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Why We Talk About Imagination

ByKelly Keller

I had a conversation with a friend recently about her little boys. One of them is in the stage where he has imaginary friends; at present, he has three of them, with nonsensical names she doesn’t understand.

Mom is doing a great job respecting the stage he’s in. She allows this kind of creative play without over-managing it because she knows it’s a typical phase for preschoolers. This, too, shall pass. He’s working out his imagination, playing at being a friend, and making adventures.

This behavior is typically what comes to people’s minds when I mention the word “imagination.” Christian adults (at least in my wing of the church) not only downplay the importance of imagination, but they also frequently roll their eyes at it.

To better help my practical, reasoned, literal friends, I have composed the following list of ways that you, a thinking Christian person, ought to welcome and strengthen the work of your imagination in your spiritual life.

Empathy: This is frequently mentioned in studies about reading fiction, but the same might be said of reading anyone’s story: can you put yourself in someone else’s place? This requires imagination. What would it be like to be that person, in those circumstances, with that struggle? This is a way that we can better love one another and so fulfill the law of Christ.

Enjoying Scripture: Yes, I said “enjoying.” The Bible is first and foremost a story — the way that God has revealed himself to his people. Stories are meant to be experienced, enjoyed, and soaked up. I find that imagination helps me when I read the Old Testament (“what was it like to wake up every morning and find that your shoes still didn’t need to be replaced?!”) and the New Testament (“what did it sound like next to the balcony where Pilate was addressing the crowd? what was it like in the room where Jesus was anointed before his death?”). These are questions and exercises I see all the time in children’s lessons, but at some point, we stop putting ourselves through these considerate paces of sitting with the amazing, mysterious nature of God. The result: the Bible doesn’t affect us anymore. The further we distance ourselves from the real humanity and the real Diety present in the Bible, the further apart our heads grow from our hearts.

Hope for the Kingdom: Christians believe in a real, impending Kingdom, where we will enjoy God, feast at a table, and work and worship to his Glory. Do we believe that, really? Do our daily choices, stewardship, and worship indicate our thoughts toward that reality? Can we consider the possibilities of What Will Be?

Hope for People (Ourselves and Others): A while back, I wrote about John Steinbeck’s epic novel East of Eden, and the ways the characters either have hope for one another — or don’t. Even the author himself betrays an utter lack of hope for one character (Cathy, for those of you who’ve read it). The fact that there’s no hope for her — that she is “pure evil” — affects the way that we as readers perceive her actions.

In the same way, the presence of real hope for ourselves and for others affects the way we live. If we are basically cynical about the possibility of real change in ourselves and others, we will not think and work towards that change. If you believe that your coworker will never stop that annoying habit, if you think your child will never outgrow that phase, your actions towards them will indicate that.

More personally, if you think that you are beyond the help of the Holy Spirit, if you are unable to imagine a way in which God can change you into the likeness of his Son, you will become stunted. By laying down the rails of imagination, we remain open to the ways in which God is molding us into his likeness.

Dear logical, well-read, well-reasoned friends, I beg you to remain open to the work of imagination in your grown-up, tidy, rational life.

It must not be supposed that I am in any sense putting forward the imagination as the organ of truth. We are not talking of truth, but of meaning: meaning which is the antecedent condition both of truth and falsehood, whose antithesis is not error but nonsense. I am a rationalist. For me, reason is the natural organ of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning. Imagination, producing new metaphors or revivifying old, is not the cause of truth, but its condition. It is, I confess, undeniable that such a view indirectly implies a kind of truth or rightness in the imagination itself.

-CS Lewis, Selected Literary Essays, “Bluspels and Flalansferes: A Semantic Nightmare”

Kelly Keller
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