"The Age Of Visualcy"<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
 
          Welcome, reluctant pilgrims, to the Age of Visualcy.
          More than every, we are an image-driven culture.  Whereas in the not too distant past, a picture was worth a mere thousand words, today the perfect image may substitute for a million characters scattered across a thousand pages.
          We see; therefore, we are.
          If I might add a corollary to this altered philosophical proposition, I would say, "We are what we see."
"Come and let us reason together," has fallen on hard times.
          We have always processed the comings and goings of the world around us more through our eyes than any of our other physical senses, but not nearly to the extent we do today.  Our impressions of reality are almost totally shaped by what we see.
          Unfortunately, you can't always believe what you see.  Seeing is no longer believing.  More than ever, our eyes can play tricks on us-- at times other than dawn or dusk.  One does not have to be dying of thirst in the desert to see a mirage.  In fact, an image in the raw is less common than one in an altered state.  It's as if the whole world has been airbrushed.
          I met a 50-something lady for the first time recently after seeing her photo in the newspaper for many years.  I didn't recognize her.  I even asked her if she knows the person I had come to meet.  It was so bizarre I skipped the embarrassment part – at least for me.
          I'm still a little unclear on the whole glamour photo concept.  This pleasant woman, a grandmother and professional business person, had apparently gone to a studio, put on a wig and mask, had her photo taken and altered, and then printed it in the newspaper, expecting everyone to pretend it was her.
          Have we come to expect pretension as the norm? 
          I guess I'm old-fashioned, but what is glamorous about that?  I'd still prefer real any day.
          Image, I assume, has become everything.
          Look around.  Everywhere we go and everywhere we turn, we get an eyeful of provocative, predacious, and suggestive images.  We are bombarded with visual stimuli coaxing us to come, go, and buy.
          The power of persuasion has adopted the visual medium.  We have been trained to react in ways dictated by the nature of the image.  We are constantly manipulated to think and feel a certain way dependent on slick imagery purposefully and powerfully presented.
          "Come and let us reason together," has been replaced by, "You want to go to a movie?"
          "I read in my Bible today" has been substituted with, "Guess what I saw on U-tube?"
          "I heard an old, old story," has lost a large segment of its following.  We're more likely to render our reality from a Super Bowl commercial.
          The 150 million Americans whose important social networks utilize virtual visual reality interpret their world through the lens of a cell phone camera.  No wonder we suffer from cultural myopia.
          We seek to capture the moment with a lasting visual image, but often times the captured vision distorts the true picture.
          Things are not always as they appear. 
          Marlboro made a zillion dollars promoting their image of the rugged and independent cowboy lighting up anywhere he pleased.  Later, they had to pass on some of that fortune to his widow after he died of lung cancer in his early 50's.
          Believe it or not, the hard-bellied beer babes representing Miller Lite and the Silver Bullet didn't get that way downing a half-pack before dinner.
          The giant, smiling Pastor on the billboards probably struggles with temptations just like you and me.
          The <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Hollywood starlet decorating the poster on your teen's wall sets him up for disappointment when his wife in real life succumbs to gravity.
          Keep in mind his wife likes it less than he; for her it is not a second hand reality, but personal.  She has run a distant second to puberesant male fantasies all her life.
          Don't' underestimate the harm incurred by the continual exposure to beer babes, car babes, boat babes, parade babes, runway babes, denim babes, and a legion of Internet babes – on men and women alike.  False images of the girl next door and the conjugal partner on the pillow next to yours have been bad for the long-term marriage business.
          By the time folks are ripe to marry, images of the perfect spouse emanate more from fiction than fact.  Our sexually-charged, visual culture has created unrealistic expectations and positioned us for disappointment.  We want what we can't find.
          I know a man, now in his mid-50's, who remains on the illusive trail of Miss September disguised as an elder's wife.
          Unreal expectations and fantasy lovers are not the sole propriety of men.  Women have issues, too.
          Romance novels, a style of soft-porn sensitive to female emotional needs, sell by the millions.  Take note of the images on the covers of these paperbacks – island men with big hair, no shirts, and tender, understanding eyes.  These men know how to treat a woman.  They can scamper through emotional land mines and decades of unfulfilled dreams to apply delicate pressure in just the right spot.
          I do the shopping at my house because I don't want my wife in line at the check-out stand lusting over these big hunks.
          To be a Christian and stay pure has become a greater challenge in this Age of Visualcy.  We see too many images that simply are not healthy for our spiritual souls.
          In the greatest sermon ever delivered, Jesus anticipated our struggle and said this: "The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!  (Matthew 6:22-23 NIV)
          The truth of the matter remains that we must filter what we see through the ultimate reality of a right relationship with God.
          "Be careful little eyes what you see," the children's song reminds us. We need to monitor what we watch, what we desire, and what images get burned into our mind.  Our adversaries work hard to distort reality and exploit our sexual weaknesses.  We must stand firm against the forces that seek to do us ultimate harm.