Image

As a business student of sorts (I chose to minor in it in college, but I am constantly being educated in the rest of life) I am beginning to find my everyday adventures to stores and restaurants to be crowded by many business-like observations. For instance, today I stopped in at a small Chinese restaurant near my house to order some amazing sesame chicken and rice. The food was awesome. However, as I sat there waiting for my food to be prepared, I looked around the room and noticed the walls were, for the most part, gallingly white. Sure there were a couple small 8"X6" pictures and a beautiful 3-foot fan with horses painted on it, but in a room about twice the width of your average household hallway, that's rather spartan fare.

If this was my room, I might sleep and wake and not really care about the plainness, or the cracked paint, or the door slightly off its hinges leading into the kitchen area. Given the awesome smell of the place, I nearly avoided caring about the appearance at all. However, image is something which is very important to address, especially when your business will be entertaining customers for anywhere from one to thirty minutes. In the five minutes it took me to order and receive my food, I envisioned at least 7 or 8 things I could do just to that room that would make customers want to stand around longer, maybe even sit down and eat (which every restaurant owner should know is a great thing, despite the behavior of rundowns like McDonalds).

The point of this, apart from a not-so-subtle hint that I'm for hire for business consulting (and cheap too), is that public image is something which I think not many of us are aware of.

Now as a quick note, I will allow that people from foreign cultures who were more than likely born and raised in foreign cultures may have different ideas of image and customer relations and general personal interaction standards. It isn't just chinese restaurants that have image issues, however.

It occurred to me today that image issues- or more specifically, a perceived lack of concern for public image- may well be a symptom of postmodernity (by which I mean the philosophy and many manifestations in Western culture). After all, one of the key messages of postmodernism is that the individual and the subjective perspective are king. Every person's experiences and morals and worldviews are unique and equal and cannot be involuntarily subjugated to the views of another. In this worldview, no one has any overarching reason to care about what others think of them. Apart from fulfilling our own needs and wants- such as impressing members of the opposite gender and earning cash to buy stuff- there's really no reason why we would allow any other person or group's ideas of normality or rightness hold sway over us.

This viewpoint has unfortunately led us to the point where music largely comprises a vast mass of make-upped whiner-guys, 2-bit autotuner rappers, and chaotic and nonsensical orchestral compositions. Our most popular artists might even be good at singing if they aren't lip-syncing at concerts or weren't chosen because they were fashionably good-looking. World religions at this point (which unfortunately includes Christianity) have degenerated to the extent that even "intolerant" "absolutist" religions (like Christianity and Islam) can't seem to hold onto their holy books when they've been exposed to iPods and cell phones for too long (someone should do a medical study on that).

Postmodernism has, in short, attempted to entirely lay waste to the founding pillars of culture and...well...life. When everything is equal, nothing is valuable.

As a further result, individuals are exempted from concern for what others think of their day-to-day actions and opinions (although, of course, others are not exempt of our opinions of THEM). We have begun to believe that, for instance, profanity and vulgarity are acceptable so long as enough people use it- or at the least, others shouldn't take offense at what I myself find innocuous. We have begun to dream that what we accept as normal activities and items in our lives are inherent rights, which when infringed upon by unsuspecting villains must be defended with harsh words and hard feelings. We have reached the point where, as the detective says in the movie "Crash," we no longer talk to each other, bump into each other in our daily lives- we just crash every now and then. We have so insulated ourselves in the rightness and goodness of ourselves and our thoughts that we no longer have any regard for the impact of our lives on the lives of others- except, again, when we feel we must impact them voluntarily (for their own good).

This voluntary rejection of others and self-glorification is responsible for immeasurable damages to our friends and neighbors and brothers and sisters around us.

We as people cannot afford to go on like this. For one thing it inevitable that the purposeful nothingness of modern culture will be eventually consumed by a powerful positive ideology. For another, the bloodshed can only increase as we stop talking and caring and simply act and respond.

We as Christians cannot afford to forego a wise and discerning and purposeful consideration of our individual and group public image to the world. We MUST represent positive ideology, good intentions, real faith which creates real actions, and a 360 degree consideration of our lives and impact. (Necessary note: this includes environmental impact, but I'm thinking recycling, not "stop having babies to save earth")

The Bible is full of passages exhorting us to avoid being stumbling blocks to others and lead in wisdom. We are reminded over and over of the dangers of an unrestrained tongue which will destroy. We are told to love- which often means giving more than we receive. And all of this falls under a consideration of image.

"What do people say when they see my life?" is not a question we need ask ourselves so that we can blithely bathe in any real or imagined praises others could be showering us with. The question of image is a very necessary question which we must constantly address in our lives. It is a question which I would especially say must be addressed in the institutional body of Christianity today (private goodness generally being outweighed by public foolishness).

Specifically, it's time for us to start considering how others can be uplifted and led to praise God by what we do.