What is Imaginative Discipleship?
And why we need it for transformed hearts and minds
Welcome back! Thanks again for all of you for reading. This week I’ve been off work for half-term and enjoyed spending a long weekend at L’Abri Fellowship, along with my wife and daughters. L’Abri has a wonderfully integrated approach to the Christian faith, focusing both on the truth and beauty of Christianity communicated in the Bible, and the goodness of Christian community in practice.
Visiting L’Abri and taking part in the life of the community there takes quite a lot of energy, but it gives a tremendous amount back too - I enjoyed the rich discussions and community life there, and look forward to being back there (without kids!) next week to give my lecture on The Great Dance: C S Lewis’s Cosmic Trilogy and the Discarded Image of Medieval Hierarchy.
Join us live on Zoom at 8pm on Friday 5th November - the password is "Lecture".
Imagination is powerful
Imagination can transport us to other worlds and take us into other minds.
As I explored last week, like the wardrobe to Narnia or Doctor Who’s police box time machine, imagination is “bigger on the inside.” Time passes differently in the world of imagination, and we return from imagining stories or imagining the future to our present reality having perhaps experienced years or lifetimes.
Through the imagination, a well-told story can touch a heart, change a mind, or redirect a life.
Imagination and empathy
Imagination is also linked with empathy: it enables us to place ourselves in place of others, to walk a mile in their shoes. Listening to the stories of others, entering imaginatively into their experiences, is a way of loving our neighbours.
It’s important, of course, that we don’t passively accept all narratives. We need to respond and engage with kindness and courage based on our understanding of what’s true and good. But we can only form a fitting response to other people’s viewpoints and experiences after we’ve taken the time to listen deeply.
We see the power of imagination in the pages of the Bible, which speaks to our imagination through many stories – and indeed, the Great Story. The prophet Nathan’s tale of a stolen lamb brought King David to repentance (2 Sam. 12) - the power of the story brought David to a place of empathy to recognise how he had sinned against Uriah and Bathsheba.
Jesus often taught in parables, delivering down-to-earth stories that are stealth bombers of the human heart, bypassing our defenses by way of the imagination (though our deep bunkers of overfamiliarity often protect us from their full devastating impact).
When imagination goes wrong
But imagination can have a darker side. Like all human endeavours, we exercise imagination in the shadow of the fall. It was a story, too, that persuaded Adam and Eve to eat the forbidden fruit: the seductive fantasy whispered by the serpent that we could become like God yet be apart from Him.
The Bible warns against “evil imagination” and those who pursue their own imaginations apart from God’s design (e.g. Psalm 73:7, Isaiah 65:2, Ezekiel 13:2). There are many imaginings that we instinctively recognise as wicked – for example, the world imagined by white supremacy where minorities are eliminated or marginalised.
But often evil comes about from a failure of imagination, from the inability to imagine the impact of one’s choices on the marginalised and disadvantaged, from the absence of a positive vision for diversity and inclusion of people of all cultures and backgrounds. We fail to love our neighbours because we don’t make the effort to imagine their lives and needs, or to imagine creative ways of bringing about a better, fairer world.
We become the stories we believe about ourselves, and about others. Imagination shapes the world by shaping the way we see the world, for better and for worse.
If we are to grow in love, truth and goodness, we need to direct and cultivate our imaginations carefully.
Redeemed imaginations
In the reformed and evangelical Christian traditions I’ve grown up in and are my theological home turf, there’s often been a very strong emphasis on being “transformed by the renewing of the mind” (Romans 12:2). This has often focused on rationality and ideas, on having the right ‘worldview’. While there’s value in that approach, a Biblical view of what it means to be human has a much more integrated view of the self.
A bare emphasis on truth has sometimes neglected beauty and goodness. But as we grow in our faith and seek to communicate it in a culture that’s increasingly removed from Christian understanding, we need to develop a deep understanding of why the Bible teaches what it teaches. We need imagination to see the beauty of Christ and his teaching, and live out its goodness.
A core Biblical concept is the ‘heart’ as the core of us as human beings. Unlike a Western, post-Enlightenment conception that sharply distinguishes heart and mind, emotions and reason, the Biblical pattern weaves together thoughts, desires and will as all bound up with the ‘heart’. While the Bible rarely talks about the imagination directly, I believe we can map our modern conception of ‘imagination’ into the language of the ‘heart’ as it relates to seeing and desiring, especially phrases like ‘the eyes of the heart’ - Paul prays that “the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you” (Ephesians 1:18).
So the role of Christian discipleship isn’t simply to communicate a set of propositions, though propositions are necessary. Rather it’s to tell a better story, to provide a better way of seeing the world, so that our loves are transformed.
As James K A Smith says in the preface to You Are What You Love:
Worship is the “imagination station” that incubates our loves and longings so that our cultural endeavors are indexed toward God and his kingdom. If you are passionate about seeking justice, renewing culture, and taking up your vocation to unfurl all of creation’s potential, you need to invest in the formation of your imagination. You need to curate your heart. You need to worship well. Because you are what you love.
We need to immerse ourself in the Bible’s big story of creation, fall, redemption and restoration. We need to develop a vision of Jesus Christ as the one in whom all goodness, truth and beauty are found.
How practically do we do that? That’s a theme I’ll be returning to in future editions, as I explore imagination in worship, prayer, service, evangelism and other aspects of the Christian life. Stay tuned!
Note: Parts of this essay have previously appeared in slightly different form in my article Choose Your Own Enchantment for the Christian Research Journal.
What I’ve been enjoying recently
Reading: Operation Mincemeat by Ben Macintyre
Proving that truth really is stranger than fiction, I’m gripped by this fascinating tale of how British intelligence fooled the Nazis about their plans for the invasion of southern Europe through an elaborate scheme involving sending a dead body planted with fake documents… I’m reading it on Scribd, the ebook subscription service that I use widely, and you can also check out the trailer for the upcoming movie.
Listening: Human by Becca Jordan
Becca Jordan’s single Human jumped out at me as I listened to the Rabbit Room Discovery playlist, and spoke refreshment to my soul. It was only after being struck by the beauty of the song that I realised that Becca Jordan had been at the English L’Abri when we visited in the winter term 2017 - it’s a small world, but it doesn’t surprise me since the theme of our humanness resonates very well with the L’Abri ethos!
Listen: Spotify, Apple Music
Watching: Aesthetics and the Knowledge of God by Matt Peckham
I really appreciated this talk from Christian Heritage Cambridge on beauty, imagination and the knowledge of God. He discusses the need for “orthopathy” (right emotions/desires) as well as “orthodoxy” (right belief). If you want further exploration of the themes I’ve been discussing in today’s post, check it out!