Right vs. Cool

            Which do you prefer?
1. Jesus came into the world 2000 years ago to destroy the power of death and sin over people and to defeat the power of Satan in the world.
            Or do you like this better?
2. There is an ancient prophecy—three thousand years old—of the coming of a child who would be born into the world but who has always existed, who would destroy the elder gods who weren’t really gods but agents of the dark Archon. The child would be born in no place, raised elsewhere, roam the savage frontier of an evil empire, be betrayed from within his own ranks, and achieve victory over the greatest tool in the Demon-Archon’s arsenal: the one power, the consumer of souls who in the language of men is called Death. And then it happened. Baal had been destroyed in preparation for the time, and the gods of Egypt were waning. And though Jupiter had conquered Olympian Zeus, his own death knell was soon to be sounded. It was the hinge year, the first year, named such forever after to this very day: year one.

            If you’re like me, though you appreciate the clarity and preciseness of option one, you like the power and vision of option two. If you’re not like then you may get nothing of what I’m about to talk about. But if you are, then you’re prepared to hear about something our churches have been missing—something Satan robbed the church of which we barely noticed gone, but the absence of which has prove powerfully destructive. There is a hole in our theology that has already cost us our culture. It is a failure to understand the power of images.

A Theology of Imagination

            In an essay called “Horrid Red Things,” C. S. Lewis once made an unusual point. He said that there are two things Christians must do to reach “modern” people. The first makes sense to us: we must maintain the supernatural elements of basic Christian doctrine. The second is more puzzling. He said, “we must try to teach something about the difference between thinking and imagining” (God in the Dock 69). He went on to tell of a conversation he overheard between a mother and her little girl. The mother had said that taking too many aspirin was poisonous. The little girl replied that she didn’t think aspirin was poisonous because, when you broke it open, it didn’t have any “horrid red things” in it. The little girl knew what poison did—she had the right idea about it. But she thought that all poison was red—she had the wrong image in her head. In the same way, many people who object to Christianity do so, not because of what they believe about Christian theology, but because they have false images of what the Christian life is like in their heads and are confusing those images with ideas.

            A great reverse example of what I’m talking about is visible in how the American church today uses contemporary music to make Christianity “look” appealing to youth—we trade images of stain glass and boring hymns and replace them with images that appeal to young imaginations to be relevant and cool (more on “coolness” later).

            Our churches were born out of a desire to find a purity that traces back all the way to the New Testament Church; however, our churches were also born during the Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, and as such elevated left brained, propositional, reason based thinking above the more biblical model of learning truth through experiences and stories as well as through words. What has been lacking for four hundred plus years of protestant Christianity is a theology of imagination.

            In our culture, imagination has been reduced to fantasy and entertainment. Little children are allowed to have vivid imaginations and go to art and music classes. Adolescents, however, can only take those classes electively. And they are frequently accused of allowing their imaginations to “run away” with them. We see imagination as having no practical purpose. If this is so, then why did Jesus teach in parables? Most everything He taught was done so with imaginative language: stories, metaphors, symbolism and poetry. Imagination is a mode of thinking. It’s very practical. We use it all the time without seeing it for what it is. It is different from reason. When a preacher explains a difficult idea he uses what he was taught to call a “sermon illustration.” When teachers try to explain concepts to their students, they’ll often do so with an example. Do you know what those are? They’re truths for the imagination when reason can’t quite grasp the truth in words. When the Publican asked Jesus, “Who is my neighbor, He could have replied with a nice left brain, reason-based answer: “Your neighbor is whomever you see in need.” But He didn’t. Instead He told an imaginative story, the parable of the Good Samaritan. And the answer was suddenly obvious. It didn’t need to be explained in words the listeners would soon forget. They understood completely.

Why Does This Matter?

            A proper understanding of imagination matters for a lot of reasons. First of all, if we do think with a left brain and a right (reason and imagination), but we reach out to people with Christian truths packaged for left brain thinking only, we’re preaching a half-witted gospel. We’re teaching only half the truth the Bible offers. Secondly, if we don’t realize that our culture is one in which words are giving way to the power of images, we will become increasingly irrelevant. The proof of this is the fiasco that has been Christian film making up till the last few years: dull, boring movies which can’t find any market because their makers thought that Christian films were those that put sermons on celluloid. We figured out what the arts were for with music, producing songs that could have impact on Christians and non-Christians in our culture, but even then we didn’t know why we were doing what we were doing and so we argued incessantly over the conversion to new worship styles in our churches, those of us realizing their value able to argue that value with vague, unbiblical ideas like, “It reaches people” or “It’s culturally relevant.” We were right to value it but didn’t know the reasons why.

            The single most important reason that we have to understand what imagination is for as a mode of human knowing, however, is that, while reason helps us to understand what behavior is ethical, imagination motivates us to act on it. I’m about to say something pretty radical here: Our beliefs do not motivate us to be good. Our imaginative sense of what’s “cool” does. Imagine a men’s dorm on the campus of a Christian college. A guy goes walking around, chest stuck out, bragging to the other guys: “How’s it goin’ fellas. Had a birthday last week. That’s 20 years, two decades of virginity! I am the man. I am in control.” I’ve never heard a conversation like that. Nor have I heard it as a pick-up line: “How’s it goin’ ladies. My name’s Fred. I’m a virgin. That means you can count on me to respect you completely on a date. Not even going to bug you for a good night kiss.” The strange schizophrenia that our culture puts young Christian men through is hard to watch. Guys who come to a Christian college because they’re interested in serving the Lord face the bizarre situation that they should consider their virginity an honorable (the Bible word for “cool”) thing but are in fact embarrassed by their lack of sexual prowess. On the other hand, men who have not been true to God’s commands about sexual purity don’t have the stigma of virginity to be ashamed of but do feel guilty for their sin.

            Guilt and shame, you see, aren’t the same thing. Guilt arises out of understanding that we have broken some law. But shame is something we feel when we have a sense that we’ve violated a vision of what we ought to be. Because our culture bombards our young people with images from television and movies that sexual purity is nerdy, dorky, geeky, uncool, Christian kids have a harder time believing that they ought to remain celebate. Sure they know that sex outside of marriage is wrong, but they don’t see celebacy’s value. They don’t believe it in their hearts. All they have to motivate them to be good is guilt. What they need is an imaginative sense that sexual purity is not only right, but is also very, very cool. In medieval times such a sense existed. A great knight was only considered great if he could manage sexual self control. The greater his purity, the greater his power as a warrior. The great Lancelot of the Arthur stories was only defeated twice in battle, once by Arthur (and that by accident) and once by the purist of all knights, Sir Galahad. What a difference from contemporary visions of virgin men as nerds, geeks and dorks.

            The evidence that there is a strong connection between imaginative experiences and ethical behavior is explained in an amazing book by William Kilpatrick called, Why Johnny Can’t Tell Right from Wrong. Every indication from studies in moral upbringing is that stories and experiences contribute more to right actions than beliefs do. For example, in the 1800’s, people in the North believed slavery was wrong, but they were only stirred to action by their reading of a book that showed them the evils of slavery. That book was Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Upon meeting the author, Harriet Beecher Stowe, President Lincoln said of her, “So this is the little lady who started a big war”.

            You’ve seen this with your children without realizing what was going on. They watch a TV show and start acting that way. You read them stories, and the heroes inspire them to become a fireman, a policeman, or a doctor. You teach little kids Bible stories in Sunday school, not theological outlines from Paul. In junior high your kids’ very cool youth minister takes them to a camp, or a conference, or a concert and they see that Christianity isn’t just true and right, but it’s also very cool—and they commit themselves to Christ! Moral motivation comes from things we learn that resonate in our imaginations. The Bible calls coolness “honor” or “glory” and tells us to pursue these in God (Romans 2:6-7; Philippians 4:8). Psychology uses words like “role model,” literature the word “hero” and business the word “vision.” Even very down to earth, practical folks working in a practical business somewhere have learned the importance of having a vision for their business. What is vision but seeing with our imaginations what we want the future to be. Then we act on that vision to make it happen.

            Even faith is more about imagination than simple belief. For the last one hundred years people have said that the opposite of faith is reason. This is a completely unbiblical idea. Faith and reason can work hand in hand with no problem. Rather, the Bible says that the enemy of faith is sight. It’s when things “look” grim that our faith comes under attack. Faith, in such hardships, is not merely choosing to believe in abstract truth statements; it is choosing to see reality the way God sees it. It is choosing to exercise the imagination to envision the world as it is, not as appearances are making it. Truth certainly matters, but vision brings truth to life. It’s not enough to believe that sexual purity is right. We have to see its nobility, its honor, its glory. We have to see just how cool it is.