×

At the age of 6, the Little Prince abandons “a magnificent career as an artist” when the adults around him misunderstand his drawings. “Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves,” he laments, “and it is exhausting for children to have to provide explanations over and over again.”

The Little Prince is right. As we age, we lose the ability to imagine. In fact, brain-imaging studies suggest that imagination loss is linked to memory loss. As Harvard researcher Donna Rose Addis explains, “Our theory of how one puts together a future event is that . . . you take bits of information from past events and you kind of recombine those and integrate them into some new scenario that hasn’t happened before.” In other words, we struggle to imagine because we struggle to remember.

Memory and Imagination

Memory is an important part of our faith. The Lord put a rainbow in the sky to “remember” his everlasting covenant with Noah (Genesis 9:16). Throughout the Exodus account—in the institution of the feasts, in the preamble to the law, and in the instructions for entering the promised land—the Israelites were repeatedly told to remember what the Lord had done to bring them out of Egypt (e.g., Exodus 13:3; Deuteronomy 5:15; 7:18; 15:15; 16:12). During the period of the judges, the people “did not remember the Lord their God,” and, as a result, “everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 8:34). The psalmists frequently wrote about the beauty and glory of remembering and the danger and folly of forgetting (e.g., Psalm 78:42; 105:5; 106:7).

The Old Testament exhortations to remember, however, did not merely point to the past. Now that the glory of the Son has been revealed, we know that the commands to remember also pointed to the future. Even if the prophets did not fully understand the anticipated glory of the incarnation, the Lord used them to offer glimpses of glory to his people. For example, Isaiah spoke about a “lamb” that would be “cut off” by the “will of the Lord” in order to “bear the sin of many” (Isaiah 53). As they remembered the past, of course, they thought about the blood of the Passover lamb that was sprinkled on the doorframes of the homes of their ancestors. Yet Isaiah also prophesied about the future. Who was this man of whom the prophet spoke?

When Jesus came, the “imagination” of the prophets turned into reality. What they could vaguely picture in their heart became concretely incarnate. As Peter later reflected, “Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories” (1 Peter 1:10). This inquiring was not merely a mental exercise; it was a thirsting and a longing, an affection for the One who was to come.

Imagination in the Overlap of the Ages

Like the prophets, we live in an age where many things—but not all things—have been revealed. We have seen the glory of the Father in Christ Jesus, but the fullness of redemption has not yet been revealed. Some theologians call this “the overlap of the ages” or “the already but not yet.”

Again, here, our ability to remember affects our ability to imagine. For example, if we frequently remember that we were once “separated from Christ” with “no hope and without God in the world” (Ephesians 1:12), then it becomes easy to imagine that there is no one beyond his grace and redemption. He died for us when we hated him. Is anyone beyond this salvation?

In this age, when we are not yet made perfect, imagination is integral to all of our relationships. John writes, “Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared” (1 John 3:2), and Paul says, “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully” (1 Corinthians 13:12). In The Meaning of Marriage, Tim and Kathy Keller write,

If you don’t see your mate’s deep flaws and weaknesses and dependencies, you’re not even in the game. But if you don’t get excited about the person your spouse has already grown into and will become, you aren’t tapping into the power of marriage as spiritual friendship. The goal is to see something absolutely ravishing that God is making of the beloved. You see even now flashes of glory. You want to help your spouse become the person God wants him or her to be.

Imagination and Work

To see what cannot be seen is not merely important in the context of spousal or personal relationships; it is also important in the context of work. Where can I see flashes of glory in my workplace? In the content of my work, what is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, excellent, and praiseworthy? What was God’s original intention with the industry in which I work? How is he redeeming it and where can I get involved in his plan of redemption?

As we ask ourselves these questions, it is important to remember that imagination—unlike imaginary—is rooted in reality. In fact, research shows that children do not develop an imagination until the age of 2 because they simply do not have enough reality from which to create new scenarios and possibilities. In the same way, when we imagine what the gospel and redemption might look like in our work, we take what we know from the Scriptures and apply it in new ways to the reality of our lives.

The creation-fall-redemption framework is helpful when we imagine how God is working to heal our world. In some industries, there is so much brokenness that seeing “creation” and imagining “redemption” seems futile because “fall” is so readily apparent. This is the moment, however, when we must return to remembering. We remember what the Lord has done in seemingly impossible situations with nothing but sinful human beings. Most especially, of course, we remember the incarnation, the life, the death, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who is “able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us” (Ephesians 3:20).

Is there enough evidence for us to believe the Gospels?

In an age of faith deconstruction and skepticism about the Bible’s authority, it’s common to hear claims that the Gospels are unreliable propaganda. And if the Gospels are shown to be historically unreliable, the whole foundation of Christianity begins to crumble.
But the Gospels are historically reliable. And the evidence for this is vast.
To learn about the evidence for the historical reliability of the four Gospels, click below to access a FREE eBook of Can We Trust the Gospels? written by New Testament scholar Peter J. Williams.

Podcasts

LOAD MORE
Loading