Chapter 14 is covered by Craig LittleJohn as part of our Group Blogging Project discussing the book Flickering Pixels by Shane Hipps. If you need a quick overview to what Flickering Pixels is about, please go here.
I don’t like Shane Hipps.
Not the “I don’t like him” in the way that I would not talk to him at a party. Nor in the way that I would spread gossip about his personal life. I don’t like Shane Hipps because he makes my brain hurt. Which is interesting, because Chapter 14 of Flickering Pixels is all about our brain, and the way it works.
In this chapter Shane talks about the differences between our right and left hemispheres of our brain. He uses the story of The Prodigal Son in Luke 15 as a metaphor about how the different part of our brains work. The left brain (the older brother) is the “critical reasoning, logic, order, and abstract thinking” side of the brain. As the right brain (the younger brother) is the “power of intuition, emotion, holistic perception and pattern recognition” side of the brain”.
His obrservation is that when the printing press came to be in 1400’s that the left brain flourished. Suddenly the “older brother” dominated all thinking and made the “younger brother” his slave. This brought forth a new age of reasoning, debating and the ability to “test” truth claims. And for the next 400 years the “older brother” ruled the roost… with no new forms of communication being created.
Shane sees the invention of the photograph as the homecoming of the “younger brother”. Once again, suddenly the right brain is allowed and encouraged to flourish. Shane sees the “digital age” as a place where the right brain is not only encouraged to come home and party (like the younger brother), but is also endanger of making the older brother his slave. He also credits the current lack of “biblical literacy” as a unsurprising result of the digital age, and the right brain flourishing.
More thoughts after the jump:
Shane’s main point in this chapter is we need to have “brain-balance”.
In the story of the prodigal son, the father seeks a way for his sons to co-exist. He must manage the tensions and disagreements between them. He gives each their place and their due. pg 149-150
and
Brain balance is born by restoring an intentional relationship to our technologies. pg 150
This chapter brings much needed balance to this book. I don’t know Shane all that well, other then seeing him speak at Q conference and reading this book, but I keep having the nagging feeling that much of what he writes is hyperbolic. Much like what Jesus did when he told the crowd to cut out their eye if it causes them to sin, I see Shane using the same strategy through out most of the book.
But I digress, this chapter is spot on. I could not agree more with Shane that we do need to have both a balance and intentionality with our technologies.
If we don’t have intentionality with our technology we are just following the crowd. Just going with the flow, and its really hard to make anything different when you are just joining the masses. When we actually think about what technologies we are using, how we are using them, why we are using them. We open up the door to allow them for Kingdom use, which should be the chef end of these new technologies.
If we don’t have a balance with things like Twitter, blogs, Facebook, online church we (both personally and corporately) will become increasingly isolated from the real world. Online church will never take the place of physical church, or at least it shouldn’t. I think that twitter, blogs, and online church should serve as a gateway and “in addition to” not a replacement for.
As far as the left brain vs. right brain side of things, the churches that are thriving are utilizing both of these sides of their brain. And the results are amazing ! And then I look at churches that honor one side of the brain over the other and I see them struggling to have a voice. I guess you could say the proof is in the pudding.
Would you do this today… would you take 5 minutes. And see how you are doing at letting your left and right brain work together for the Kingdom of God ? Is one of the brothers making the other one a slave ? Do you have the courage to free that brother and see what he will birth within you ?
[Image from MigraineChick]
SCBubba says
I really likes this chapter for what Hipps had to say about brain balance and how the photograph brought the right brain back into the story. I haven't done any research on the subject, nor do I recall much from history classes on the 15th-18th centuries. So, I can't really point to what things looked like artistically during those times. At this point, I'll take his word for it.
What I didn't exactly dig in this chapter was the use of the Prodigal Son story as an illustration of left/right brain dominance and balance. I think it was too much of a reach to try to fit it.
Overall, this was a really good chapter and made up for some weaker ones previously,
Great post!
anivus says
scbubba I struggled with that at first as well… and I went back and reread that he, Shane, thought that it could be used as a metaphor for his idea of the right brain left brain thing. My left brain still didn't like it… but my right brain loved the idea :).
@phillipgibb says
I can almost understand that most of Christendom – if not all; b4 the print age, was driven by heavy spiritualism, imagery, and stories of wonder as well as fear. It was most likely a completely Right Brained period. And as Shane explains – the Print age brought order, long complex messages and theology – Left Brain. Maybe the Right Brain is coming home with all the new media around. Yet not in a completely segregated way, buy in a hand in hand way with the Left.
So yeah, the most successful churches will be those that use both – imagination, creativity, new media, truth, order, video, images, the drummer killing the cymbals, theology, relevant, contextual, spiritual and lesson based.
Adam_S says
Many of the original universities were set up during the time that Hipps says was driven by right brained people. Aquinas and others helped get thought going that helped move Western culture toward the enlightenment. Aquinas was several hundred years before Guttenberg. While that doesn't destroy Hipps basic argument, as with much of the rest of this book, it does temper it a bit. I think it can be argued that the advent of the scholastics (well before the printing press) was really what started the move toward the left brain. If you have ever read some of the works of the scholastics you will know it is left brained stuff. It isn't organized like we would organize, but it is clearly cerebral.