As Susan Sontag noted in On Photography, we cannot travel and be tourists without ferrying home images of the place we have visited – as if the purpose of the trip were of the collection of the images, not the being there.
-John Freeman, The Tyranny of E-mail, p. 16
It is hard to imagine that people lived for thousands of years without photography. If you wanted a picture you had to do it the good old fashioned way – draw it, paint it, or sculpt it. Yes, people actually lived quite contentedly without photos. But could we?
Freeman’s words ring true. We’re constantly clicking buttons along the way, taking pictures. My wife and I have had the discussion on more than one occasion about our children, especially on special occasions – believe it or not, it is actually more important to participate in, and enjoy, the moment, than capture the moment. Does anyone still believe that?
Hardly anyone considers these days the implications of the second commandment for our picture taking:
- You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them… (Exodus 20:4-5a)
We, at least we Reformed folk for the most part, tend to focus on the command’s prohibition against visual representations of God made by the hands of men. But the command is actually broader. Any physical object representing something else in connection with worship is prohibited. But could it go even farther than that?
I won’t press it too hard, though I wonder about the second commandment’s implications for photography in general. God knows perfectly well man’s tendency to exalt objects of his (man’s) own creation. A physical object can store all sorts of hidden meanings. Physical objects, and especially pictures, can hold all kinds of memories that lay dormant, only to be evoked by the picture. Behold a picture, and feel time crawl backwards, smell an old aroma, sense an old feeling that you haven’t felt in a while. Those were the good old days. Days worthy of reverence. If only I looked and felt like I did back then. If only that old flame were still in my life. And boom, the second commandment is in full force. Don’t bow down. Put the picture away. Live in the now. Now is the acceptable time. Today is the day of salvation, not yesterday. Remember the past, but do not wax nostalgic, or your now will become enslaved to it. You will become the servant of the picture, and you probably won’t even realize it.
Hence the need to reflect on our propensity to take pictures.
As Christians in an age in which photography is so simple, easy, and accessible, when we spend too much time on websites that flood our souls with images, we must stop and think, we must remember our ever-present God who forbids us to make images of him lest we think that he is a thing of the past. Even when he took on flesh, and the image of God was revealed perfectly in a Man, the Lord Jesus Christ, no pictures were taken. We are to behold his glory through words. We see with our ears. We hear through our hearts.
As you take aim with your phone, or break out your high-dollar camera, consider whether or not you are storing up little idols to place in the shrine of Me. My family. My memories. Remember when they were little children, wasn’t that great. They’re all grown up now. But we’ll take plenty of pictures of the grandkids. I hear Robin Williams’ voice in my head, in that great scene in Dead Poets Society, whispering ‘Carpe…Carpe…Carpe Diem. Seize the day boys.’
I’m sure not everyone has experienced this, but some have. Do you know that powerfully symbolic moment after a breakup when you toss all those old pictures of your ex? What is powerful and symbolic about it? It means you’ve moved on. You’ll no longer be enslaved to the past. I hear Robin Williams again: ‘Carpe…Diem.’
We refuse to let ‘time like an ever rolling stream’ bear its sons away. We would immortalize the moments when it is man, not moments, persons, not pictures, that God would have be immortal. How’s your soul these days? I know you are smiling in your profile picture, that’s not what I’m talking about.
Maybe I have pressed this too far, I don’t know. Pictures can certainly serve positive purposes. I don’t know that anyone has ever said that taking pictures violates the second commandment. My point is that you must be careful how you use them. Look away from the pictures and see real faces, made in the image of God. Look away from the screen and see the stars. Look away from the snapshot and see the sky. Put down the camera and drink it in, right now. Be there.
Use the pictures to reflect. Tell stories. But don’t dwell too long. Make new stories. Go to new places and try to appreciate the actual being there.
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today
Tomorrow will be dying (Robert Herrick)
