The Idea of an Essay, Volume 4

152 The Idea of an Essay: Volume 4 Communicational cultures certainly affect the way people understand the Gospel, but all Christians believe one same thing that Jesus died for their sins and rose from the dead. And after getting saved, All of them, regardless of communicational background, have one goal: to become more like Jesus Christ. Those who live in literate cultures aim to grow by studying the Word of God, reading books written by men and women of God, doing daily devotionals, keeping journals, and so on. Literacy plays a huge role in the area of growth. Some might even learn Hebrew and Greek in order to gain more knowledge. Christians in oral communities, on the other hand, grow mainly by hearing the Word of God and listening to the teaching. Lovejoy mentions the power of narrative stories in oral cultures and says, “It was only through a chronological presentation of God’s word, Old Testament and on to the Gospels, story by story, that they were able to vividly portray the holy nature and character of God, the sinful condition of man, the grip that Satan has on this world and the redeeming solution to man’s predicament found in Jesus Christ” (8). Oral cultures Walter Ong points out the change in the oral cultures. He says, “I style the orality of a culture totally untouched by any knowledge of writing or print, ‘primary orality’. It is ‘primary’ by contrast with the ‘secondary orality’ of present- day high-technology culture, in which a new orality is sustained by telephone, radio, television, and other electronic devices that depend for their existence and functioning on writing and print” (10). There are new technologies that can be utilized for oral Christians. Jagerson says, “A number of scholars, such as James Miles Foley, Tom Pettitt, and Lars Ole Sauerberg, suggest that the phenol of new technologies is going to lead to a revolution that will be on par with the Gutenberg Press” (269). People have been working on capturing the Bible in the media form. When the media content is a full New Testament or full Bible, “it becomes an accurate and complete presentation of biblical truth for the oral learner” (Swarr and Koch, 87). Lovejoy calls this the “oral Bible” and refers to it as a new powerful tool (7). Swarr and Koch say that there is an additional advantage in using an oral Bible. They say, “It becomes an unchangeable and exhaustive source for oral learners to refer back to time and time again” (88). According to Jegerson, “secondary oral” learners exist in literate cultures, too (269). Lovejoy and Claydon say that secondary