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Document Details : Title: Breezes: Religious Images in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction Author(s): LOUGHLIN, Gerard Journal: Louvain Studies Volume: 27 Issue: 3 Date: fall 2002 Pages: 265-279 DOI: 10.2143/LS.27.3.940 Abstract : The gospels teach that if we are to live with God – live with God in Jesus Christ – we must become like little children.1The advice, like so much in the gospels, is baffling. What is it about children exactly that we, who are not children, should imitate? The injunction seems retrogressive. Yet we may remember that we were once children, and, if we are honest, that we have never really ceased to be so, no matter how slow and cynical we may have become. Trust, and the ability to imagine the world after our own fears and desires, are marks of childhood, even if trust is quickly lost and imagination is deadened with the need – and sometimes the relief – of coming to imagine the world as do others. These characteristics of childhood answer to the gospels’ conditional injunction, for if we are to be united with God in Jesus Christ, we have to trust that we can live in the vision of the Kingdom that Christ shows us, for it is not as others imagine the world. |
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