Children lead us in the ways of the imagination, as in so many other aspects of faith (see Matt 18:3). A cardboard box becomes a house or a palace; wooden bricks and wool become the pathway to electrified railways! I love the phrase ‘make-believe’, because I believe it captures the truth that belief actually leads to reality. The child’s world of ‘let’s pretend’ is as real to the child as the world of breakfast and baths! – and our imaginations, when harnessed to God, can lead us to spiritual worlds every bit as real as the physical matter we can see and touch.
Some see the imagination as an escapist route out of reality (and, of course, it can be.) But Pablo Picasso said, ‘Everything you can imagine is real’, and I believe God wants us to enter into fulness of life (Jn 10:10), rather than being restrained to the mundane which can only be explained by reason. Michael Card says that ‘the imagination is the vital bridge between the heart and the mind’ and I think if we are to grow tall in God, not being withered, stunted or lopsided in any way, we need to see imagination and reason yoked together and learn to love both. Reason is important: it explains, it clarifies, it gives context and understanding. But if we don’t use our imaginations to engage with God, we run the risk of knowing a lot about God without actually knowing Him at all. We are in danger of becoming outsiders to God’s story: outsiders looking in, but never really understanding God’s grace and mercy and love for ourselves. Imagination takes us inside the story. J. K. Rowling said, ‘In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it [the imagination] is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared. Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people’s minds, imagine themselves into other people’s places.’ When this ability is harnessed to God’s word, when faith and imagination are added together, the result is an endless world of possibilities!
