word and Spirit (1993), PO Box 39, Buxton, Derbyshire, SK17 9BT, price £2.50.

Footnotes

(1) See further The Evil Eye, Guy Playfair, Jonathan Cape, London, 1990, for a penetrating assessment of the modern face of television.
(2) Jacques Ellul, The Humiliation of the Word, page 6f.
(3) Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death, page 99f.
(4) Os Guinness & John Seel (editors), No God but God, Moody Press, Chicago, 1992, back cover; page 28.
(5) Ellul notes the irony of taking earrings (used to adorn the organ of hearing) and making an image which would please the eye! (page 87).
(6) Note the introduction to the Ten Commandments in Deuteronomy 4.3-8, 35-38.