The Importance of Your Imagination
Prison, the Exodus, and Resurrection
Earlier this year, I laid out a general theory that ties our 1) personal actions to our 2) stories, which point toward our 3) desires.
Our actions, stories, and desires are formed in the soil of our 4) imagination, which is affected by our 5) attention and 6) environment.
Now, I’m breaking down each of the parts for a fuller explanation.
I: Exodus and Imagination
Your imagination is the lens through which you view the world.
Let me start with the exodus. We’ve seen movies and heard stories about it. The central figure, Moses, is rescued as a baby. He grows up and has to flee Egypt after killing an Egyptian; in the desert he sees a burning bush and is told to speak to the people about God’s salvation. Through a series of miracles, God acts to liberate the people of Israel. This culminates in Passover, where God strikes the Egyptians while telling the Israelites to eat a special meal with their coats on and sandals ready; it’s a night of watching and waiting for the Lord.
In the book of Acts, an imagination shaped by the exodus sees how God continues to act. Take, for example, three episodes of prison escapes—where followers of Jesus are miraculously liberated from prison.
The first, in Acts 5, simply records “the apostles” in jail; they are liberated by an angel arriving and telling them to speak to the people (just as Moses was told to speak), and eventually brought before the Jewish leaders—just as Moses was brought before Pharaoh. We get echoes of the exodus story here: people rescued, people told to give a message that’s both for the general masses but results in a confrontation with the rulers.
Or, in Acts 12, Peter is in prison and an angel arrives. The angel strikes Peter to wake him up (echoing language in Passover of God striking, only subverting the meaning); Peter is told to get his cloak and sandals on, just as the Israelites were to eat with their cloaks on and sandals ready; and Peter is told to leave in the night. The words echo the exodus again.
In Acts 16, Paul and Silas are up in the night watching and worshipping—just as Passover was a night of watching and worship—when there’s a miraculous earthquake that leads to their liberation. This ends up with them teaching the jailer the reason for their hope—just as the exodus narrative speaks of the rescue of the Israelites spreading to the local populace (“many other people went up with them” Exodus 12:38).
Three prison rescues are three mini-exodus events in Acts. Each includes a confrontation with oppression, a miraculous liberation, a call to mission to continue to share the hope these followers of Jesus have.
Of course, we can just as easily say that each event is shaped by the cross and resurrection of Jesus: suffering leading to miraculous salvation—though some of the language seems to echo the exodus story specifically. But my main point is that by preparing your imagination, the text opens and expands. The Bible becomes literature, if you will, meant to be read to inform your imagination: the liberation of the exodus is occurring again. Too often, the Bible is taught not as literature but a moralistic text, as if the point of these stories was merely to be good and God will deliver you. (Which is a misreading of the text, as other stories right alongside these show followers of this new Way dying: the work of rescue God performs does not occur all at once or in predictable fashion.)
II: Constructing Imagination
Martin Luther writes, “I am persuaded that without knowledge of literature pure theology cannot at all endure, just as heretofore, when letters have declined and lay prostrate, theology, too, has wretchedly fallen and lay prostrate…Certainly it is my desire that there should be as many poets and rhetoricians as possible…”
That is, without a shaping effort of the imagination, without understanding the Bible as a story, we will not grasp the theological importance of scripture. Theology collapses to moralism without imagination. But it’s not just the Bible. Life collapses without imagination; we have information or imperatives that we tell ourselves, but we cannot string information into something coherent without an imaginative framework. This is why the philosopher Byung-Chul Han writes that “Life in late modernity is utterly naked. It lacks narrative imagination. Pieces of information cannot be tied together into a narrative.”
Our imaginations are critical to understanding not only the narrative of the Bible, but the narratives of our lives. An imagination shaped by the story of the Bible will see themes in-breaking to everyday life: first in other stories we see or read, with ideas of Eden, the Fall, transformation, Exodus-shaped rescue, and resurrection will be themes often repeated for those with eyes to see, and eventually we will see these themes in other lives and our very own. Failure to do this reduces faith to a set of morals and miracles. The morals are meant to guide our lives, and the miracles become necessary to justify the morals, as evidence they are really true. If and when they don’t arrive: crisis.
An imagination shaped to see story, and a larger story of which my life can fit into, doesn’t seem to be a trick as much as the trick. This is what Byung-Chul Han is writing about; Annie Dillard proclaims that “art remakes the world according to sense.” We bring an imaginative construct to the world in order to bring order, understanding, meaning.
This is why C.S. Lewis can write that he sees Christianity like he sees the sun has risen—not simply that he sees it, but by it that he sees everything else. This only works with an imagination shaped by a certain type of faith.
Because, naturally, all our imaginations are informed by—and, consequently, inform—something we could call faith. I don’t mean only traditional Christian faith, but the many faiths we or those near us may find ourselves holding. In 21st century America, we have certain faiths around consumerism, abundance, or political liberty: that is, we have imaginative constructs that tell us this is what is real, what the good life is, what we should pursue. We may have faith that only what is measurable exists: a wholly material view of the world is an imaginative construct that seeks a clear answer (that humanity can grasp) for every phenomenon or experience. This particular imagination has only been made plausible by humanity’s understanding of the natural world, which accelerated at a rapid pace over the last 200 years.
Our imaginations are the water that keeps our stories afloat, our faith afloat, even the water that surrounds and shapes our desires. The imagination of consumerism tells me that what I buy will give me satisfaction, happiness, even help carve out and solidify my identity.
An imagination shaped by the exodus will mean that I understand I need liberation and rescue; I am victim to something over and against me, and rescue will come both through a miraculous event and my belief and participation in such an event. Such an imagination is also ripe for what Christians believe the exodus points to: resurrection. The two could be said to be sides of the same coin, in that early Christian writers pointed to the resurrection as a type of exodus. In a good use of symbolism, the reverse is also true—exodus is a type of resurrection.
III: Resurrection
On Good Friday, I proclaim that I want an imagination shaped more and more by both of these symbols. The imaginative concept insists that a new world is on its way, and I’m to play a role in the delivery. It insists resurrection has already broken into this world and that it’s pulling this world forward, and our best stories and hopes and dreams ought to have a resurrection shape (and many already do if we would recognize it—Harry Potter, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, classic Disney retellings of fairytales, our self-understandings that certain aspects must die so something new can grow, the natural rhythms of the earth—I’ll stop there). It insists liberation for humanity is both here and on its way.
And on Good Friday, this imaginative construct is not a call to judgment but one of proclamation. A proclamation that liberty has arrived, that hope is breaking in with the day, a new world is on its way, the old ruler is deposed and a new good king is crowned. Rescue is happening in surprising places: not all at once, and not predictably—but is it ever predictable in a good story?
As the Indian author Arundhati Roy writes, “Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”
Our imaginations will tell us not only what we think of this day, or of stories written long-ago, but whether such ideas like exodus and resurrection continue to happen, in our midst: the ongoing miracle of moving from death to life, from captivity to liberation, shaping our hopes and stories to encounter greater depth and meaning.
May your hopes and desires be for life and real liberation rather than an empty promise. May your stories—and lives—be filled with meaning and significance, and your imaginations with visions of rescue and resurrection not only once, but again and again and again.