https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rA4P7p20sqE
I immediately rolled my eyes as soon as I understood what this video was about. And I was prepared to dismiss it entirely begin to speedy work of forgetting about it forever, but I just couldn't. The video was too arresting. It intrigued me in a way that few marketing ploys do. I kept coming back to the questions, why don't I like this image? What went wrong here?
I posted this link onto facebook a few days ago and some of my friends were offended by what they saw as an inappropriate conflation of God with deadly military technology. And there is some merit for those concerns though not as much as they would like to believe. God is characteristically pictured as the Divine Warrior throughout the Bible, and Salvation in the Old Testament is often won through divine military intervention, so the comparison is hardly unbiblical. Why does this image that has modest Scriptural precedent continue to rub me the wrong way?
After all, the speaker in this video is only doing what any good teacher does. Pastor Young took an object that is familiar to his audience and he used that common knowledge to draw connections between the object and something that his audience may not be as familiar with. In this case, he is taking a physical piece of technology and using it to help his audience conceptualize some important truths about God. So far so good.
I believe the problem arises when a speaker fails to take into account the emotive impact that his chosen illustration has in the imagination of his audience. The thing about images is that they are very rarely neutral. Unless you are using beige wallpaper to communicate theological truth, generally whatever image you use is something that an audience not just understands but has particular feelings about. Take the iPhone for instance. I don't know of a single person in my demogrpahic who is neutral about the iPhone. I know obsessed Apple fanboys and I know Android using Apple iconoclasts. There is very little neutral space when it comes to Apple products.
Even though the comparisons that he makes between Drones and God's attributes are accurate. It is a clever illustration. I believe he failed to take into account the feelings and value judgments that drones elicit in the minds of his audience members. I don't know many people who feel warmly and positively about the existence and functions of combat drones. So when you take an image or a symbol that nobody likes, everybody fears and is anxious about, and then say that this image is in fact just like God. You are stuck with the fallout of your audience transferring those dislikes fears and anxieties onto God. As a teacher you aren't allowed to decide that your audience is only allowed to see the rational correlations and must discard their emotional judgments about your image of choice. You are free to try but I have serious doubts about your success. The affective portion of your brain is just as strong if not stronger still than your rationality.
As a teacher I don't employ an image simply as a means of helping my audience to rationally understand a concept. My goal is something much deeper. I'm trying to activate the imagination. I try to use images to help my audience love God the way that some hipsters love their iPhones. I run the risk of miscommunication if I use this illustration in a room full of Android users. And the fault is my own for not taking into account the beliefs and feelings of my audience.
As someone whose part time job involves inflating balloons and crafting them into symbolic representations of actual people and objects, I try to take very seriously the depths of what a single image can convey (#PneumaticSemiotics). I was working in a restaurant on Good Friday a few years ago and somebody asked me to make for them a balloon cross. I thought nothing of it and was happy to craft such a simple balloon for a change. But as I was twisting, tweaking and creasing my balloons into the appropriate form I began to feel a little bit weird. On Good Friday of all days, the medium that I was using to depict the instrument of my God's brutal execution felt very inappropriate. I had just finished a round of balloon dogs, penguins and Super Mario action figures that I gave away as toys for children and I had to move on from my standard circus fare to craft one of the holiest images in all of creation out of latex balloons. I decided as soon as I was finished that I would never again depict a cross with my balloons. I felt that there were too many mixed signals being sent by the object signified and the medium used to signify that object.
Symbols are powerful tools that have been employed by the Christian church since it's inception to communicate the transcendent truth of God our creator and Redeemer to His worshipers. We would do well to consider long and hard how we employ symbols in our church and in our teachings so that we do not import unhealthy or inappropriate theology into our worship.
