We are rapidly moving away from a literary society to a visual society. Globally, we would rather watch something than read something. The death of newspapers. The rise of Youtube.
What does this mean for the written Word of God? Well, there’s good news and bad news.
The good news is that there is much healthy discussion on visualization in the church these days. Artists like Makoto Fujimura have written extensively on the subject of visual theology. Visual theology, he says, “happens, when we are engaged with scriptures, with fulness of our imaginations”. I agree. It is a good thing when our minds are creatively engaged with Scripture in such a way that they come to life for us.
Indeed, for centuries Christians have portrayed biblical narratives in creative visual ways (think Medieval stained glass to 1960s flannel graph). Kids like to build Bible scenes out of LEGOS. You get the point. This supplementation of the Bible is good, healthy, and God honoring.
The bad news is that as many people are less and less interested in reading, they are less interested in reading the Bible.
They are more drawn to the latest instagram photo with some overlayed words from a Christian pop song that may or may not be theologically correct.
God has given His Word in literary form precisely to engage with our hearts and minds in that way. Why? I don’t know – but that’s what He chose to do.
Are we so naive to think that the god of this world is not using the expanding availability of visual stimulation to influence us away from God’s written Word? We must find balance in this, our visual world, and as believers hold on to the written Word as our primary influence.
Probably weekly we ask a friend “did you see that video?”
What we should be asking is “have you read that passage?”
Sola Scriptura