That Wonderful Hypertext Experience

jesus-with-rifle-thumb by Jordon

Hypertext--the format that allows you to click on links and create your own path through information--is wonderful to experience. I often take it for granted. It's like channel-surfing while reading.

What happened to me just now was that I was reading a review of a new book about the history of religion's influence in society called Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon. The review made reference to the recent Danish Muslim cartoon controversy and tied it to the history of Christian iconoclasm. So I looked up the history of Christian iconoclasm on Wikipedia. It's pretty dense with history, but interesting. The article details the battle between the iconoclasts, who wanted to remove all imagery from the church, and the inconodules, who wanted to preserve icons, relics, and other visual images of Jesus and the saints.

The main iconoclastic argument seems to have been that any physical representation of Jesus represents his human nature but not his divine nature, and thus separates the two. The Eucharist, considered by the iconoclasts to be the only permissible icon of Jesus, "was believed to be his actual body and blood," and therefore an integration of his physical and divine natures. They also believed that images, even of Jesus, violated the 2nd commandment against worshipping idols.

Of course, the iconodules win in the end. The whole thing reminded me of an experience I had when I was an acolyte at my Lutheran church. My robes were kept in a closet in a room at the back of the church. There was also a framed painting with its face turned to the back of the closet. One day I mustered up the courage to pull out the painting and look at it. It was a painting of Jesus.

I asked my pastor before services that morning why the painting was stuck facing the back of the closet. I caught him rushed and off guard. He said, "Uh, well, Jesus didn't really look like that."