Volume 6, Issue 7, March 1997

The DIVINE POWER of IMAGINATION

The vehicle of the meaning and teaching of the Bible should be our imagination. The word imagination is sometimes debased in meaning, as if it indicated the realm of fancy. But, imagination is the producer of vision, the source of the power to understand truth.

The divine power of imagination within us all creates beauty and surprise, ecstasy and possibilities. It is the outreaching of the mind. Our creativity happens primarily in our imaginations, with the gifts of our imaginations, and our powers of imagining.

Imagination weaves the visual context of knowledge. When sense objects are not present we imagine them as we have seen them.

We use symbols to represent our ideas and knowledge. Symbols are used by us in everyday life and in almost every sphere of human activity - conversation, mathematics, science, sports, government, and religion. Imagination is the chief religious faculty. In the symbols of religion humankind has a way of expressing the meaning of reality. Symbols provide a means of participation in that meaning.

A symbol can be defined as an object or a notion that we can perceive with our senses or grasp with our minds, but in which we see something other than itself. Reason alone will not enable us to perceive the special, the universal, or the eternal in a particular, temporal object. This is the task of creative imagination.

The divine and holy in life can at times perplex us; at other times confront us, and can condemn us when our moral intuition speaks against us reprovingly.

If our spiritual faith is to be real for us in our age, today, we must find words and images through which that reality can be articulated. As knowledge grows so must our understanding and expression of our faith be coherently known. We must seek the truth that lies beneath the mythology and symbolism of the past so that we might experience that truth.

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"Religion NOW" is published in limited edition by the Rev. Ross E. Readhead, B.A., B.D., Certificate of Corrections, McMaster University, in the interest of furthering knowledge and participation in religion. Dialogue is invited and welcomed.