Imagination and Revelation

Here at Living in a Larger Universe, from time to time, we like to observe and think using the reasoning and logic and observation God has given us.

Clive Staples Lewis, (yes, someone named their son that, I too would just use the letters and not spell it out) was a fascinating mind. He wrote books of profound impact about God and man, about nature and miracles, love and pain; but to me what is exemplary was his ability to write about all those things and package it in a children's book; and not just a crummy and confusing children's book but perhaps the most popular of its kind in modern history.

I have heard it said that the real examination a pastor should have to go through in order to become a preacher and minister in a church is to explain the Gospel of Jesus and the larger story of the bible in a way that a five-year-old could grasp it. I often am applauding the scientist or the philosopher or the theologian who I am sure is brilliant . . . if I could only understand the words he is using. But those who can swim in the depths of complexity and difficulty but come back and clearly and concisely explain what they just experienced, that is someone special.

God gave all of us the ability to imagine. Each person has the gift to think outside the laws of nature, and inside the broader scope of reason--here I am thinking of the Professor's argument for what the word 'logical' means in the book The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

There are some Christians who fear the unsure and preposterous. It makes no sense for someone like this to understand, for example, the book of Revelation as a book mainly describing history past. The book was written for people who were about to die for what they believed, I'm not so sure where John--the author of Revelation--would have been going in encouraging these death-row saints by telling them things that mattered not to them.

Imagination helps us to see. For something to be IMpossible that thing or idea must have absolute zero chance of ever occurring at any time in any place anywhere . . . ever! Imagination says, what if. What if this happened; what if things were this way. god has given us the ability to step into a world that is different but plausible compared to ours.

The book of Hebrews states that 'faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not yet seen.' Faith is not imaginative as in fictional or untrue or implausible or even impossible; no, faith is imagining what WILL be. Imagination come true according to the Christian bible, this is how the Christian hopes.