Hi Brother,
Have you seen some of the religous movies of Tozer's day? They were sinfully bad! Bad costumes, extra-biblical sentiment...yuck. ;-)
Seriously I've had questions about Tozer's article as well. (By the way, I've never thought of Tozer as a fundamentalist!) There is perhaps a related attitude found in the early church fathers, such as Tertullian, who had a general disdain for all theater...partially because the theater gave "lessons in fornication" and partially because it depicted violence and strife with no reality. (Interestingly he seem to feel that violence for the sake of entertainment was the worst use of violence of all...even worse then actual warfare.)
Tertullian would be beside himself if he could see the modern world! We are a video saturated culture, which is something different then saying we are a visual people. We seem to express all our ideas, even our faith in God, through the historically unique technological medium of moving pictures, sound, and music. We trust film; not nessicarily as a fact telling medium...but as a truthfully expressive medium...we use film to authenticate reality!
Every meaningful issue today has become become pop culture in film. I'm not talking about fantasy and fiction movies...but of movies dealing with "real life." We make movies about the experiences of other people and this seems to expand our knowledge about these experiences too. But these constant intense film experiences are actually a culture of unreality that insulates us from the reality of life.
Yet film is trusted. For instance consider Al Gore's recent Global Warming film. The ideas have been around for a while now...but once Vice President Gore made a "documentary" global warming has become suddenly mainstream. (Untill the next big documentary comes along...)
So perhaps herein lies Tozers concern. In our television/film media age people no longer seem to percieve what is real anymore...instead they simply open their minds and recieve any truth transmitted to them in non-linear video editing and emotionaly stirring sound tracks. Our human susceptibility to having our cortexes imprinted on by the light, color, and sound coming from our iPods may make Al Gore happy, but it certainly would not be enough to satisfy God who wants our hearts and minds more then imprinted, but awakened from our digital dullness to the ultimate and tanglible reality of Jesus Christ. Such a reality can only be experienced first hand in a personal relationship, not second hand through an illusion of relationship with a movie actor.
Just some thoughts trying to understand Tozer brother, and I look forward to reading your thoughts on this interesting topic.
MC
