Richard Foster, in his book A Celebration of Discipline writes that “The Imagination is stronger than conceptual thought and stronger than the will. In the West, our tendency to deify the merits of rationalism-and it does have merit-has caused us to ignore the value of the imagination.”
Scripture resounds with the truth that out of the heart, the mouth speaks. Therefore, what a person says or does comes from what was cultivated within the heart and the imagination is the soil of the heart’s loves and hates and desires. The imagination is father to action. All ethical and unethical actions-both spoken and unspoken-have their roots, their genesis, their inception, in the imagination. It has been said that we do not truly know something until we have imagined it in some form. What we feed our minds feeds our imagination and will take root in the soil of the heart, ultimately resulting in the fruit of what we say and do.
Essentially, a Christian’s examination of conscience must include an examination of the imagination, for the health of one’s conscience is directly connected to the vitality of the soul.
For this reason, pornography is not only immoral but dangerous. Pornography, both physical and emotional, skews the imagination and an imagination so distorted can only bear distorted fruit, fruit that ruins all relationships. Pierre Nicole wrote, “What discernment we should exercise about the things that feed our mind and are to be the seed of our thoughts! For what we read unconcernedly today will recur to our minds when occasion arises and will rouse in us, even without our notice, thoughts that will be a source of salvation or ruin” (Essais de morale contenus en divers traits, V.II, Paris 1733).
I do not agree therefore with Abraham Heschel and others in this respect, who say that the imagination is only for weaker minds that need images upon which to base belief (see Sabbath). No, we are creatures with the gift of an imagination whose power is beyond our understanding and whose quality must be guarded as the gateway to our hearts. Nor do I side with Martha Nussbaum who wrote that “Hate is just a failure of imagination” (Love’s Knowledge, quoted in The Disciplined Heart, by Caroline Simon). No, unbiblical hate is the realization of an imagination unwashed in the blood of Christ; it is an unsanctified imagination, not a failure of imagination. Actions of love or hate are the full fledged product of the imagination. The Christian imagination is measured by its sanctification, by the degree to which it is washed by Christ and seeks Christ in everything: the degree to which it is gleaning the savior.
After all, “nothing reveals more forcefully one’s true view of God than the quality of one’s imaginings” (Langan); therefore, we must cultivate healthy imaginations as intentionally as we do healthy bodies. Simply put, the imagination is connected to morality, like the brain is to the hands. It is an essential element of the faith and must be treated with the proper honor. Our view of God, our theological doctrine, dictates all action and is expressed by what we say and do; a man’s ethics reflect his view of God and his view of God rests in the imagination. To reject strong stories that inform and nourish the imagination guarantees death to the imagination and, therefore, a deeper spiritual death.
What has already been stated needs restating: we must reclaim the imagination, not by starving it, nor by feeding it only propositional truths from Scripture, but by feeding it on the stories that give meaning to life: those stories are first and most purely found in the Scriptures, both Old and New Testaments, but they are secondarily found in the stories of mankind that provide metaphorical models of our role in God’s story. Part of the purpose of this book, Gleaning the Savior, is to demonstrate that if a person loves God and desires to imitate Christ, then a love for stories and a cultivated imagination submissive to Scripture is requisite.
