Sneaking past watchful dragons when reading the Bible
Tuning our imaginations to read the Bible well
Note that this post is primarily written with fellow Christians in mind, but readers of all beliefs and outlooks are welcome! I hope you’ll find it an interesting insight into the relationship between faith and imagination whatever your own commitments…
How often do those of us who are Christians stop to think about the place of imagination in reading the Bible? Among big ideas like ‘exegesis’ and ‘hermeneutics’, where does imagination fit in?
With most books, it’s unremarkable to say that we need imagination to read them well. But if anything, Christians often get a bit nervous about imagination and the Bible. Doesn’t using our imaginations mean we’re going to be making up a lot of stuff in our heads that isn’t actually there in the text? Isn’t imagination the pathway to fanciful speculation, even to false teaching and heresy?
But when the Bible calls us to be “transformed by the renewing of our minds” (Romans 12), it isn’t just talking about “minds” in a narrow sense of the intellect. The Bible has an integrated view of the human heart, which encompasses not only what we think and believe but also how we feel, imagine and desire.
What’s more, imagination helps us steal past what C S Lewis called “the watchful dragons” of overfamiliarity, and the sense of obligation to feel the “right” responses to the Bible that can freeze feelings. Let’s explore the place that imagination plays in engaging with the Bible…
Invention vs understanding
It’s helpful to distinguish between different senses of imagination. We use the word ‘imagination’ both for the faculty of invention but also in a sense that underpins the faculty of understanding.
Imagination often means invention, creating new ideas. This kind of creativity is a wonderful thing in many contexts – but invention is misplaced if it is the source of our philosophy or theology. If we’re serious about the pursuit of truth, then we need an external reference point less malleable than our own imaginations. For Christians, we seek to ground our beliefs in what we believe to be God’s revelation to us, in the person of Jesus Christ and as recorded in the Bible as his inspired word, rather than our own speculation or desires. “I’d like to believe that…” can easily lead to wish-fulfilment versions of Christianity (or other belief systems). The Bible calls this kind of wish-fulfilment belief ‘idolatry’, and the prophets criticise those who ‘walk in ways not good, pursuing their own imaginations’ (Isaiah 65:2) or that ‘prophecy out of their own imagination’ (Ezekiel 13:2, 17) – that is, they set their own invented ideas up as a source of spiritual truth. A particularly egregious example of this is Scientology, which was created by L. Ron Hubbard after he infamously said “You don't get rich writing science fiction. If you want to get rich, you start a religion” – and which borrowed heavily from his science fiction.
If you’re not a Christian then you may well see Christian beliefs as being invented in this way – however, I believe there is a depth, reality and counter-intuitive nature to them that defies any easy explanation of Christian teaching as mere wish-fulfilment. Religion can be a form of mere escapism if it’s rooted in imagination alone, unmoored from any principle of truth, reason or empirical enquiry. But religion at its best – and the Christian tradition for the most part – grapples with the big questions of reality through use of the imagination, but in pursuit of truth.
This brings us on to a wider sense of the term imagination: imagination as a means of understanding, of bringing truth to life vividly. The Bible is full of stories, metaphors, images, poetry and other literary techniques that engage our imaginations to bring truth to life. Here the imagination is anchored in God’s revelation to us (if you accept, as Christians do, the claims the Biblical scriptures make about themselves), but is engaged in receiving it in full technicolour. Imagination in this sense is an essential part of theology, a way of fully understanding, embracing and fleshing out truth in all its dimensions.
If you’re not a believer yourself, then to really understand what Christians believe, there’s a “willing suspension of disbelief” needed - try reading the Bible story, especially that of Jesus in the Gospels, and entering into it and letting the story have its full impact on you emotionally and psychologically. You need to understand what any claim means before you can evaluate its truth. Imagination enables you to get a better sense of what Christians find attractive and appealing in the Bible narrative – imagination is needed to fully grasp what Christianity means, before you can make an in any way informed decision about whether Christianity is true.
Tuning our imaginations
How does imagination work?
When we read, we might think of the words on the page are like the musical score for a story, and our imaginations as the instrument on which the story is played.
But like a musical instrument, our imaginations can become out of tune. We might be out of practice or not have developed good habits for bringing the text to life in our heads as we read.
How can we make sure that we have well-tuned imaginations, led and sanctified by the Holy Spirit, capable of grasping the goodness, beauty and truth of the Bible, in all its rich variety of stories and songs, histories and epistles, poetry and prophecy?
A big part is immersion - the more we familiarise ourselves with the storyline of the Bible, with its repeated images and motifs, the more our imaginations will attune themselves to the melodies of God’s word.
The Bible communicates spiritual truth through material means. Think of gardens; trees; snakes; water; fire; blood. All of these are key themes and images that run through the Bible. All of them are things we can touch and feel and imagine.
Like a musician practising day after day, the more we use our imagination to grasp the good, the true and the beautiful, the more in-tune the instrument of our imagination becomes.
Imagination and experience
Imagination helps close the gap between the truths the Bible communicates and our own experience.
One aspect of this is empathy – imagination allows us to enter into Biblical stories, to put ourselves in the shoes of Biblical characters, to see the connection between their actions and stories and our own. This was the prophet Nathan’s technique when he confronted King David about his adultery with Bathsheba – he didn’t begin by tackling David’s sin head-on, but by telling a parable, a story where David could empathise with the person who had suffered injustice at the hands of the powerful. Imagination engaged David’s sense of justice and compassion – and then turned it back on himself, making him realise that he was the bad guy in the story. (I’m looking forward to reading Mary McCampbell’s book Imagining Our Neighbours as Ourselves: How Art Shapes Empathy:, out in April, which is on this theme – check out Mary’s Substack, The Empathetic Imagination).
Another example, discussed by Andrew Peterson and Tim Mackie in their Hutchmoot Homebound discussion of The Trees at the Heart of Creation is that of metaphor. When the Psalmist talks about God’s word being sweeter than honey to the mouth, we understand more deeply the truth of this if we take the time to imagine and bring to mind the taste of honey, sticky and dripping, filling our mouths with sweetness. It connects an aspect of God’s creation that we experience through our senses with our experience of receiving God’s word. Metaphorical language connects us to the spiritual reality of the goodness of God’s word.
The trouble is that many images become so familiar that we gloss over them. Let’s take a non-Biblical example - when something is easy, a writer might use the phrase “like a knife through butter”. But do you actually stop to bring in your experience of knives and butter to bear on your reading of that? On a cold day, it can actually be quite tough to scrape butter with a knife! It’s become a stock phrase, a cliche that no longer prompts us to connect our actual sensory experience to what’s being said.
Past watchful dragons
Some Biblical metaphors have references that are unfamiliar. How many of us really have an understanding of shepherding or sheep? One of the ways we can enrich our understanding of the Bible is to seek out the realities that it uses as metaphors. When you’ve spent some time watching a bunch of sheep actually wandering around a hillside, it adds depth and dimension to Jesus’ parables, for example.
Or if we can’t get out and about to experience it, then stories or vivid historical description can help fill out the meaning of Biblical images and metaphors.
This is where Christian artistry and imagination can play a tremendously important role - to make unfamiliar different images and ideas, to explore them in new ways that steal past what C S Lewis called the ‘watchful dragons’ of overfamiliarity.
Think of Aslan, and how the Narnia stories refresh and revive the way we imagine lions, kingship and power. How many Christians have had our sense of awe at God’s power deepened through the understanding that he’s good but not tame, because he is the King?
We fuel our imaginations by experiencing the world in all its richness.
We sharpen our imaginations by encountering art that gives us fresh eyes with which to see the world.
We tune our imaginations to the song of God’s story by immersing ourselves in the Biblical narratives.
We then in turn change our lives and the world around us by imagining how they can be different and better… but that’s a whole other theme, and one I’ll return to another time!
What I’ve been reading, watching and listening to recently
I’ve been rereading The Chronicles of Narnia (in the correct order, which is by publication date, naturally!) - it’s great to revisit old favourites and be refreshed by them
Shards of Honour by Lois Bujold McMasters - a fascinating space opera and tale of star-crossed lovers, where they are drawn together by their sense of honour despite being on opposite sides of a galactic conflict
Spider-man: No Way Home was great fun but falls apart when you think about it in any detail. Spidey’s desire to redeem the villains rather than merely defeat them is wonderful, but it fails to grapple with the questions of evil and moral responsibility that this should raise.
I couldn’t get excited about The Book of Boba Fett. I watched the first episode but it didn’t sell me on Boba as being a compelling character, and I’m not nostalgic enough about his ‘cool factor’ for the show to hold my attention on that alone.