Redirected Vision: Bread of Life Pt. 3

Imagine a society where, instead of baking bread for hungry people, they produced mass quantities of pictures of bread and posted ads for them at every corner, and handbills were given out with pictures of different types of bread, hundreds of different types of bread. Pictures of wheat bread, pumpernickel, Jewish rye, banana bread, croissants, sheepherders bread, bread sticks, garlic bread…heck, even melba toast.

Now imagine that these images of bread not only became the dominant mode of exchange (some hoarding these pictures, others spending them as fast as they could get them), but were actually consumed on a daily basis despite the fact that they had no nutritional value whatsoever.

Imagine that, besides the handbills, posters and billboards which depicted the pictures of bread, the evening television news consisted of discussions and international debates over which of these pictures of bread were worth the most, and which were declining in value or had become disreputable as a true picture of bread. Imagine witnessing special interest groups arguing and protesting the advantages and disadvantages of consuming their particular type of bread-pictures. And, of course, in such a world, litigation would be intense over who had the actual rights to each type of bread picture, and there would often be disputes over counterfeit pictures or poor foreign copies had infiltrated the market.

And the entire time that men and women were viewing these billboards, wheat was growing up around the posts. And wherever they stapled posters, streams gurgled by with yeast cultures forming in the shallows and the sun.

What would you make of such a society?

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Have you noticed that despite the boom in communications technology, people are less and less likely to talk with each other? They talk at each other. They posture, hold their opinions, do their business, but people no longer meet at the city gate and talk with each other. They stay in their darkened apartments and houses and stare at one of the 63 channels on their viewscreen. Their real needs for life are appeased and deflected as they are vicariously run through basic emotional experiences by what they view. And all the while, as they attempt to feed on these empty images, the wheat grows up around the posts, and the streams gurgle by with yeast cultures forming in the shallows and the sun.

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Much of the modern church would feed us pictures of bread instead of inviting us to meet the Bread of Life Himself.

Let’s disappoint them, shall we?

~ by bakdon on January 4, 2008.