Man is sick and his symbols are killing him.
The battle in the public sphere is a symbolic one, and I mean that quite literally. A war is being waged over the significance of symbols, of what man sees and thinks when confronted with an image. A prime example of a lost symbol, one wrested from God’s spiritual lexicon and diabolically inverted, is the rainbow. The rainbow had been a sign of God’s promise to Noah, a reminder to never flood the world again. Now when one sees a rainbow, they are reminded of two of the gravest sins, pride and sodomy. Why does this matter? Because our thoughts define us, and foreign impulses can quite literally stir our souls, a flash of a nude figure on a flickering computer screen can conjure up feelings of lust, and lead one into immediate sin. Conversely, a stirring image of a baroque basilica can like a flash of lightning send one on their knees in humble prayer. A single image that one is subjected to can singlehandedly shape the course of one day through a cascade of impulse, and multiple images over multiple days can shape the trajectory of an entire life. In our current epoch, in the era of the videodrome, it is nearly impossible to avoid the constant onslaught of sensory information and visual stimuli. It was far easier to avoid sin when life was not mediated by a hologram of information, when a mosaic of screens and stagecraft did not rule a mans waking existence. So what is a man to do? He must adjust his sight.