Glimpses of Wisdom

It is wet and misearble outside and here I am inside on a Saturday evening responding to a post on If:book. Such a banquet of posts and and who is this individual living in a world of intellectual abundance? - I see it is john mcclymer -

Oh no! far too long a post for my brain to soak up on a Saturday night particularly when I could be watching James Bond on the tube.

Oh here is a post by ray cha "three glimpses at the future of television Oh I can recall those delicious times when the whole family was crowded around the radio listening to "Diana and the golden apple" Such wonderful images floated around in my wee small brain. Not to forget the bonding between brothers and sisters, mums and dads.

Radio broadcasting began at the turn of the century, perceived as a powerful educational tool. Yet, New Zealand (unlike Southern Korea), its new media is still not triumphant for while the new media of information technology (computer/internet), play a role today, most NZ people live in a world defined by old print, televison radio and film.

NZers still hunger for images, pictures, music and myth. This is evidenced by the vast popularity of programs watched daily on the tube. Whatever the tube tells you , you do...you dress like the tube...you eat like the tube...you raise your children like the tube ...and you even think like the tube.

New Zealanders will take longer to shift from the television boxe to laptops. After all we are community people who enjoy sitting around the big black box watching rugby, racing and Shortland street (No I don't watch it).

Those under the poverty line (and there are many), will yearn for the days when televisons prices come down. They will say..."You can have your affluent families sitting in their privates studies watching DVD on laptops. Yet television manifests as the most subtle of all powers. It introduces distorted images of reality in the minds of people.

In communities, where unemployment is prevalent, powerless people are forced to see technology from a different perpective than in the cities or regions of affluence. We have to place technological eduation in their very midst to give choices and open up life changing possibilities. ooh a good opportunity for the church huh?

Television and movies offer us a creative language that can bridge the gap between the sacred and the secular, the church and the world. To live as Christians/theolgians in our time, requires learning to engage media and culture.

Become aware of the power of the images and finding the tools to explore and critique these images.

Take the movie "Shawshank Redemption" The film featured Andy Dufresne who was given two life sentences in the Shawshank State Prison. If you saw it you will recall the theme of hope:; Hebrew view of creation; redempton of life and other theological inserts.

Perhaps the most powerful image of rebirth and new life in the movie is the scene where having crawled through five hundred yards of sewage Andy stands victorious, stripped bare n the pouring rain, Andy's bare body is symbolic of a stripping away of the old and preparation of the new. In the scene nakedness is a visual metaphor for birht or rebirth - transition from the old to the new, Similarly the apostle Paul uses the metaphor pf childbirth to desribe the hope by which the Spirit is liberating not only humanity, but creation as a whole. For we all know the whole creation groans and sufferes the pains of childbirth together until now...saved(Romans 8:22-23).

Video sharing site mmm...it would be a a place for Christians to set the bible into drama sounds very much like Tim's Amos project. Doing it this way could create a remix of old stories. We could create a spiritual dimension of technology that Kelly calls "regenesis"the urge that human beings have to create creation.

Biblical Creation - The struggle between good and evil. why not? Star Wars had same theme.

For the gospel to be communicated today, we must learn to express its meaning to us in terms of stories, televison and the internet. It must be carried out with wisdom - it requires the exercise of humility, right judgment, justified boldness and caution where there is uncertainty.

It's late

Good night

Te atapo (the dawn).