Blogging, Tweeting, and Instagramming in the Image of God

Via Christianity Today:

Christians are divided on what to make of this recent flood of digital technology. Generally speaking, evangelicals are either "determinists" or "instrumentalists" when discussing media technology. On the determinist side are intellectuals like Jacques Ellul, Neil Postman, and Marshall McLuhan who warn that technology comes with its own set of values that shape (and erode) culture almost apart from human agency. People who decry the corrupting "force" of Instagram or iTunes would also be in this camp.
On the other side are instrumentalists, who view media like Facebook or Twitter as either neutral tools or unfettered allies in the work of the gospel. They ask, like Leonard Sweet, not "Would Jesus Tweet?" but "What would Jesus Tweet?" There are certainly wise moderate voices in between these two extremes (John Dyer's fine book From the Garden to the City: The Redeeming and Corrupting Power of Technology comes to mind). But arguably most evangelicals fall into a dazed middle ground, posting status updates, "pinning" pictures, and hashtagging away with little thought for how the Christian story might inform their media usage.

Points:

• "If God creates and uses media…then there is a theological logic instructive for how we produce and use media technology today."
• “…understand how God himself employs media and to craft a theological framework for our media usage and production today.”
• “The Bible puts God's vast media repertoire on display. Dreams, visions, symbols, plagues, deliverances—all are chosen mediums for God's revelation.”
• “…tension between two forms of ancient media: God's words (‘'’law,’ ‘my voice’) versus the images of ‘the Baals’ (Jer. 9:12-16).”
• “Because God uses and creates media (broadly defined), there is a discoverable logic to guide Christians in using and creating their own media. This changes the conversation from the proverbial "Yea" or "Nay" to blogging, Pinterest, or cable news, and instead asks how we can imitate God's media use and take the next step to creating divinely-inspired media.”

The immediate thought that came to mind was about those Christian authors who must apply these lessons to what their agents and editors tell them, namely to always be promoting themselves. However, a broader application is for Christians in the knowledge economy. These thoughts can apply to drafting a business memo on a word processor or crunching data in a spreadsheet. Both are media, and both have incarnational, criuciform, and resurrectional implications.

Paperback             Kindle