Jen Wilkin makes a critical point about context and reading, when she writes of “The Instagram Bible” at her blog. Here is a taste:
Beware the Instagram Bible, my daughters – those filtered frames festooned with feathered verses, adorned in all manner of loops and tails, bedecked with blossoms, saturated with sunsets, culled and curated just for you.
Beware lest it become for you your source of daily bread. It is telling a partial truth.
I saw in my vision by night, and behold, I dreamed of a world in which every copy of the Bible was gone, except those portions we had preserved on Instagram. Consider this Bible, my daughters, if you will:
Its perfect squares are friend to the proverb, the promise, and the partial quote, leaving laws, lists, land-allotments, and long-stretching lessons to languish off-screen.
It comforts but rarely convicts.
It emotes but rarely exhorts.
It warms but rarely warns.
It promises but rarely prompts.
It moves but does not mortify.
It builds self-assurance but balks at self-examination.
It assembles an iconography whose artists, by spatial necessity, are constrained to choose
brevity over breadth,
inspiration over intellect,
devotion over doctrine.
Beware its conscribed canvas, where calligraphy conquers context.
Beware.
Click here to see the full post. And please take this to heart as you post verses, share verses, or even memorize verses. All such verses are but a nibble of a larger passage, a broader argument. If we don’t get that argument, we misuse the verse.
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