Faith And Imagination

How can we begin to perceive God? How can we understand God if he is with out boundaries or limits? It seems to me that the best way for us to try and perceive him is to use the part of our minds that is limitless as well, our imagination. After all don’t we say that our imagination is beyond constraints, beyond expectations, and beyond our primitive logic? And, coincidentally, don’t we describe God in the exact same way? In forming our image of God it is essential that we are rooted in scripture, but it is also important to realize those roots are only our foundation. If we try to define God only through the scriptures then we are not getting a full picture, where scripture ends imagination begins.

After all, scripture leaves things up to our imagination; it does not spell everything out word for word. Scripture tells us to love one another but what does that look like for each of us? It does not give strict rules as to how we are to carry out this commandment. It leaves it up to our imagination, so long as it is well guided through prayer. It is our duty now to interpret what it is that God wants us to do. He has given us the tool of imagination which, since we were created in his image, is like that of God’s imagination.

So we must take a leap of faith from logic to imagination, from concrete to abstract. But we have to be careful that this leap of faith does not turn into a free fall which, instead of bringing us closer to understanding God, could lead us astray. Ralph Waldo Emerson once said that:

A person will worship something, have no doubt about that. We may think our tribute is paid in secret in the dark recesses of our hearts, but it will out. That which dominates our imaginations and our thoughts will determine our lives, and our character. Therefore, it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming.

This is why we must be careful, not to restrain our imagination but rather pray for the Holy Spirit to help us lead it in a righteous direction and away from temptation. Luckily for us we can be sure that God is with us and will not give us more than we can handle as it says in 1 Corinthians 10:13:

No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.

Thus we should not be fearful but rather joyful in meeting the challenges that come while we use our imaginations to better comprehend God.

But how far can we truly reach with our imaginations? Can we ever hope to definitively and completely understand God? Well in Ephesians 3:20 it says:

²⁰Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, ²¹to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.

And in Romans 11:33 it says:

Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out!

Our minds deal with concrete and stable things, we can only briefly imagine abstract things and only to a certain point. That is why we often try to put boundaries and limits on God. This can be seen in the creation of idols which Habakkuk 2 talks about:

¹⁸ "Of what value is an idol, since a man has carved it? Or an image that teaches lies? For he who makes it trusts in his own creation; he makes idols that cannot speak.¹⁹ Woe to him who says to wood, 'Come to life!' Or to lifeless stone, 'Wake up!' Can it give guidance? It is covered with gold and silver; there is no breath in it.

The author and preacher Rob Bell also sheds insight on boundaries and God in his book Velvet Elvis:

“The moment God is figured out with nice neat lines and definitions, we are no longer dealing with God. We are dealing with somebody we made up. And if we made him up, then we are in control. And so in passage after passage, we find God reminding people that he is beyond and bigger and more.”

Therefore we must believe that even our imaginations cannot capture the full essence, justice, reasoning, and wisdom of God. Our imagination gives us only another aspect of God’s nature, not the full picture.

However, God has given us the gift of imagination and insight for a reason. And it seems that God wants us to wonder and question his nature and to continually imagine what he would have us do. This kind of wonder and imagination is captured in the song “I can only imagine” by MercyMe:

I can only imagine what it will be like, when I walk by your side. I can only imagine what my eyes will see, when your face is before me. I can only imagine!

While achieving a better grasp on God’s nature is abundantly important we must also remember that God does not want us to stop at just imagining, he wants us to take action on what he has called us to do.

After we have carefully imagined what it is that God would have us do in a certain situation we must ask him to guide us through the Holy Spirit. We must ask him to help us through prayer as it says in Philippians 4:6:

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.

I mean if we are able to use imagination, scripture, and the other means God have provided to us to discern his nature and will but we never put what we have discerned into action what good is it? As it says in James 2:26:

As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.

Accordingly, instead of constantly sitting in wondrous awe we must take action and apply what we have been taught both through the scripture and through the use of our imagination. Because there is a difference between belief and faith as Edith Hamilton points out:

Faith is not belief. Belief is passive. Faith is active.

We must be active in our faith as opposed to being passive in our beliefs. Thus let your prayerfully guided imagination lead you on your chase after God’s nature.

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