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Bible, imagination, scripture
Bible, imagination, scripture Entries in imagination (9)
What Makes God's Word Living and Active?
Thursday, April 14, 2011 at 12:05PM 
In Monday’s meditation I suggested it’s not enough to read the scripture with our mind, because we are body, soul, and spirit. Hearing God requires all of our being. What makes God’s word “living and active?” I’d like to suggest it’s something more than our intellect.
We’ve explored what it means to bring our imagination to bear in narrative portions of scripture, but what about those didactic letters of Paul and his friends? This is where so many theologians like to live: defining words, developing systematic theology, and generally being the smartest guys in the class. May I speak plainly, and perhaps heretically? I have a basic distrust of systematic theology. I don’t like either word at all. Put them together, I find myself in full rebellion. Count me in the camp with Thomas a Kempis: "I would rather feel contrition than know how to define it."
I want to read the scripture with my heart: engage the Word body, soul, and spirit. I want to love the Lord with all my heart, soul, mind and strength without allowing my intellect to dominate the other three. I joyfully put myself in the camp of emotionalism because the Creator of the universe is never impressed by our intellect, but he is moved by our heart and our faith.
Here is a passage from Paul’s letter to the Colossians:
Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. ~ Colossians 3: 12-14
I’d like to suggest five ways to engage this passage imaginatively, and, should I say it? Creatively.
1). There’s a ghost in the book. In fact, the Ghost wrote the book. The first step in imaginative reading is to ask for the Holy Spirit’s help. It’s no mere formality: Paul, Peter or James may have written the New Testament epistles but behind the human agency is the loving heart of God. John, the disciple Jesus loved, wrote these amazing words to his followers: As for you, the anointing you received from him remains in you, and you do not need anyone to teach you. (1 John 2: 27) Amazingly, John was dealing with the issue of false teachers in the church, and his solution was remarkably subjective! The same Spirit that hovered over the waters of creation is available to hover over us as we come to God’s word. Does this mean we are infallible interpreters of the word? No. But it does mean we have a loving guide.
2). Feel the love: this passage in Colossians opens with the description, “God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved.” You may not need to go beyond these seven words. If we are dearly loved, shouldn’t we feel it? One of my friends engaged in this exercise: he sat alone in his office and expressed his love to the Father, then waited for the Father to answer. He quietly spoke the words, “God, I love you” and sat in silence, attending to the Lord. A moment later he felt a subtle physical sensation of God’s presence--a still, small voice or the subtle movement of a draft upon his skin. Too mystical? Too subjective? Perhaps we’ve been trained to avoid the experience of his presence: if the text directs us to the love of God, why wouldn’t he respond lovingly?
3). Clothe yourselves: why not extend the metaphor? He presents us with the image of someone preparing to move from private to public. No one leaves home naked! He invites us to extend the metaphor and see ourselves preparing for the day. How do you get dressed in the morning? What decisions do you make? No one puts on every article of clothing they own, but rather they select the clothing appropriate to the day’s tasks. Infants and toddlers must be clothed by others, Paul calls us to the mature response of clothing ourselves. It takes imagination to extend the metaphor into a practical vision for the day. There, in my prayer closet, I ask in advance: Where do I need to show compassion for the day? What kind of compassion will I need? Compassionate tears or compassionate sweat? How should I dress my heart? How can I prepare to meet the needs of others?
4). Imagine what the text does not say. I know: this is dangerous: every Bible scholar tells us not to make “the argument from silence.” Except I am not coming to the scripture to argue: I’m coming to hear the heart of God. Paul provides a representative list of what we need for life together; compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. But not necessarily intelligence, wit, or smarts. By imagining what is not on the list I understand that character trumps intelligence. That God desires mercy, not education. The Holy Spirit might even remind me that knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.
5). Finally, I’m invited to consider the mysteries of incarnation. As one friend commented on Monday’s Meditation, “I'd say the life in these passages is all from the same source: Jesus. Who is the Word; Who is Love; Who is Life. I think I'll remember this every time I'm thinking, What will I wear? I am putting on Christ.” I love this observation because it started me thinking about what it means to put on Christ each day. I started me wondering how Christ put on his humanity, and whether we can put on divinity in return. In short, it started me thinking of how I can be like him.
Some will think I am against using reason and intellect with the scripture. But I’m truly not. I only want to ensure that what comes into my mind will also travel 12 inches to my heart. How about you?
Monday's Meditation: What Makes God's Word Living & Active?
Monday, April 11, 2011 at 09:42AM 
For the word of God is alive and powerful. It is sharper than the sharpest two-edged sword, cutting between soul and spirit, between joint and marrow. ~ Hebrews 4: 12 Since my earliest days as a follower of Jesus I’ve heard this passage quoted. The same night I came Christ someone put the Bible in my hands and told me God would speak through the book. Yet my experiences with the scripture were decidedly uneven. Sometimes it felt as if the secrets of the universe were unfolding before me. Other times I was clueless as Republican at Burning Man.
Why is this book so special and such a mystery at the same time? What makes the word of God living and active? How can we enter into the life of the word?
It’s not enough to read the scripture with our mind, because we are body, soul, and spirit. Coming to the scripture is more than reading literature. If we want to hear the words of God it requires all of our being. Last weeks’ posts explored the power of imagination in reading the scripture and suggested some avenues to stimulate the imagination. Perhaps these posts helped some to engage the narrative and poetic passages of the Bible, but other people asked me if it’s possible to bring our imagination to bear upon the letters which make up such a large part of the New Testament.
This week’s Meditation invites you to engage the Epistles with your imagination. Consider this exhortation from the Apostle Paul:
Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. ~ Colossians 3: 12-14
We know Paul is giving us more than good advice. These are life-giving commands. “Do you want to please God?” thunders the PreacherMan, “Then follow the instructions!” Perhaps you’ve even seen someone shake the book, declaring that the Bible is God’s Owner’s Manual. Yet I've never seen an owner's manual capable of changing my life.
I'd like to suggest there are at least five pathways to use your imagination--inspired by the Holy Spirit--as you come to this passage. To help get you started, why not live with this passage in the coming days, and ask these questions:
- If the Word of God is living and active, where is the life in this passage, and how is it acting upon me?
- What doors are open to me through these words--and what doors are closed?
- Can I apply my imagination to cut-and-dried commands such as the ones in this passage?
- How can I engage these words with something other than my understanding?
I invite you to suggest some possible answers in the comments below, and come on back Thursday as I share a few pathways I’ve found as well.
Four Hopeful Imaginations: How to read the scripture with your heart
Thursday, April 7, 2011 at 10:15AM The hillside is bathed in golden light as pilgrims walk up the dusty hill. They gather and sit as the Teacher begins to speak. The camera pulls back slowly from the Teacher, revealing a vast multitude of listeners, fixed upon every word of the Sermon on the Mount. Still the camera pulls back. The crowd is very large. There, at the very back of the crowd, at the edge of the desert hillside, one family strains to hear the blessed words.
“Eh? What’d he say?”
“I think it was ‘Blessed are the cheesemakers?’”
“Aha, what's so special about the cheesemakers?“
“Well, obviously it's not meant to be taken literally; it refers to any manufacturers of dairy products.”
Did you ever think about the people in the very back of the crowd, trying to listen to the Sermon on the Mount? John Cleese, Terry Gilliam and four of their friends did, and their imagination grew into this famous scene from The Life of Brian. Such frivolity provides an example of listening to the word of God with our imaginations as well as our intellect. Monday’s Meditation suggested “Godly hope springs from a Biblically informed imagination,” and while some would dispute whether Monty Python qualifies as a Biblically informed imagination, Cleese and the boys will act as our spiritual formation guides today.
I’d like to suggest four ways to engage the inspired text with our imagination.
Imagine the setting: Jesus worked and taught in a real world. He walked real hillsides and felt the heat of the day on his body. The Son of God sweat. He thirsted. One way to hear the word of God anew is to put yourself into the setting. You needn’t be a Biblical archeologist to do so: the important thing is to take the words off the page and wrap yourself in the setting. Monty Python imagined what it must’ve been like for those who found themselves on the edge of the crowd. Their imagination inspired laughter. What could yours inspire?
Join the party: You don’t need an engraved invitation. Come in, sit down, and put yourself in the setting. It does no disrespect to the Biblical narrative to add one more person to the scene. You could be the thirteenth disciple. Or the woman with five husbands. Or the rich young ruler. Dallas Willard observed that one of the first steps in hearing God in the scripture is the ability to recognize that the people of the Bible were real people, no different from you or me. Even the narrative sections of the scripture are addressed to us personally. The trick is to re-create the setting, then accept the invitation to the party.
Stay yourself, be real: Jesus isn’t speaking to other people, he’s speaking to you. Each person who heard the actual words of Jesus was a real person with a real life. This one was fisherman, who thought and responded like a working man. That one was a wife and a mother, who thought and acted in ways very different from a fisherman. If the words of Jesus are truly the word of God, they should speak to us where we are: man, woman, rich, poor, depressed, confident, gay, straight, black, white, Asian, Latin, rested, fatigued, desperate or self-sufficient. Some people engage in conversation while others ponder words in their heart. How would you have reacted if you were actually there, listening to him speak? A stained-glass answer will not do, only a real answer prepares our heart for the word.
Respond to the word. Perhaps you’ve never noticed it, but everyone in the Biblical narrative responded to the word of God. The rich young ruler went away unhappy; the woman at the well returned to town and told everyone how her life had changed. The implicit message of the Biblical narratives is simply you cannot walk away from the word of God unchanged. Yet modern readers of the Bible close the book and walk away unaffected. It’s the difference between an intellectual exercise and experiencing his words. It’s the difference between reading and living the word.
Hope comes from an imaginative engagement with the word of God. If we place ourselves in the text, be begin to imagine ourselves as real people, engaging with a real Lord. After all, we’re real, aren’t we? He’s risen and real, isn’t he? An imaginative encounter with the text produces hope because we imagine ourselves differently as a result of meeting Jesus. It’s just another way of saying, “the inbreaking of your word brings light.”
Monday's Meditation: Sanctified Imagination
Monday, November 16, 2009 at 06:02PM The gospels give us a glimpse of the life of Jesus, but only a glimpse. John the Apostle reminded us “Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.” (John 21: 25) In John’s final words to us we have been given an invitation to imagine the life of Jesus more fully.
Don’t be afraid, we apply our imagination to the life of Christ in more ways than we realize. For example, the scripture tells us only that Mary “gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.” (Luke 2: 7) Our imagination provides the barn: the sights, the sounds, even the scent. Some of the most beautiful paintings in history have depicted the details of that night. And if you have ever suffered through a Sunday-school Christmas pageant you will also acknowledge some of the cheesiest dramas ever written have portrayed the events of the nativity. From transcendent beauty on canvas to children wearing ridiculous paste-on beards, our imaginations accompany the revealed word of God. It’s OK—we are invited to meditate upon, to imagine, his life.
This Monday, let me suggest a path for our imaginations. From the beginning, humanity was made in the image of God, but one of miracles of incarnation is that humanity became more than an image, it became a temple. In Jesus, God became man, and man became the dwelling place of God. It was God who became a child, forever sanctifying birth and infancy. It was God who was a boy: running, playing, learning and growing, and forevermore youth became a vessel of his presence. It was God who grew into a carpenter: sweating, working, and laboring. His work makes our work holy.
Jesus himself experienced the most mundane, repetitive, and humblest aspects of everyday life. He cleaned his home, only to watch it fall into disrepair again. He lived the "ordinary" life as well. Can we imagine the ordinary things in his life? If we can, then our life becomes his: the factory and the laundry room are his domain as well. Can we imagine the possibility that he is familiar with the everyday toil of our lives?
Sanctified imagination belongs to him. If we can imagine the daily life of the Son of God, we can find him in ours.