Walt Disney and an early drawing of Mickey Mouse
“It was all started by a mouse,” Walt Disney said, reminding people of the power of imagination. For decades, big voices of Christian faith have emphasized information without much attention to imagination. Faith brings life and bears fruit through stronger and better desires, not just better ideas. How does imagination affect desire?
By analogy, picture a marriage you admire. What guided the couple’s will to make the original lifetime commitment? Imagination. There are no guarantees. Marriage vows are not a promise always to feel a certain way. Instead, when a couple stands up to make their pledge, they are casting a vision to guide them no matter how they feel, moment to moment. They imagine a preferred future together. It’s a common dream they share and it results in one weighty pronouncement: “Until death do we part.”
Next, picture the fruit of a healthy marriage. It’s all a result of keeping vision alive. Stories develop, histories build, children appear, neighborhoods grow–we could go on, endlessly. What emerges is more than you might foresee and more than you can measure. Imagination as square-one is most appropriate.
Imagination is the organ which helps us digest reality. J.S. Bach commented he did not so much compose music as he did discover it. We all have reacted after seeing some simple innovation and said, “Why didn’t I think of that?” Once it’s invented, it’s obvious. Even the lovable cynic Mark Twain remarked, “You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.”
As with Mickey Mouse, marriage, and music, so too with belief. Imagination is required. I often wonder how so many people with so much good information can be so unaffected by it? Just having the right data isn’t the thing. In his book, Desiring the Kingdom, James K.A. Smith asks, “What if education, including higher education, is not primarily about the absorption of ideas and information but about the formation of hearts and desires?
“He told them another parable: ‘The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of seeds…yet when it grows it becomes the largest…'” (Matt. 13:31). It was all started by a mouse.
What’s sparked your imagination lately? How is it shaping your desires?
Tim, I read Smith’s book this spring. It’s a powerful apology for rethinking our “usual” ways of education. His bit on the social imaginary and counter-liturgies is just awesome.
Thanks for this endorsement, Andy. Just wading into it. I’d like to see this topic catch fire. Andy Crouch has tried to say it in a little different way in his book Culture Making. The fact we need reminding we’re born to create and the imagination is given for that purpose is sign of the times.
The Bible doesn’t say much about the imagination, so Christianity has neglected thinking about it. But all of us live in our imagination. I live in a vast universe that I have never seen, yet my mind builds an image of that universe and I live in that mental image. My imagination creates a conception for me of those things that my senses can’t perceive. So it’s a critical part of our human equipment. It’s like a sixth sense that takes over when our other senses have nothing to work with. And so I’ve always thought that the imagination is important in worship, despite all of the warnings we get about worshipping a god we have created in our imagination. The trick is to imagine the God who really exists and to allow our imagination to be corrected by the Bible and by our actual experience of him. I also need to constantly remind myself that the God who is there is beyond anything I can imagine. Am I off base?
Good stuff, Cliff. The second commandment (no idols) shouldn’t sit us down–it should beacon us “higher up and further in.”
Tim, you have taken me back in ways that only you could have done. You realize how much our history together has shaped my faith. You know my story, my short comings and yet you have always been there for me and I believe ( don’t say that’s my imagination) that you loved me in spite of me. This is the first time there has been an opportunity to read Milestones and I couldn’t stop until the last word.
There is not one word that anyone could disagree with if they truly hold view our God as the creator of the universe and the father of our Lord and Savior. Back to imagination: it has allowed me to see the loved ones we’ve lost in the most loving, perfect place and to know that it won’t be long before we’ll be reunited. There is no longer any fear in death but actually a blessing. Please know that life has changed but now heaven is more real and is more my goal than ever. Love is the legacy that drives me and you know how much I love you and your beautiful family.