Tag: signsandwonders

Developing a Spiritual Pointer Called “Whole Reality”

~ jim0211 ~ Leave a comment

As I’ve sought the Lord about new spiritual insights for sharing the Gospel over the years, one concept has consistently been forefront as an example of the principles: virtual reality photography. Not as something perfect to be copied, but something different to help me seek. Prayerfully working with it, both online and as a witnessing tool, has shown how new approaches can open doors that have been closed to conventional witnessing.

Studying apologetics has also shown some new ways that this way of grabbing people’s attention can be used to point to the Gospel. Bringing these insights together, I hope to rebuild the experimental efforts that I used over the last decade into a next step.

It starts with the idea that we need to get people’s attention, and does so with a particular type of photography. We need to point to the spiritual without necessarily being explicit about it at the beginning. This is done through the use of metaphor, symbolism, and so on, and the goal is to enhance the link to the spiritual through writing, although the initial content is intended to engage people with concepts that they already find interesting – their “unknown gods” – and point them to deeper consideration.

Like Paul’s efforts in the Athenian marketplace, this hopefully leads them to want more. That deeper content, more directly spiritual and leading to the cross, would be presented in a different site called “Kelvin’s Clouds”.

There are two reasons for keeping Kelvin’s Clouds separate. First, due to the post-Christian nature of our society, I think we need to be careful about introducing spiritual concepts, especially Christian, right away. A separate site allows Whole Reality to engage people with abstract ideas without immediately triggering any anti-religious sentiments.

Second, there may be other ways to bring people to the content being developed for Kelvin’s Clouds, and it may be best to not confuse those paths with what to some is a rather obscure photographic interest.

At any rate this is the initial plan. Whole Reality is described below.

Comments are more than welcome.

Whole Reality is an exploration of the art and craft of spherical photography* and its use to convey ideas and emotion. This is common with some types of standard photography such as fine art, abstract, and so on, but is much less common with spherical photos.

Instead, spherical photos are normally used to provide viewers with a “you are there” experience by allowing them to look around a scene in any direction. Examples include Google StreetView, showing real estate or hotel rooms, and making immersive games. These applications are useful and fun, but still leave plenty of room for new artistic expressions.

As a result, there’s an opportunity for new thinking to develop this capability.

To start with, some existing photography genres use techniques that can be adapted to spherical photography. So a key opportunity is to learn techniques that can be adapted to spheres – the way images are composed to express ideas, how colors and lighting are used to evoke emotion, how symbolism can be used to communicate ideas, and so on. Exploring these ideas in spherical photography involves first understanding and practicing standard photography.

There may also be possibilities that work only with spherical photography. For example, making prints that are not flat, finding ways to experience spheres other than just panning around, and making standard photo prints come alive with virtual content. In fact, the connection between standard and spherical photography is another reason why regular photography is part of this work.

The results may still be beautiful, but also interactive, surprising, eye-opening, and fun. They can encourage us to consider more than just a fixed view, illustrating the value of looking around and paying more attention to the world around us.

While it is valuable to learn to see more, the ultimate goal is to learn to understand more. The vision-expanding nature of spherical photography is also useful for exploring things like the nature of consciousness and self, reality and transcendence, beauty and perception, and connections (especially human). Many of these are ideas that stretch the limits of rational thought and therefore benefit from being explored through art.

Much of this seems to be uncharted territory, so to a large extent it represents a journey rather than a well-known destination. Nevertheless, I hope there are plenty of interesting and useful things to share.

* Also called “virtual reality photography”, “VR photography”, “360 photography”, “Photo Spheres”, and more.

Signs and Messages

~ jim0211 ~ Leave a comment

In the previous post, we saw how Antioch was the church’s true breakthrough to the ends of the Earth, and how it represents the parts of our society that are the furthest from God. A key purpose of this blog is to seek fresh insights for reaching into this darkness. A different post described the spiritual principle that the Spirit will guide us to speak in the ways that are needed.

This was indicated by the direct mention of God’s involvement at the Antioch breakthrough:

Now those who were scattered because of the persecution that arose over Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch, speaking the word to no one except Jews. But there were some of them, men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who on coming to Antioch spoke to the Hellenists also, preaching the Lord Jesus. And the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number who believed turned to the Lord.

Acts 11:19–21 (ESV, emphasis mine)

We can expect the Lord to guide us how to speak today, but we still need to get people’s attention, engage with them in a way that leads into the words that God will give us. The early disciples seemed to realize this, for when they prayed for boldness to go out and speak, they also asked the Lord to lead the way with signs and wonders:

And now, Lord, look upon their threats and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness, while you stretch out your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus.”

Acts 4:29-30 (ESV, emphasis mine)

Miracles were not the only way that messages were introduced, and in some cases messages were given without any sort of clear pointer. In any case, there seem to be a handful of places where messages are associated with a clear lead-in, miraculous or otherwise, and although I think more work is needed, there does seem to be a pattern that relates the introduction with the message. We can see that by considering these events at Pentecost, the Gate of Beautiful, Cornelius, Lystra, and Athens.

At Pentecost, people noticed the strange behavior and heard them speaking of the “mighty acts of God”. Peter described how the strange behavior was the fulfillment of prophecy, and described how the mighty acts that God performed through Jesus validated who He was.

When Peter healed the lame man at the Beautiful Gate, he did so in Jesus’ name. Then when he preached to the crowd that formed in Solomon’s portico, he pointed to that sign as an example of God’s power validating Jesus as the Messiah.

When Peter encountered Cornelius, they obviously shared a profound experience. Peter built on that by pointing to the events throughout Judea that they all knew about concerning Jesus, emphasizing his personal experience of the resurrection, something that Cornelius would have had sympathy with considering the profound experience that they had both recently experienced.

At Lystra, Paul healed a lame man, but the people completely misunderstood what happened, even after Paul tried to explain the truth to them. His message seemed to have little to do with the miraculous event that started the incident. Could that be why there seemed to be no fruit? There’s more worth investigating there, but perhaps it could be an example of how some important principles need to be applied consistently.

There is no miracle reported when Paul was in Athens, but his message on Mars Hill built directly on the reactions of people to his message in the marketplace. They apparently didn’t understand about the resurrection, but realized he was talking about some “foreign gods”. Paul used that by starting with their knowledge of “gods”.

There are other miracles and other places where messages are presented without an obvious sign, but these examples demonstrate the power of a “pointer” to introduce the gospel message in some situations. This also needs to be investigated further, but perhaps something is needed to help introduce spiritual concepts in this post-Christian culture for those who aren’t interested in Christianity.

So, this leads to some encounters consisting of two pieces – first a sign or pointer, and then a message.

Working with this concept of a sign, or a pointer, it probably doesn’t need to be a miracle if Athens is any indication. This raises the question of what else might be a pointer today. Perhaps some things that are used in apologetics, such as arguments from science or morality. But I think of pointers more as introductions with context, so they may also include things like art. For example, a compelling work may evoke emotions that lead into a presentation of the gospel that starts with that emotional perspective.

In that way, I’ve been led to explore a type of photography that seems helpful in getting people to think beyond the natural and creating openings for spiritual discussions. It is sometimes called “virtual reality” or “360” photography, and consists of pictures that are viewed in a window by clicking and dragging the viewpoint around. Initial experiences with unbelievers have been positive, and I am starting to expand that work to provide clearer pointers in a photography blog called “Whole Reality”.

Since the photography is intended just to point to spiritual concepts, there needs to be additional content to further develop the ideas that have been raised and take them to the gospel. I plan to have a second blog for this work, called “Kelvin’s Clouds”, for such content. The photographs will point to this section of writings. The approach used in this blog is based on years of prayerful listening to unbelievers, and will help place Christianity within a rational framework that recognizes the profound unknowns existing in even the best materialist descriptions of reality.

This is just a start of digging into this spiritual framework, but gives enough basis to continue work on the two efforts mentioned above. In addition, I hope that simply walking this path myself will lead to a deeper understanding of these principles that may be helpful to others.