A Holy Imagination

A Holy Imagination I John 3:1-7 Cultivating imagination is an important part of childhood. It helps to develop social, psychological and emotional capacities that help children understand their world and their relation to it. Watch a group of young children playing together, and the first thing you’ll notice is that each of them believes that they are more than they appear to be. Give them a bunch of pillows, and they are no longer small children, but mighty warriors in mortal combat banging away on each other. When we were being raised on the farm, all the neighbor children would come over, and we would go into the haymow and build houses or places to hide for hide and seek. If we were in the woods, we would build lean-tos and sleep overnight with stories around the campfire, or pick up a stick and imagine it was a gun or makeshift bow and arrow and play cowboys and Indians; or if it snowed, we would build forts and have snowball fights or igloos and do the winter version of playing house. I gave Gabe a fairly expensive toy in a big box one Christmas, and that afternoon he was outside playing with the box using it as a bobsled riding down the snow-covered side hill. What looks like simple fun to them is actually vitally important work in a child’s development. Imaginative play helps them to learn how to solve problems, create new possibilities, and — perhaps most importantly — develop the belief that they can one day change the world. Imagination transcends the limits of the present physical world and the limits of a child’s inner world, opening new ways of seeing and being. Cultivating a holy imagination is still important for children of God who, at any age, are called to see the present, in light of the imagined future made possible by Jesus Christ. Somewhere along the line, however, imagination begins to become less important than knowledge. As we get older, we tend to be more concerned with what is, than what could be. Education gives us amazing tools for learning about the present world and about ourselves, but sometimes that knowledge can begin to impose limits on our imagination and our capacity to think outside the box. It’s not that knowledge is unimportant; it is that knowledge is limited when it is without imagination. Albert Einstein, who most people would consider the avatar for the pursuit of knowledge, once said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world … Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.” 2 The story is told of two elderly men, roommates in a nursing home. One had recently gone blind and was living in quiet despair. He felt that life held little for him. He wanted only to die. His roommate could see just fine, but he had trouble getting around. He rarely left his bed, which was next to the window of their room. Neither one could remember how it happened, but one day the man who could see began describing to his blind roommate what was going on in the world outside their window. He told him of the mail carrier making his rounds; of neighbors walking their dogs; of the teenage boy and girl who passed the window every day after school, who first held hands, then embraced, then had an argument, then reconciled once again. As the days went on, the blind man looked forward for these updates from the outside world. It was life to him. His friend seemed to take such joy in it and had a real gift for describing what everything looked like. Then one day his friend, who was much sicker than he had imagined, died. A new patient was wheeled in. The blind man asked his new roommate if he would let him know what was happening outside the window. “I’d be glad to,” said the roommate, “but I don't know how I could do that. There's nothing outside our window, but a solid brick wall.” The blind man was bewildered for a moment. He felt betrayed by his former friend. Had he been playing him for a fool? But then he realized, in a flash, what a precious gift his friend had given. He had spun, out of nothing but the stuff of his imagination, an entire world. He had dreamt up the mail carrier, and the neighbors, and the pair of teenage lovers, and he’d made those characters as real as if they’d lived outside that window every day. In that moment of revelation, the man realized there are things worse than having no sight. It is far worse to have no imagination, no inner vision. We pursue knowing about the Bible, the life and times and lessons of the people of God, wanting to understand our history and doctrines and beliefs and the why of it all, all important things; but sometimes we can become so enamored, so in love with that knowledge (as many academics and some pastors would be) that we fail to cultivate an imagination of what God is actually wanting to do in us and through us in the world. For example, it is sad to say that plenty of biblical scholars and even some pastors and not a few lay people I’ve known, are not believers. They have knowledge, but no imagination, no Spirit of the living God breathing within them. We need both a strong foundation of the knowledge of God - and a holy imagination to live out the vision for the eternal life God has for us, both now and in the future. 3 Perhaps that’s why John consistently refers to his audience as “children.” It’s an invitation to cultivate a childlike imagination for the kind of life God has made possible for them in Jesus Christ. Earlier in this passage, John lays out the difference between the accumulation of knowledge and the imagination that leads to action. It’s one thing to have the knowledge of the truth and say, “I am in the light” (John’s metaphor for walking with Christ). But if one cannot use that knowledge to imagine and demonstrate love for one’s brothers and sisters, that one “is in the darkness, walks in the darkness, and does not know the way to go, because the darkness has brought on blindness” (I John 2:9-11). “Antichrists” (as he calls them) had slipped into the Christian community, denying that Jesus is the Christ, and John urges the community to refute that falsehood, both with their “knowledge” (2:20), and with their imagination of who Christ is and who He called them to be: “If you know that He is righteous, you may be sure that everyone who does right has been born of him” (2:29). Those who are born of Jesus, of His Holy Spirit, are indeed “children of God.” We might say that the children of God are the product of God’s own imagination, going all the way back to creation, when God created humankind in God’s own image (Genesis 1:26-27). The gospel of John begins with Jesus being the Word made flesh, as the perfect image of God, the One who has “made Him known” to the world (John 1:18). Those who receive Him have been given “power to become children of God, who were born not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:12-13). All of this is at God’s initiative, out of God’s imagination, and through God’s love. Today’s verse begins, “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are.” But we aren’t merely God’s children now, John goes on to say. We are to imagine something more. “What we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when He is revealed, we will be like Him, for we will see Him as He is. And all who have this hope in Him purify themselves, just as He is pure.” In other words, the children of God are to imagine that they can and will become like Jesus, the perfect image of God, not later but now! Wesley would say this is our “moving on to perfection.” In other words, the children of God are to imagine themselves in the person of Jesus Christ and act accordingly. Tall order, isn’t it? But we are not left alone to accomplish this. We have His Holy Spirit bearing witness to our spirit to be successful. Like children wrapping themselves in the garb of the superhero they want to be, we are to “put on Christ, or clothe yourselves with Christ” as Paul imagines in Romans 13:14 and 4 Galatians 3:27. As a child might imagine being a force for good in the world, children of God can too and can imagine and can be like Jesus and be “purified themselves, just as He is pure” (1 John 3:3). And then there’s the real superpower for those who believe. The more a child of God believes that they are in the mold of Jesus, the more power they have over sin. “You know that He was revealed to take away sins, and in Him there is no sin,” says John. “No one who abides in Him sins; (on the other hand) no one who sins has either seen Him or known Him. Little children, let no one deceive you. Everyone who does what is right is righteous, just as He is righteous” (vv. 5-7). But let’s be real, this might sound less like imagination and more like delusion, given the human propensity for sin, even among those who are striving hard for holiness. John admits earlier that sin is still a factor in the life of the believer: “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” (1 John 1:8) But sin doesn’t have to be the deciding factor. Indeed, the more we imagine ourselves being formed in the image of Christ through disciplines like prayer, Bible study, accountable relationships with other believers, and confession of sin; the less sin becomes a nemesis in our lives. As New Testament professor D. Moody Smith once said, “The work of Christ brings about our birth from God, that is freedom from sin, but a freedom that must be ratified continually by willing and doing what is right, as John never tires of urging.” Here’s where imagination becomes critical for the children of God. If we cannot imagine that we can have victory over sin, then we are trapped in a never-ending addictive cycle of sin and repentance. That then is a good indication that we’re not living up to our full potential as the children of God. If we believe we are born of God, then we can imagine a life that is not dominated by the constant cycle of sin, because our lives are modeled after Christ and empowered by the Holy Spirit. A child at play believes he or she can be or do anything. A healthy imagination breeds creativity, confidence and a vision for the best of what life can be. Imagination can lead to a discipline in pursuit of an imagined goal, a focus on what to embrace and what to avoid in pursuit of that goal, and the imitation of the kind of people we want to be. Children of God need to cultivate a healthy imagination for the kind of people God created them to be, to be like Jesus, to be people who love God and one another, and then develop the habits and practices that get them there. That’s how we change and how God can use us to be a force for good in the world!