Fairy Tales, Mary L. Gow. c. 1880
. . .it’s easy if you try. In fact you don’t even have to try, because it’s here and that’s the point. Don’t bother trying. Science has taken the place of the imagination and we are left with but a thread of the great tapestry that makes us human. Yet we think we know it all.
Now of course everything you know about science is as much a part of your imagination as any Fairy story. How many of you have seen an electron? How many of you have seen evolution take place? How many of you have actually seen any scientific construct that you have in your head? No, you take them on faith, and imagine what is going on. But this scientific imagination is very anemic, it only covers part of life. And when it goes beyond observing the natural world it causes many more problems than is solves. When a notion about natural selection goes from an observation, to a motivation for invading all of Europe, millions of people die. And this whole method of seeing everything as scientific and rejecting any imagination that is deemed unscientific is just as destructive.
It is not bigotry to be certain we are right; but it is bigotry to be unable to imagine how we might possibly have gone wrong.- G.K.Chesterton
Imagination is the key to being a human and therefore the key to being the best type of human, a Christian. The heart and soul of the Christian message is that the transcendent God of the Universe came down to earth as one of us. We must do the same with the Gospel, we must imagine the current status of the other person and tailor the Gospel accordingly. Empathy is imagination. This is why Jesus so often invented parables and metaphors that the people could understand. The work of every teacher is imagination. The very Golden Rule is a call to imagine the position of the other person, put yourself in their shoes and your actions towards them will become very clear.
Boy Reading, Thomas Anschutz. c. 1900
It is often said of Chesterton that he had an endless capacity to appreciate. This is very similar to the faith of the young child. They are endless in their ability to dream up a world where the events before them are meant to do them good. Unfortunately we know that many would do them harm. Many scientists today are doing them harm. By cutting out the myths, fables and fairy tales of old we destroy this ability to imagine the good, or anything beyond ourselves. We like to pride ourselves on the notion that these stories are untrue and we don’t lie to our children. But this itself is a lie, you are telling your child that the imagination is not important. Most of humanity has understood the necessity of moral stories, of fairy tales in turning children into adults with virtue. The imagination is like a muscle, it must be trained and exercised if it is to operate effectively. Without that training we become the ‘men without chests’ from C. S. Lewis’ The Abolition of Man. They are men with brains and appetites, but nothing in the chest, no heart, to direct these thoughts and impulses. In a sense they become the animals that they worship in their science. If you worship the observation of the created world you become just like the pagans Paul talks about in Romans 1, worshiping the crated thing rather than the creator. The Creator made us unique, we have the ability to not do what we were made for. We can commit suicide and kill people and dishonor God in any number of ways, it’s called ‘sin’. In fact we are biased to choosing incorrectly, we are sinners by nature. And so we end up worse than the animals, only following our lusts and crazy thoughts without the guidance that the rest of creation has built in.
Imagination is key to every area of study and the idea of study in itself. If all you have is yourself and your observations are all that matters, why study anything? Your story is just as valid as the next person because you all have observation. Maybe people with 6 degrees get a little more respect, but not much. A well trained imagination can truly appreciate our place in this world. The medievals are often mocked for making the earth the center of the solar system. In reality they imagined a tiny dot called earth, the silent planet, surrounded by the great music of the heavenly spheres. The music was the harmony of God’s creation communing with him in obedience. And the earth was a small dot where man did not commune with it’s creator, it chose sin. Imagining yourself in this way makes you want to conform your mind to something greater than you, outside of this world. It makes you want to study. This is the reason why science as we know it today was born in Christendom. Humility, change, asking questions are all the result of well trained imaginations attempting to reach beyond themselves.
The Fairy Tale, Thomas Anshutz. C. 1902
How can you study history without the ability to imagine what it was really like for those people in that time? Today we don’t study history, we judge it by our bigotry. We assume we are more evolved and they were cave men, so we dissect how they were wrong and write millions of papers on it. This is the opposite of imagination, this is just applying the self backwards, this is the ultimate arrogance.
The same goes for the study of literature. It requires imagination to try to conform our minds in the image the author is trying to communicate. We allow him to take us on a journey and make us better humans. But modern scientific man has no use for this. Instead we again impose ourselves on the text, the only question we ask is “what does it mean to me?” Of course if you can bash tradition and Christianity in the process you can get extra bonus points. But this too is the opposite of imagination, it is arrogance.
The same is seen in all of the arts. Art has become something that someone blessed as an artist does. I’m not sure how this happens, but it seems a little like an elite club. In the past art was seen as a window to help us imagine. Beauty can inform our soul and make us good. It is the same exercise of imagination, tools to help us go beyond ourself and our little, tiny insignificant world.
And each of these applies to our Christian walk today. Our faith is based on historical events passed down in a piece of literature the Bible. Satan has become very adept at undermining the basics of humanity, so he doesn’t even have to bother with the Gospel. The same is true of art. Art is an aspect of culture. Culture is religion externalized or religion incarnate. Today we pick a church based not on how it changes our soul but on how we feel about it. We think musical standards are based on what we like, we are the authority. If we don’t like it we go somewhere else. Instead we should ask if this music makes us more like the standard of all truth, goodness and beauty, God. Does the culture of this church exercise our imagination to appreciate more of God’s world and to see how little we are. Not, “does this music make me feel good about myself?”, but “does this music make me a better self?”
So, good stories are the key because they help us to imagine what is not us. The truth of the story is not as big of a deal as the truth conveyed. Does it matter if the good Samaritan never lived? I don’t think so, the fact is that Jesus’ story helped us to imagine it and it made us better, it conveyed truth. Little boys play with toy swords so that they may one day be soldiers. Little girls play with baby dolls so that they may one day be mothers. We, all of us, should play with our imaginations in Fairy Land so that we may each day glorify God in this land.
The Land of Enchantment, Norman Rockwell.