Or maybe it’s more like, a picture can say what a thousand words can’t even say. Or so says James K.A. Smith in his latest book (at least the latest I’ve acquired), Desiring the Kingdom.
This brings home to me a major reason why multimedia content is so preferred. The senses, the affections, being captured lays a greater hold on us than text because of this way we are driven as AFFECTIVE creatures, or , as JKA puts it, “driven by desireâ€. And this desire, or love, is aimed at particular things.
Our ultimate love is oriented by and to a picture of what we think it looks like for us to live well, and that picture then governs, shapes, and motivates our decisions and actions.
It is important to emphasize that this is a picture. This is why I have emphasized that we are fundamentally noncognitive, affective creatures. The telos to which our love is aimed is not a list of ideas or propositions or doctrines; it is not a list of abstract, disembodied concepts or values. Rather, the reason that this vision of the good life moves us is because it is a more affective, sensible, even aesthetic picture of what the good life looks like. A vision of the good life captures our hearts and imaginations not by providing a set of rules or ideas, but by painting a picture of what it looks like for us to flourish and live well. This is why such pictures are communicated most powerfully in stories, legends, myths, plays, novels, and films rather than dissertations, messages, and monographs. Because we are affective before we are cognitive (and even while we are cognitive) , visions of the good get inscribed in us by means that are commensurate with our primarily affective, imaginative nature. This isn’t to say that the cognitive or propositional is a completely foreign register for us (if it were, this book would be an exercise in futility!); however, it doesn’t get into our (noncognitive) bones in the same way or with the same effect.
Desiring the Kingdom, James K.A. Smith , p. 53
This is why , I think, we see such disconnect between a theology that considers itself confrontive of “secular valuesâ€, and yet is so assimilating of just those same values. They are unaware of the “theological†power of the “secular†desires instilled in us by a “liturgy†that escapes recognition as liturgy. But JKA asserts that the secular “desires†are very “religious†and “liturgical†in that they promote and “form†that desire. What many churches end up doing is “attack the culture with the gospel†in a cognitive –based strategy, and in the process, miss the formative instilling of desires. They try to “change the mind†rather than change the habits.
This is the path to the “worldly Christiansâ€; the problem Ron Sider saw in “The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind†(though Sider didn’t really focus on the unconscious, affective aspects as JKA does here). But Sider does pounce on the use of money, and the lack of giving that is exhibited amongst the evangelical crowd, and how money indicates where the heart is. JKA would say that where money is spent is a pretty clear indicator of what “drives†us; what we truly pursue in our efforts.
Something else this study highlights for me is the power of the image, and thus the “story†to which we gravitate; to which we are drawn. The description of the story that grabs hold of the affective is being played out in the attraction to new media that extend beyond text, and invite us to “participate†rather than be passive consumers of “rational†ideas.
Hmm. This is a really interesting way to view the importance of new media. And it is probably consistent with a theology of immanence, however, I haven't thought that through. But if this is God's world, then God is present is ways that are beyond our limited vision and perception. Thus, the beckoning call of messages, images, stories within the culture that enlighte us, lift us to a higher level of thinking and feeling, lead us from beyond ourselves to generosity and self-giving, could be a very positive thing. Of course, there are those who see these media as merely self-satisfying, personalized expressions of our self-absorption. But you're raising an interesting thought.
Larry,
The further I read into "Desiring the Kingdom", the more I become convinced that this is something very key for the church to realize. I wasalso reminded of a book we were assigned as a group for those of us in the MARC program at United in 1990-91 (For readers who don't know: MARC = Master of Arts in Religious Communication). Gregor Goethels visited us and I went and fetched her from the airport, and had read her book "The Electronic Golden Calf: Images, Religion, and the Making of Meaning", which was great. My copy is full of yellow and blue and green highlighted passages. She covers a good bit of this kind of exploration of the impact of the affective upon the imagination and cognition. Somewhere in that continuum between Imagination and cognition is the workings of faith (something like Pascal's "the heart has reasons which reason doesn't know"). I myself am not actually sure that imagination and cognition are effectively portrayed as continuum points, because that implies that the closer we get to 100% of one, we move closer to 0% of the other. I don't think that's the case.