paulkuritz.com

Whenever the relationship between the media and Christianity is raised, the name of Marshall McLuhan is close behind. In addition to being a pioneer in the history of the media’s influence on culture, Mr. McLuhan was a devout Christian.

The 2008 EO Symposium, sponsored this year by Wheatstone Academy asks this question:

 “If the medium affects the message, how will the Christian message be affected by the new media?

In The Medium and the Light (Toronto: Stoddart Publishing Company Ltd., 1999), 169), McLuhan himself began to answer this question:

                          “I suggest that our faith in the Incarnation has an immediate relevance to our art, science, and philosophy.  Since the Incarnation all men have been taken up into the poetry of God, the Divine Logos, the Word, His Son.  But Christians alone know this.  And knowing this, our own poetry, our own power of incarnating and uttering the world, becomes a precious foretaste of the Divine Incarnation and the Evangel.  We can see how all things have been literally fulfilled in Christ, especially our powers of perception.  And in Christ we can look more securely and steadfastly on natural knowledge which at one and the same time has become easier and also less important to us.”

As a Christian, McLuhan knew the message of the gospel was unlike any other message in human history.

The message, in words, is contained in John 3:16; “For God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.”

But God did not choose words, either spoken or printed, as his favored medium.

God chose Jesus to be both his medium and his message.

To know the message of salvation one needs to know not words, but a man.

Jesus brought the message of salvation not merely with his words but in his life.

Jesus, God’s holy and unique combination of message and medium, is, and always will be from eternity, the same, unchanging, and unchangeable.

Media may come, and media may go, but Jesus, the man of sorrows and the message of hope, remains the same forever, gloriously unaffected.

God demonstrated this truth before McLuhan announced it:

                                            My Medium is My Message.