Should Christians Turn Off ALL Images?

In this regular feature Dave and Tom respond to questions from listeners and readers of The Berean Call.Here is this week’s question:Dear Dave and TA, I read TA’s March article in The Berean Call titled, Weaning Evangelicals Off the Word, and I was greatly disappointed by it.His condemnation of imagery and worship as idolatry was unscriptural, not to mention irrational.Although he pointed to the Temple built by Solomon as housing the ArK of the Testimony, containing the tablets upon which God wrote, he failed to mention the imagery found throughout the Temple that God instructed the artist to make, which included cherubim, palm trees, flowers, pomegranates, oxen, the sea, lions, lilies and so on.I think you guys need to wake up and smell the lilies.This is an age of massive visualization.That is not going to change.How are you instructing the Christians to live in this world by turning off all images?No, you should be telling them to balance their viewing with reading.You’re not helping anyone become a discerner by your all-or-nothing mentality.You don’t further good Christian thinking by your adamant fundamentalism, nevertheless, I still support you guys.I just wish for your own sakes and for those you influence you weren’t so narrow minded sometimes.

Tom:

Well Dave, actually the letter is three times this long, we couldn’t go into all of it, but let’s just take one issue, let’s see if there’s a basis for it.Certainly in the Temple that God had given the instructions for how to build there were images, cherubim, palm trees, the flowers, pomegranates and so, does that open the door for the kind of imagery that we’re seeing today in the church?

Dave:

Well Tom, I don’t think anybody in the church, you know, Christian psychologists teaching them to visualize, and so forth, and this is an occult technique, it’s positive mental attitude technique, and so forth, I don’t think anybody is visualizing palm trees, what would be the purpose of that?What we are opposed to is visualizing Jesus, so we are talking about movies, I’m opposed to having a man on the screen pretending to be Jesus Christ, who said, He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.Now we are forbidden, absolutely forbidden to make an image of God!Everything that was in the tabernacle, God said to Moses, See that thou makest it according to the pattern that was showed to thee on the mount.Up on Mount Sinai God gave him the pattern.Now if someone can tell me that what they are doing is according to the pattern that God gave. The cherubim—well, these are angelic beings and why that would be there only God knows, but what am I going to do now?Am I going to visualize angels, cherubim protecting me?No, I can’t do that because these were at the throne of God, they are in a specific place, you can only go in there once a year.So, Tom, what visualization are we opposed to?What would we be opposed to on the screen—just very quickly.Well, how can you improve upon the Word of God?In other words, I’m going to put the New Testament into film.It’s been done now, I’m going to make a video—

Tom:

There are literally dozens of these videos.

Dave:

Right.So why am I going to do that?Oh, because I’m going to improve the Bible.So I’m going to get some actors and actresses and they are going to act this out.But God says, My Word— My Word— Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every Word.Never does it ever talk about pictures, okay.

Tom:

Dave, can I just interject because this isn’t the only response that I’ve gotten to the Arc. People say, We do this in India because the people are basically illiterate, so we’ve got these projectors and we’ve got this imagery.Now one ministry is using a film made by Indians, for Indians, and so on, but it’s still the same thing, they still have images of Christ, they still have, supposedly, their portrayal of the New Testament and things that took place in the gospels, and so on.Dave, doesn’t the scripture say faith comes by hearing?So, if they are illiterate, and you jump on this, if they are illiterate they can still hear, can’t they?They can find some understanding, can’t they?

Dave:

And hearing by the Word of God.In other words, you are supposed to give them the Word.It won’t add up, because—what did they do a thousand years ago?How did the apostles preach the gospel there in Athens, and how did missionaries take the gospel to Africa, those people were illiterate.

Tom:

Illiterate but not stupid, Dave.They could be taught to read, couldn’t they?It wouldn’t take that long, but I guess the thing that I’m so concerned about here, Dave, you know, this guy is calling us fundamentalists.I don’t have any problem with that, because to me a fundamentalist is somebody that starts with the basics.Come on, two plus two equals four, four plus four equals eight, let’s get the fundamentals correct, let’s do it God’s way in a fundamental way.

Dave:

Right, we follow the fundamental teaching of the Bible, and that’s it.But anyway, Tom, I guess I will have to read the whole letter, but I didn’t hear in there any justification for having Jesus Christ on the screen, for visualizing Christ, and like Calvin Miller for example, or other Christian leaders who are well thought of—Richard Foster— just visualize Jesus, and now Jesus will really come to you.Now this is an occult technique, so I don’t understand how someone could criticize our objection to this.

Tom:

Well Dave, we mentioned the New Testament, give me a New Testament example of how the apostles—Now you would say, Well, they didn’t have movies back then, and movies are really popular and people are attracted to movies.They did have imagery, they did have painting, they did have sculpture, they had all of these different kinds of things, and immediately, if not sooner, they all turned to idolatry, and that’s the point we are trying to make.John says, Keep yourself from idols, and he wasn’t just talking about anything that displaces God.

Dave:

Paul says to Timothy, 2 Timothy 4, Preach the Word.Be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long-suffering and doctrine.You cannot present doctrine in a picture, I guarantee you that.We’re to preach the Word, it is the Word of God that brings light.We are born again, Peter says, by the Word of God, not by pictures.Now we are not being hard-headed fundamentalists, we are only going by, Number One: the Bible, Number Two:common sense.You are not going to get doctrine in a picture, and you are not going to get truth in a picture, okay.

Tom:

Dave, I had thirty years of that growing up Roman Catholic.I had imagery, I had pictures, I had statues, I had all of that stuff.It never set me free, it was the Word of God that set me free.

Dave:

Amen.