Jesus Cropped from the Picture

Jesus Cropped from the Picture

“kingdom of this world.” The basketball in the hands of the player represents the Church, of whom Jesus is head.

In the picture, the offensive player is the primary subject , the defensive player is the secondary subject , and the ball is the object. In the biblical narrative of the Kingdom, Jesus is the primary SUBJECT, the devil is the secondary subject , and the Church is the OBJECT .

Slowly over time, the American church changed its perspective of Christ’s KingdomStory by “cropping” the picture to look like Figure 2.

Figure 2: The Partially Cropped Picture

The photo in Figure 2 is the same photo as Figure 1, but two dynamics were at work to create this new perspective. First, a choice was made to focus on one part of the photo (the basketball), to the exclusion of other parts of the photo. Second, a process (cropping) was employed to exclude the two players from the photo so that only the hands of the player remained (see Figure 3).

Figure 3: Fully Cropped Picture

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