In last week’s blog post, I pointed out how modern science has shown that energy fields “are the fundamental realities”. And I discussed how the Bible says a great deal about our hearts, including: “Keep (guard, watch over) your heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life” (Proverbs 4:23). Indeed, modern science measures and makes use of the electro-magnetic field induced by the heart in medical diagnoses.
Physical substances reduce to immaterial energies. The sub-atomic particles to which all matter becomes most fundamentally, are discreet packets of vibration which induce and emanate an electro-magnetic field. And since this is the case, since energy transcends physical matter, why shouldn’t soul and spirit transcend our physical beings, just as the Bible says?
The Bible says there is a spiritual world – a spiritual contest between good and evil. These are spiritual forces and personalities that emanate their own “force-fields”. Like a “medium” through which spiritual messaging operates, most frequently under the radar of our intellects. On the one hand, you have the “presence of God” and the Holy Spirit, and on the other hand, you have dark forces aligned with the devil.
This is why we are to discern with spiritual eyes and ears of faith - not just our physical eyes and ears (Matthew 11:15).
Marshall McLuhan, the famous communications theorist at the outset of the television era in the 1950’s, coined the phrase “The medium is the message”, and predicted the World Wide Web almost 30 years before it was invented. He also said, “Electric circuitry is an extension of the nervous system” (Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, 1964). He was noting the fact that there is an electro-magnetic as well as a psychic (human neuro-electro-chemical) “field” or “medium” extending the human faculty. This “medium” both carries and also transcends the “message” because it can influence our feelings (feel-good/feel-bad hormone releases) sub-consciously.
McLuhan interestingly also foresaw that “The successor to politics will be propaganda.” This has become ever more apparent today, increasingly enabled by Artificial Intelligence (AI) assisted algorithms and the constant news cycle of our electronic and cyberspace media age.
The tech monopolies now exert a level of control over American public opinion through clever use of media that has no precedent in all of history. By selecting which topics merit discussion and how the topics are discussed (the approved “narrative”), no population has ever been more skillfully manipulated than the modern population is being manipulated. As Christians, we must remember what the Bible teaches about the prevalence and source of worldly “false philosophy” (Colossians 2:8) and deception. The devil, who is “a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44), and the sinful flesh of mankind, which is naturally inclined to those lies, are the problems.
Our physical bodies are affected by and, as we’ve seen, actually emit an invisible electro-magnetic field. We both emanate and receive the “medium” as well as the “message,” to use the language of McLuhan. Passions, emotional intensity, high-impact visuals, images, and sound trigger hormonal electrochemical responses in our bodies, which, because of the electron exchange, create magnetic fields. Because we are alive, we are constant recipients of this activity! It is what makes magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) work - as well as all sorts of other high-tech imaging diagnostic equipment. In addition, the hormonal and neurotransmitter electrochemical reactions within us can reinforce good behavior or lead to addictive and destructive behaviors because there are emotional and physical feel-good or feel-bad attachments.
Researchers can place you in a functional MRI (fMRI) machine and show you a series of pictures, noting the part of your brain that has activity, and how intense that activity is compared to the average subject you might see. Social media, with continuous improvements from AI, is designed to feed us more of what we want to see. It can easily lead us down an addictive, destructive path of human flesh and frailty.
Clearly, our experience and human history itself demonstrates that emotional, psychological, and spiritual media can be manipulated. Adolf Hitler, with his frenzied speeches and the Nazi propaganda machine are one famous example. The electrochemical as well as spiritual receptors of the human body can cause either edification (build us up) or degeneration (tear us down). “Keep (guard) thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life” (Proverbs 4:23)!
Indeed, God’s Word is itself a spiritual “medium” of its wonderful “message”! It is a medium of the Holy Spirit. There are many proof-texts for this. And we are to take in both the medium and the message! The Bible builds us up with more than mere words (Hebrews 4:12, 2 Timothy 3:16, 2 Peter 1:21, Proverbs 4:20-22, and 1 Corinthians 2:14).
The Bible teaches that salvation is at once past, present, and future. Time marches on toward its “fullness”. Prophecy gets fulfilled. And our Holy Maker will complete his plan for our salvation! Christ’s Resurrection – which we will celebrate especially in just a short time – reminds us of the wonderful future before us in our eternal home!
And the Bible says His coming again in clouds of glory is another example of the transmission and absorption of His “special electro-magnetic field”, His eternal light and glory! “We know that when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see (understand and absorb His radiance in recognition of) Him as He is” (1 John 3:2). Somehow we will absorb that spiritual medium, that spiritual presence, into our bodies, and they will be transformed. In spite of all our failings and frailties, we have been created to be an especially glorious testimony of Him, to be like Him, and to be in relationship with Him forever! And that is available to all who trust in Jesus Christ!
Like many of us will soon sing,
“Soaring now where Christ has led, Alleluia!
Following our exalted head, Alleluia!
Made like Him, like Him we rise, Alleluia!
Ours the cross, the grave, the skies, Alleluia!”
- Christ the Lord is Risen Today, C. Wesley, 1708
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