Imagining God

I've been thinking for a little while about this "Name-Worshiping" idea that I've blogged about recently. It reminds me of something I've thought for a long time.

A lot of times you hear more or less an accusation that religion invents God for whatever reason--we need something to justify our existence on this planet, we need a crutch to get through tough times, we need a way to control the masses, etc.

So no matter what kind of experience one has had with the divine, perhaps even supernatural encounters with miracles or visions, and no matter what evidence you see for the divine, there will be those who say, well, that's just your imagination.

My response to this would be, I don't think it's just my imagination... but I do think imagination has a lot to do with it.

In the modern world people often try to pick sides between a cold, rational way of looking at things and a romantic view that incorporates mystery and wonder. Often things we say seem like attempts to convert each other from one point of view to the other: "Oh, that's just your imagination," or "Where's your sense of wonder?"

If you pick one side or another, though, you're just cutting yourself in half. Reason and imagination go together, always, and when they don't you're bound to go wrong somewhere.

This is especially clear to a mathematician, actually, since imagination is essential to discovering new mathematics, but reason and logic are the tools by which we tie these new discoveries to old ones.

On a more basic level, imagination and reason are both involved when we ask the question, how do I know this is real? How do I know the world around me is real? How do I know God is real?

How can I really know another person? Oh sure, my capacity to reason plays a role. I have to learn patterns in a person's speech and behavior. Social interaction can be just as much a game as anything else, with rules and logic that a master can figure out and manipulate.

But that's not all there is to really knowing a person. My ability to know a person has everything to do with my ability to imagine her. Imagine what it really means for her to be a person. Imagine her as more than a face in the crowd, an individual with an imagination just like mine. She has stories, hopes, and dreams, and she wants to imagine someone else imagining her.

A lot of philosophy is done with the intention of musing on a thought for a while because it's interesting to think about. I could never do philosophy that way, and I'm not doing that now. To me philosophy begins with pain.

There really is nothing quite like the pain of knowing a person deeply, only to be faced with the reality that it really was just your imagination.

It's tempting for someone who has experienced this to retreat and say, it was my imagination that did this to me. If I simply put on my guard, hide behind the cold shell of logic and reason, then I won't experience this pain anymore.

But only those who lose their life find it. It is only by risking yourself enough to imagine someone who might, after all, not even be there, that you can ever truly love someone.

(Am I speaking metaphorically? Sometimes it's hard to tell. Perhaps metaphor just expresses reality so much better than facts.)

Reason grasps for answers; imagination creates possibilities. They need one another. I would not diminish the importance of anyone's attempt to provide reasons for God's existence; but I emphatically believe that imagination is essential to the spiritual life.

Very often our reason flourishes after a rush of imagination. That's how it always works in mathematics, anyway, and I suspect it works that way in theology. It's no wonder the prophets were always telling people to tear down their idols. Idols limit the imagination; they teach us to think of God as smaller than He really is.

Christian traditions have doctrines that they've built up to direct people toward God. I've noticed that when pastors preach about doctrine, they tend to focus on the weakness of ideas outside their own tradition.

What if, instead, pastors focused on the weaknesses of their own tradition? What if each pastor could act as a prophet for his own congregation, urging them to tear down their own idols, and not self-righteously look down on the idols of others?

Would this not liberate the imagination from the chains of "pure doctrine" that we Christians so quickly wrap around ourselves out of sheer vanity? But we are too afraid of a God who speaks out of a whirlwind, a God who meets our questions with more questions, rather than answers.

There are many Christians these days who say we need more apologists, more people explaining why the Bible is fully reliable, showing that evolution is false and creation is true, proving that Jesus rose from the dead, or giving five reasons why there must be a God.

But my honest answer to anyone who asks me why I believe in God is that faith is as risky as love. My faith looks forward in hope to something I don't even understand, but I try to imagine it every day. I try to imagine a world without evil, and I think, God, that's what I pray for.

Sometimes I catch just a glimpse when I see the sun rise on a clear autumn day, or when I hear a voice that I've been waiting all day to hear, or maybe when I just stop and let myself be alone with my own thoughts. Just a glimpse is all. Isn't that all any of us ever really see of those we love?

I don't suppose that will convince anyone of anything, nor do I even think it should. But it's honest, and maybe the more I think about it the more fruit will come of it. That's the cool thing about reason--eventually it can catch up to imagination, before imagination takes another turn.

Until my reason does catch up, though, this little blog of mine will have to act as a bookmark so I can come back to these thoughts. It's hard to shake the feeling sometimes that there's something just around the corner that I'm not seeing.

Life is like that, though, isn't it?