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A Maieutic Approach

其他書名	A Suggestion for how the Church Should Use the Mass Media
出版	Regent College, 2010
URL	http://books.google.com.hk/books?id=qnihnQEACAAJ&hl=&source=gbs_api

註釋Although Huxley's comments were made with reference to the "miraculous technology" of radio, there could hardly be a more fitting description of today's media-saturated environment. Indeed, we are "awash" in an "image-and-sound torrent." We are being blown away by an "infogale," a "knowledge hurricane," a "blizzard of information." The messages around us constitute a "wind-tunnel of gossip"--A "veritable avalanche of pseudo-scientific "findings" and even patently bogus "opinions." We must practice "information self-defence" against the "information bombing" of the "mediasphere." Simply put, our intimacy with communications technology has produced a world heavy-laden with messages. And this "noisy" cultural environment raises any number of important questions for Christians committed to communicating the gospel. In this thesis, I have chosen to focus on one of the more obvious: Should the church use modern mass media to communicate the gospel? Given the machinery of mass media -- the press, radio, and television, are they appropriate for the task of communicating Christianity? And if not, what are they good for? The mass media have, of course, been embraced as vehicles for evangelism, but we would do well to heed Kierkegaard's warning: "If in order to be heard in the hullabaloo [God's word] must be shouted deafeningly with noisy instruments, then it is not God's Word ..." Kierkegaard's comments should not be taken to mean that the mass media are categorically incompatible with Christian mission, but they do suggest that there might be a disconnect between the nature of modern media and the nature of God's word. Instead of using these "noisy instruments" to broadcast the gospel, perhaps we should simply use them to raise the possibility of gospel, of "good news." Indeed, I will argue that, although the mass media are actually inadequate to the communicaiton of the gospel per se, the church can nonetheless use them to open people up to the possibility of the gospel, and, perhaps, to the possibility of hearing the voice of God. I call this strategy, following Kierkegaard, maieutic.