Look at this Photograph
We’ve probably all heard the phrase a picture is worth a thousand words. At least, I hope you’ve heard it. And at this point I also hope you know that with my goal of about a thousand words per article, it might be an easy out some week to describe a picture to you, but I’m going to save that idea for another week. Today, I want to talk about my photography skills. Or… lack of photography skills.
A part of a community in which I spend time, we share photos of food as part of an ongoing discussion. I tend to post photos of things that I’ve cooked, that although delicious, plating is not my forte or prime directive. Others post when they dine gourmet or get a special treat. Some folks post their cooking efforts. It’s a real mixture of photos. After posting several things, one of my friends started to give me flack for taking bad photos. Shadow of my phone across the plate, weirdly close or too far, generally not Instagram worthy. I’m not too worried about this. My feelings aren’t hurt by this and as an inanimate thing, food can’t be hurt by these words. However…this same friend has also lovingly, constructive critiquingly, earnestly pointed out that I am also not good at taking selfies. It’s become a little in-joke, and I’d rather capture the memory of the moment than a perfect photo suited for framing and display. Pictures are for me most of the time, not for my social media or other places. You’d think that with the advances in technology that I might be better at taking photos, but I’m not.
What I am grateful for is that with digital photography you can take several photos, do a smidge of editing, and generally check right away if your subject is at least on the screen. (I know many a photo-taker got accused of decapitating photo participants in the ‘90s, or maybe that was just in my family?) Point and click cameras come with fancy tech that focuses the camera on the subject, usually with great success. The cameras we used when I worked at the student paper had all sorts of fancy settings, but I usually just left them however they were set and took pictures. Worked out pretty well for me, got some photo credits… but it’s not like they had staff photographers they could send to take backup photos. It was pick my best one or run an article with no graphics.
Now, perhaps it would serve me to take a photography class, learn a little about how cameras work, or otherwise develop that skill and now that I’ve had that thought I’ll put it on the list of things to learn about enough to be more useful, but for now, my photography skills aren’t going to improve. Not without some effort. And in this day and age, where the phone camera does a lot of the work for you, that seems like taking the easy way out. I know it’s bad and I don’t plan on fixing it. But I think I have an explanation and it does have to do with how I view the world, literally: My vision, according to the eye doctor, makes it easier for me to see things that are far away while the things closest to me escape my vision. I can see the whole world clearly, but not myself.
Huh.
Now, how about that. A perfect metaphor for sin? We often have excuses for our own behavior or why we did something or perhaps the general justification for the righteousness of our actions while being able to see, in a very stark contrast, the right and wrong of others. They exist in our world without motivation, goodwill, or a chance to explain. There is a chance that you might run the other way. If you are more shortsighted, you might be able to see your own sin with perfect, glaring clarity, and offer grace to the fuzzy, wider world out there. Either way, we do not see with perfect vision. How could we? As humans, there is a limit to our understanding.
Christ does, though. Christ sees our sins and the sins of the world. Christ offers grace, redemption, and mercy. We are saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. Salvation is now, as instant as the click of a modern camera. Salvation goes with us everywhere. It does not require fancy equipment, glass plates, explosive chemicals, or a dark room. Modern photography shares a great deal with some of our beliefs about salvation and how it works. There are so many different ways to take a picture, just as there are many different faith journeys and paths that all result in the same thing: an image of the world as God’s kingdom. And much like a group of people taking photos of the same thing, each person’s perspective is a little different. We do not all see God’s kingdom as the same, even if we might all agree that it is a place in which God offers abundant grace, Christ offers salvation, and the Holy Spirit offers guidance.
Is this a skill you think is worth developing? Not picture taking, but looking at the world in the same way as we think God might. We pray for it, “thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” but do we actively seek to live it? I’ve written off photography for the moment, but do we do the same with our moral vision? Are we willing to examine, make changes, and be more like Christ? Or do we take that same approach of knowing we aren’t good at something, so why even bother? Not a fun set of questions to sit with, but honest ones. Tough questions because growing our faith and developing the nuances of our beliefs is worth the time and effort it will take to please God and bring God glory.
Photo credit: Pastor Beate Hall
