life on planet earth on Spectacle

There is one spectacle grander than the sea, that is the sky; there is one spectacle grander than the sky, that is the interior of the soul.

In the age of the spectacle, image is our identity, and our identity is unavoidably molded by our media.

The World watches the slandered church as something of a vain curiosity, but in reality, the church is a spectacle of her own—a large cast collectively playing the starring role as bride of in the hum...

Exposed to public view like slabs of meat hung from a market stall, troublesome slaves were nailed to crosses…past. No death was more excruciating, more contemptible, than crucifixion. To be hung nake...

I’ve served on staff at a few different churches throughout Silicon Valley for the last decade and a half, including a medium-sized church, a young church plant, and a multisite megachurch. At each, w...

Our culture is no longer banded together by shared beliefs; it’s drawn together by shared spectacles. Like Halloween costumes designed to match the most popular movies, we seek our self-identity insid...

Like a smartphone screen made blank by the rays of direct sunshine, one day we shall see Christ’s face. On that day, all the vain spectacles in this world of illusions and all the pixelated idols of o...

Satan blinds hearts by filling eyes with worthless things. His veil over human hearts today is a veil of pixels, and the chains of his spiritual bondage are tethered to the world’s theater.

The human heart bends toward what the eye sees. Today’s image makers fling into the world's digital spectacles of sex, wealth, power, and popularity. Those images get inside us, shape us, and form...

In our postmodern culture which is TV dominated, image sensitive, and morally vacuous, personality is everything and character is increasingly irrelevant.

In a world where sex, wealth, power, and beauty are the dominant idols, these idols will flood our dominant media.

Human spectacle making is like sorcery—an enchantment, a spell, the creation of an image that calls for a response from our inner longings. Idolatry is the original tele-vision, the bringing of a far-...

The apostles were like a capstone spectacle in the arena, the supreme sacrifice to satisfy the bloodlust of the world. In their weakness, pain, and suffering, they become to this world just another fo...

Social media may appear to empower individual voices, but it’s really the crowd’s mass attention or indifference that determines which voices are seen, heard or ignored. The age of spectacles is the a...

The rise of both video spectacles and marketed consumables is no accidental marriage. Images capture our attention and lure us because they implicitly ask us to try on various costumes of identity, to...

Tennis superstar Andre Agassi was only nineteen years old when he starred in a television commercial for Canon cameras. The spot featured him in all sorts of eye-grabbing poses, a spectacle on display...

Our enemies are not our circumstances or our neighborhoods or our bosses. Our focus on the theater of Christ’s glory complements our earthly callings; it does not distract us from them. Christ’s glory...

The loss of furry mammals captures the public eye. The extinction of another few dozen beetle species—quite possibly not yet even known or cataloged—may not. Yet such losses may be equally troubling f...

Whether or not cancer patients intend to share their journey openly with others, they generally find that the cancer situation itself has put their lives into a fish bowl—for public viewing—whether th...

It is a commonplace observation that work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. Thus, an elderly lady of leisure can spend the entire day in writing and dispatching a postcard t...

“If your eye causes you to sin…” is one of the boldest phrases from the mouth of Jesus, appearing three times in the gospels. Our eyes not only leads us into sinful behaviors, but also to take in sinf...

Two theaters compete for our gaze: the theater of sin on earth and the theater of glory where Christ is.

The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore.

A fire broke out backstage in a theater. The clown came out to warn the public; they thought it was a joke and applauded. He repeated it; the acclaim was even greater. I think that’s just how the worl...

TV is imago populi—all of society’s trendy appetites incarnated into visible form and broadcasted.

A moment of grace lies in all beauty: it shows itself to me far beyond what I have a right to expect, which is why we feel astonishment and adoration.

We’re tourist Christians. We remain as long as we’re entertained.

My experience is what I agree to attend to.

In every walk of life each man puts on a personality and outward appearance so as to look what he wants to be thought; in fact you might say that society is entirely made up of assumed personalities.

Though beauty gives you a weird sense of entitlement, it's rather frightening and threatening to have others ascribe such importance to something you know you're just renting for a while.