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The Imaginative Life

The Imagination: a flight to reality

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A man’s view of God (and the world), his worldview, rests in the lap of the imagination; his worldview is expressed by the imagination through action. While the world’s unhealthy imagination is of importance, the purpose of this blog post is to feed the Christian imagination and bring it under Christ’s sovereign rule: “the task for the Christian student of literature remains that of grounding his or her thinking in the history of Christian thought. And one place for the Christian to begin thinking about literature is with the conviction, held by Christians through the ages, that in a universe created and ruled by a sovereign God all things are meaningful.

The Scriptures proclaim that, in creating the world, God gave order and purpose to it, that in the Incarnation he sent his Son to redeem our fallen state, and that at the end of the age he will judge the nations and disclose the meaning of history in its fullness” (Gallagher and Lundin, Literature Through the Eyes of Faith). Christians must have a view of the world and God’s workings in the world that is anchored in Scripture and they must incarnate a meaningful theology that reflects this worldview.

If our Christianity is shaped by the predominant egalitarian and individualized modernity more than it is by the hierarchical and communal Judeo-Christian faith, then it will likely raise children whose imaginations do not reflect a belief in opposing teams and are, therefore, trained by and for the wrong team. If our Christianity is more Universalist and anti-antithesis, then we will likely rob ourselves and our children of an entire tradition of literature that is richly rooted in Christ and His Church as it has stood against the world and death-dealing paganism. Unfortunately, we raise the children on beats and rice-cakes and are surprised when they grow up intellectually gaunt and morally enervated.

A.W. Tozer remarked once in A Gift of Seeing that, “as God created us, we all have to some degree the power to imagine. That imagination is of great value in the service of God may be denied by some persons who have erroneously confused the word ‘imagination’ with the word ‘imaginary.’…The most realistic book in the world is the Bible. God is real. Men are real and so is sin and so are death and hell! The presence of God is not imaginary; neither is prayer the indulgence of a delightful fancy. The value of the cleansed imagination in the sphere of religion lies in its power to perceive in natural things shadows of things spiritual. A purified and Spirit-controlled imagination is the sacred gift of seeing; the ability to peer beyond the veil and gaze with astonished wonder upon the beauties and mysteries of things holy and eternal. The stodgy pedestrian mind does no credit to Christianity.”

As Lewis, Langan, and others have enumerated, the Christian imagination does not fly from physical reality, even when engaged with a book; reality is always on the mind and a return to the sidewalks of this world inevitable. He reads, however, that he might avert the stodgy pedestrian mind that so often encumbers the courage and agility of what might well have been the very best runners. Though Hamlet called his world a prison, and though we are tempted to echo his sentiments, the “Christian imagination does not see the world as a prison from which the soul must escape, but as the stage of humanity’s interaction with its God” (Langan). Stories are the telling of that interaction with God; even when God’s name is never mentioned, His shadow is everywhere spreading across her pages. We too are on that stage and if we view our little plot as a prison, then Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were correct for once and all the world is, indeed, a prison.

But this life is not a prison and history is not an enclosed history. Too many of us have forgotten that God’s story is not yet finished, though the ending is roughly known, and we imagine ourselves floating somewhere in a world that simply does its thing until God pops out from behind a cloud accompanied by loud noises. This kind of wait and see thinking is nothing but theological and imaginative porridge; perhaps enough to get us from day to day, but certainly nothing in which to exult and nothing that drives us to make a dent in things.

So we need the kind of imagination that gives us purpose to transform culture and help Christians make a dent in all the work that is yet to be accomplished.

What Might Be Missing From Your Life: or how the imagination weaves culture

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John had attended a conference on C.S. Lewis most of the day and, after hearing a great deal of hoopla about Narnia, he decided to buy the first book. When he walked into the house that night, he had The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe under his arm. After dinner, he gathered the entire family into the living room and read the first chapter of the book to them. When he had concluded the chapter and shut the book, his wife turned to him and said, “John. Something has been missing from our lives. Something important: the imagination” (Clyde Kilby, Mars Hill Audio Journal Anthology of Lewis).

I suspect that John and his wife are not the only ones who looked in a mirror one day and realized they were starved-their imagination but rags and tatters hanging loosely over an emaciated frame. It bears repeating: the reason I chose to be an English teacher (O, what a strange fraternity) is to feed the hungry with a mouth full of books.

Unfortunately, the western Christian is mired with a thousand different fancies that have a diminishing satisfaction because we live in a culture more and more Huxleyan than Orwellian. George Orwell’s 1984 predicted a world of horrifying oppression where the dominant culture becomes a prison (see Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death), while Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World prophesied a world where the dominant culture becomes a dark carnival, a world-wide Mardi gras, a sweeping exultation of bacchanalia’s soft underbelly.

Orwell predicted book banning, Huxley predicted a world in which there would be no need to ban a book-everyone would be too busy amusing themselves. “Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy” (Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death).

At variance to the fascination with the feelies and the orgy porgy stands the Christian imagination which “gratefully anchors itself in the gift of reality, seeking to decipher its message, not to get drunk on it” (Janine Langan[1], The Christian Imagination). The enemy knows that to control the imagination is to control the man and what better way to control it than by gorging it on irrelevance and training it from a young age to flirt with three minute bites of stimuli. The Christian must make a stand against such intellectual disengagement because “counter to the Sesame Street culture of three minute bites, the Christian imagination is a storytelling imagination. In every era, in every life, it recognizes the creation-death-resurrection pattern epitomized in Christ’s life. And it interprets every event as an essential moment in the movement of time toward eternity” (ibid).

I have no need to rail against the depravity so barren and naked before our eyes these days. I don’t think that does anybody any good. Doing something constructive, like building something beautiful instead, seems to me the most helpful response to mass moral decay. There are two ways to begin this shift: the first and most important way is to feed ourselves the Gospel. There are plenty of helpful books on this subject and this blog post is not one of them. This post deals with the second way to transform culture: heal our imagination. Feed our imaginations with hearty things, slowly easing our bodies into health until we can handle and enjoy intellectual, emotional, and spiritual steak. Indeed, “has not humanity always experienced creative imagination as participation in divine life? Imagining is an act of hope, a challenge to fate, an effort to take matters in hand and to accept our unique role as human beings…it is the weaver of culture” (ibid).

The world needs hope, the world needs someone to challenge the predominant view of fate that so freezes her blood and to offer her the tools by which to weave a new and a better culture. Only Jesus Christ can heal such a disease as this one, but He uses His children as emissaries and physicians to heal the sick by reclaiming the imagination through Him.

[1] The temptation to simply list a host of Janine Langan’s quotations and not add a word of my own is a strong one. She has done some wonderful thinking on the Christian imagination.

Cultivating the Imagination: the moral shaping influence of the imagination

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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.

To My Daughter, On Her 16th Birthday

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My last blog post was titled “Why Sane People Talk To Themselves, Part 1“, subtly hinting that a “Part 2” hid just around the corner and would leap out at the next opportune moment. Obviously, no “Part 2” is included in the title of this blog post. Please forgive me for indulging my fatherly affections instead. In the hopes of not alienating all of you who were perched like cats at the milk dish, please be assured that misleading you was completely justified. I thought it only appropriate that after a week-long celebration of my eldest daughter’s 16th birthday, I should interrupt my regular blog posts with a short blessing for her. Here’s hoping you’ll be blessed too.

Dear Daughter,

Here’s my birthday wish for you, dear:

“Tightly-folded bud,

I have wished you something

None of the others would:

Not the usual stuff

About being beautiful,

Or running off a spring

Of innocence and love-

They will all wish you that,

And should it prove possible,

Well, you’re a lucky girl.

But if it shouldn’t, then

May you be ordinary;

Have, like other women,

An average of talents:

Not ugly, not good-looking,

Nothing uncustomary

To pull you off your balance,

That, unworkable itself,

Stops all the rest from working.

In fact, may you be dull-

If that is what a skilled,

Vigilant, flexible,

Unemphasised, enthralled

Catching of happiness is called.”

–“Born Yesterday” by Philip Larkin

Sane People Talk To Themselves: Part 1

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Contrary to common belief,

truly sane people talk to themselves.

Christians who fix their imagination (the seeing faculty of the mind) on Christ and his Word talk to themselves in a running conversation as a way to train the way they see life. It may seem strange to say it, but sane people stay sane by talking to themselves. If our reasoning, our beliefs, and our emotional responses to circumstances are shaped by how we see things, then we should make sure that we are seeing/imagining accurately. The accuracy of our imaginings depends upon their alignment with God’s Word.

We are often guilty of seeing ourselves, others, and life in general, incorrectly. The Scriptures help us see what’s really there, not simply what we think is there. So here are five imaginatively reorienting truths from Scripture that are worth telling yourself every day.

Five Things To Mumble All Day:

1. “Jedaiah the son of Harumaph made repairs in front of his house” (Nehemiah 3:10). While God’s people were involved in rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem, each one did what God equipped him to do. This small verse tucked away in Nehemiah reminds me that I need not try to do more than I am able. I just need to take care of what’s right in front of me. Build God’s kingdom by attending to what’s right here, right now.

2. “Have mercy on me, O Lord, for I am weak; O Lord, heal me, for my bones are troubled. My soul also is greatly troubled; But You, O Lord–how long? Return, O Lord, deliver me!” (Psalm :2-4). Indeed, I am weak and in need of the Lord’s healing. That fact alone is worth reminding myself to prevent any self-reliance. And when my soul is troubled, The Lord will deliver me.

3. “What shall I say? He has both spoken to me, and he himself has done it. I shall walk carefully all my years in the bitterness of my soul. O Lord, by these things men live; and in all these things is the life of my spirit; so you will restore me and make me live” (Isaiah 38:15-16). God has been–and is still–at work in my life, speaking the days of my life and the steps I take. My only comfort in times of grief is the sovereign Lord who will restore me and make me live.

4. “If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? Who shall bring a charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is he who condemns?” (Romans 8:31-34). To the nagging voice inside my head, the voice that drums up my failures, my shame, and my sinful leanings, I can say, “Sorry Bub, I’m changing the channel.” Then I say these verses to myself, out loud if necessary, as an aid to help me see myself justified before the judge. I can stand tall and rejoice and live gladly because the Judge sent his son, Jesus Christ the righteous, to pay the penalty for my sin. I’m free.

5. And finally, “Do not fear; Zion, let not your hands be weak. The Lord your God in your midst, The Mighty One, will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing.” Being a part of God’s people, God’s church, liberates me to work hard and gladly because The Lord is already active in our midst and rejoicing over our meager efforts. He claps over his people–those whose heart, mind, soul, and strength belong to the King. That fact alone should help get us up in the morning.

To be totally honest, the entire Scriptures are imaginatively reorienting. Any other six passages would have served just as well. I chose these for me this week because I need them and that means I’m sharing them with you. May they buoy us this week and train us to see as God sees.

I leave you with a portion of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “A Psalm of Life” because the above verses drive us to imitate our great fathers and mothers in the faith and to live the beautiful life he describes:

“Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.”

I Am Sinner, I Am Saint: the forgotten key to joy

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When you start remembering your old self and when you start dwelling on how wretched you are, try this line: “Old news, buddy. Old news. Get on with life.” Here’s why.

It’s true: we’re all dirty. All our righteousness is like filthy rags; we all fade as a leaf, and our sin drives us like a strong wind (Isaiah 64:6). There’s no doubt that we’ve all sinned and fall short (notice the present tense) of the glory of God (Rom. 3:23). So Christ came into the world save sinners, of whom I am the worst. Yes, I am the worst, and that’s a sure fact that deserves full acceptance (I Tim. 1:15). So I try not to justify myself before others because God knows my heart, and what others call “good” in me is still ugly to God (Luke 16:15).

It’s true.

BUT GOD proved his love toward us by sending his son, Jesus the Christ, to die for us even while we were still sinners (Rom. 5:7-8). Those who follow God are now covered by that blood (Mt 26:28, Heb. 9:14). That’s why God cried, “Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert” (Isaiah 43:19). Now, we used to be sons of disobedience, chasing every lust in a mind palace full of porn, BUT GOD, who is rich in mercy, found us dead and made us alive (Eph. 2:3-5). So now we’re sitting together in heaven with Christ (and that’s no fantasy folks, that’s reality) so he can lavish kindness on us (Eph. 2:6-7).

Paul opens his letter to the Corinthians (some pretty messy folks) with these amazing words: “To the church of God which is at Corinth, to those who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, saints by calling, with all who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours” (I Cor. 1:2). The bottom line is that Christ raised us up with himself and he has made us holy, set apart, and those of us under the blood of Christ are now saints. Those aren’t my words, that’s Scripture.

If you’re anything like me, you probably get a little nervous around the word saint. And you get really nervous when it’s applied to you. But if Scripture calls us saints, then maybe it’s time to get over ourselves and reimagine who we are in Christ. Maybe it’s time to accept the paradox of joy: I am sinner, I am saint.

Some Christians live on a hamster-wheel of self-condemnation. They wake up with the reminders of their sin, they take communion remembering their sin, and they go to bed to the lullabies of their own filth. It might seem virtuous to live that way, but I think this self-condemnation can pretty easily twist into a kind of pietism, just another form of pride.

How easily we become proud of how sinful we are.

Does God really want us to remember how wretched we are all day? Does he want us to sit at his table and eat his bread and drink his wine remorsefully, like those who know they barely made it in? If we’ve really been adopted into sainthood, covered by the blood, and if we can really be called “children of God”, then maybe we should act like children who really belong: glad, lively, engaged children of the king. We don’t bless God, the one who has done a new thing, by reminding ourselves and reminding him of our old self. He knows our old selves andhe still calls us “sons.”

Sometimes I remember how filthy I am. Oh let’s be honest: nearly all day I remember that I am the worst of all sinners and so my flesh and my heart shrivel, BUT GOD is the strength of my heart and my portion forever (Ps. 73:26); therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come (II Cor. 5:17). Whoever hears Christ and believes God, that person has passed from death to life. He’s no longer under judgment (John 5:24). And so we eagerly hear Christ who said, “Behold, I am making all things new!” (Revelation 21:5). For he knows the plan he has for us. They are plans for welfare and not for evil, to give us a future worth living for and a sure hope (Jeremiah 29:11).

Baptism reminds us that, like Christ, we were dead but now we are raised from the dead by the glory of the Father so that we can walk in newness of life (Romans. 6:4). And when we drink the water that Christ gives, we are never thirsty again. The water that he gives becomes a spring of water welling up to eternal life (John 4:14). That’s joy my friends. So go, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart because God has already accepted your works (Ecc. 9:7). He’s promised that the ransomed of The Lord shall return, and come to Zion with singing, with everlasting joy on their heads. They shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away (Isaiah 35:10).

When you start remembering your old self and when you start dwelling on how wretched you are, try this line: “Old news, buddy. Old news. Get on with life.”

Of course you’re a sinner. Of course you’ve been made alive in Christ. So live now, brother. Live. Hold the fact of your sinfulness with your left hand and in your right hand, hold the fact of your sainthood. Only in that way can we embrace Joy with both arms and clasp our hands around it. The key to joy is a paradox: I am sinner, I am saint.

Fact: I am a sinner.

Fact: I am saint.

It’s time to live!

“Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit” (Rom. 15:13).