I would really love to get your feedback on this. A friend of mine named Shane has an organization called Dreamers of the Day in Ireland. He posted a recent blog that I feel really deserves some exploration. With his permission, I am posting it here. We are very interested in your thoughts.
ILLUMINATED IMAGINATION
by Shane Tucker of www.dreamtoday.org
For about a year now I've been contemplating the role of imagination in the role of a Christian. There have been various insights and encouragements to help me along the way with this. Below I'll lay out the headings that may form the content of my next article. Please comment and offer any insights you may have on this/these issues, or experiences you have had that may shed some light on the illuminated imagination. Of course, you'll be given credit in the next article if I rely on a fresh insight you've shared. ;-) Without further adieu...
*Art (broadly speaking) as Stimulation for Imagination
*Imagination as an Agent for Personal/Spiritual Growth
*Imagination as a Key to Engaging in God's Activity
*Imagination as a Catalyst for a Life of Service
*Imagination as a Cornerstone for Cultural Change
*Positive Uses for Imagination in a Life of Faith
The floor is open...
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3 comments:
I have read what this fellow is thinking about, and it is indeed intriguing. Strangely, the way the word “imagination” is used in the New Testament, it usually refers to our carnal nature; using our imaginations for evil, rather than for good. And yet, Jesus, of all people, appealed to our imaginations as He tried to explain Kingdom concepts and humanly unexplainable things.
So yes, I do believe God illuminates our imaginations, helping us grasp more of Himself, since we have to stretch well beyond what we can normally merely observe with our five senses. Without imagination, I doubt we would ever embrace concepts like the Trinity, for example. Here’s today’s eDevotional in which I muse about that concept a bit. Perhaps it will fuel some more thought and further reactions to this concept of the illuminated imagination.
Clark
The Ocean of God’s Triune Nature
Have you ever wrestled with a concept that seems impossible to grasp, humanly speaking, and yet it remains intriguing, compelling—maybe even addictive? I sure have.
Take music, for example. Ever since I was a very young boy, I remember hearing sounds coming from my parent’s huge stereo system (the cabinet kind that took up an entire wall in their living room)—sounds that arrested my attention, forced me to stop what I was doing, caused me to listen to the same piece of music again and again, straining to hear different things in that music. The more I listened, the more I heard.
Some of those pieces have never grown stale for me: “Bolero,” by Maurice Ravel for one. I still want to stand up and salute when I hear the “1812 Overture,” by Pyotr Ilych Tchaikovsky (which, for you history buffs, commemorated the unsuccessful French invasion into Russia, resulting in Napoleon’s withdrawal of the Grande Armee, which marked the turning point of the Napoleonic Wars). I mean, what boy wouldn’t want to do backflips over a piece of orchestra music that uses real cannons as instruments? “Beethoven’s 9th Symphony,” still rocks my world, as does “Handel’s Messiah,” (there’s something deeply moving when the Halleluiah Chorus begins and everyone in the audience stands in honor of the King of Kings, ever since King George II stood when he heard it for the first time). And in a bizarre sort of way, I’m still moved, in a very different fashion, by “You’re Mama Don’t Dance and Your Daddy Don’t Rock and Roll.”
I can still hear those pieces of music today and they still cause me to lose myself in the waves of sound that produce incredible and very different reactions.
It’s like diving for pieces of treasure dropped at the bottom of an ocean. You swim around looking for just one piece, and then when you find it, you can’t wait to dive in and look for more. The more you find, the more you want to find more.
That’s the way it has been with the Trinity and me. I won’t ever claim to have discovered the human explanation for the concept most evangelical Christians refer to as The Trinity, and yet the more I look into Him, the more I dive into the vast ocean of His being, the more treasure I find. And the more treasure I find, the more I want to find more treasure—more of Him.
Years of gradual learning, long after I had crossed the line of faith, embracing Jesus Christ as God’s Son and the Savior of my soul, it began to dawn on me what a huge thing it was that His very Spirit inhabited my puny being. Intellectually I knew that to be true, but the more I swam around in His greatness, the more it began to wow me that He was swimming around in me.
It was a shocking and awe-inspiring moment when I began to think of myself more as a fish in a sea of His presence, than as a human with two legs walking on top of some surface, with a lot of Him down underneath where I couldn’t really experience Him. Just as a fish has gills and breathes air, but through the water, I began to think of myself as swimming around in God’s vast glory, taking Him in and breathing Him out.
As a human, I had readily embraced the concepts of God the Father and God the Son. Those two manifestations of His being were no-brainers. I knew what fathers looked like, and I was a son. So it was not that difficult to grasp the fact that God was both of those things. But the Spirit. Whoah. That was another story. For me to think that God chose to “indwell” me, to take up residence inside me, was just, well, too weird for me to really grasp. And yet, every time I have experienced His song in my life; every time I have felt moved by Him to act in a way that I hadn’t acted before (usually a very positive change from the way I had acted previously), I have been amazed, and I have experienced an eagerness to explore more of Him.
A religious leader named Nicodemus, an influential thinker who served as a member of the Jewish ruling counsel when Jesus was alive, also became perplexed by concepts he couldn’t explain, and yet he felt drawn to explore them. That’s what led him to Jesus. John chapter three tells of that encounter. (I encourage you to read all of chapter three.)
Jesus taught him that most people tried to be religious by accepting only those concepts which were readily observable, but that He was teaching spiritual realities that could only be spiritually perceived. And Jesus gave an example in verse 8 of the wind. We can’t actually see the wind, but we can certainly tell it’s there, because we can see the effect. Therefore, even though we can’t see the cause, we know there must be a cause.
So it is with God’s vast Spirit. We can see the tidal movements in a literal ocean, but we can’t see the specific cause of those tides—the unseen force of gravity caused by the alignment and distance of the moon and other cosmic influences. Likewise, we can see the tides of change in the lives of people who are inhabited by God’s Spirit, but we can’t actually see the Spirit. Anyone with eyes to see the changes taking place in people’s lives because of their encounter with the Triune God should be able to tell that there is a powerful influencing force causing those changes. There must be a cause.
In that same talk with Nicodemus, Jesus discusses all three of God’s personal manifestations which we label The Trinity. In verses six through eight he talks of God’s Spirit. In verses thirteen through fifteen he talks about the Son of Man (referring to Himself). And in verses sixteen through twenty-one he refers to God in a way that obviously means the Father.
Here’s the fascinating part of this passage for me. Without God’s creative ability, we wouldn’t be here in the first place, and we wouldn’t be able to ponder the vast ocean of His grace. Without the Father sending the Son, we would not have a living representation of God’s love in a form we could humanly understand; and we would not have our sins covered over by the atonement of the only One who is truly Holy and therefore able to pay the ultimate price of our sin. Without His Spirit bearing witness to our spirits, we could not discern God’s revelation of His vast glory to those He longs to know and love. So the bottom line is this: We need to swim around in the entire ocean in order to experience God completely. We cannot separate the three manifestations of the same God, or we miss what He wants to do for us: reveal Himself, His love, His forgiveness for sin, His redemptive power, and His plan to take us home to heaven to be with Him forever after we have finished our life on earth.
The more I know of Him, the more I know I don’t know. And yet that makes me want to dive in and do some more treasure hunting, because the more I discover of Him, the more I want to discover more.
Clark Cothern is the Senior Pastor of Living Water Community Church, Ypsilanti, MI.
Here is my first blush of the question at hand…..
Imagination:
As defined by Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary: (www.m-w.com)
“1: the act or power of forming a mental image of something not present to the senses or never before wholly perceived in reality”
Power in Greek is Dunamis. It is the word Jesus when he assured the disciples that He would send the Holy Spirit.
Luke 24:48-49:
"You are witnesses of these things. And behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you; but stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high."
I believe that “imagination” is born of inspiration. Inspiration is born of the work of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit gives us the power of “…forming a mental image of something not present to the senses or never before wholly perceived in reality.” Keep in mind that “reality” is another word for “the world”. The Holy Spirit allows us to “perceive” things not of the world, but of God.
We are inspired through these mental images as a way to communicate truths that are not “visible” to the world. We in turn, communicate them in various ways: art, music, poetry, imagery in speech (preaching) and the like.
Isn’t that what Jesus did? He used parables - setting the imagination in motion to visualize truths “…never before wholly perceived in reality?”
Simply put, imagination is a gift; and like all gifts it can be used for good or evil. Each must choose… but must choose wisely.
I have been thinking about this thing "illuminated imagination" for a while now and I must say I keep getting stuck. So it has taken me a while to figure out why that is. I have come to this conclusion; The words, "illuminated imagination". To me the imagination itself is the result of the 'mind illuminated'. For most of us anyway. Some of us have the gift, if you will, of being in a state of illuminated imagination as part of their normal daily living. I think they call these people "geniuses'". For me however, I find that my imagination isn't all that "illuminated". Just having an imagination at all sometimes requires a little effort. If I can tap into that and actually create something out of the ordinary, that would be great. I do believe however that my imagination is God given, however unilluminated it may be sometimes. At the same time it is this God given imagination in me that serves as a constant precipator to the heightened areas of my life that keep me growing spiritually, mentally and physically.
Aren't most of our actions or at least the ones that leave behind a trail of effects, preconceived through our imagination, before they come into existence?
Aren't we after all "creative" beings?
In my previousl life..BG, "before God", when I was searching for "more" of what God was and who He was in my life, it was that part of me that imagined what it would be like being in Gods good graces all of the time. That precipated my search for the truth and henceforth my salvation.
Didn't we all imagine, as children, what we wanted to be when we "grew up"? Or what we would do when we gradudated from high school? What if, I mean really what if we had not imagined any of this? Where would you and I be today?
Don't we all imagine, at least sometimes, what it would be like to live in a world where color and race and religion and beliefs didn't matter...that we could all just get along in peace? Well didn't that imagining create integregation, evangelism, the end of slavery, Women's rights, and a host of other cultural changes that were the result of someone imagining that hey...this can change..this can be better..I can "imagine" that!
Without our imaginations how could we take another step in the path of life that gives birth to change? I can't help but imagine what Gods plan is for my life...this precipates the whole of my relationship with Him, my prayers, my thoughts, my decisions.
Unlike John Lennon I imagine there is a Heaven and what it will be like when I get there. And like the apostle Paul I strive for that "prize" which awaits me.
I enjoy my imagination. I believe It brings a spiritual energy to our lives that if it did not exist, we would all walk around like zombies. It is what God instilled in us to bring alive all that he created in us and...to bring it alive with a uniqueness that is unique to our own imagination.
I cannot imagine not having an imagination!
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