Imagination is an amazing thing. It makes life come alive, but it can also take us down dark and dangerous paths. God has gifted me with a powerful imagination, to the point that when reading a story book, the tale runs almost like a movie behind my eyes. I love imagining voices, faces, forms, clothing, colors, scents, and sensations. Thus, a book to me is usually more exciting than a two-hour audio-visual experience. This flows into my teaching and preaching as well, because even Scripture comes alive in my mind when I read it: What did Sarah look like, how did she hold herself? How did Yahweh sound when he spoke to Job: angry, gentle, exasperated? What did Joshua feel when he saw the Captain of the Lord’s army? How did David experience the first indwelling of the Spirit? What was Jesus’ voice like? 

A picture is an expression of one person’s imagination; thus, visual art becomes an important medium to express Truth as well. Fortunately, we Protestants are finally beginning to understand the value of this again, as Biola’s Lent Project marries the visual arts to reading the Word, listening to music, reading poetry, and a devotional thought. I love the creative way Kevin Carden looks at the world and expresses spiritual realities in poignant pictures. The abstract and calligraphic images of The Saint John’s Bible cause the reader to think deeply about spiritual realities that transcend human understanding. Indeed, each of these spur the imagination on to see God more.

As I was working on a writing project for a co-worker, we discussed how to help others in the project to invent and tell their stories well. As a writer of fiction, I have learned how to do this. However, as I looked back over my own theological training, I can remember only one course where I was specifically challenged to write imaginatively; and I was only auditing that one. We were trained to work scientifically, to study the Word as it is, to not go beyond the text. All of these are true and good and right; but they leave the Bible as a dry crust of bread, when it should be a succulent multi-course meal. Should we not be trained to use our imagination as we read the narratives, the prophecies, and the poetry? Should we not try to visualize what New Jerusalem might look like? What did that rocking boat on the Sea of Galilee feel like? What did Athens smell like as Paul entered it for the first time? These of course demand research—perhaps more effort than a layperson would like to put in; but, as Randy Alcorn encourages us in his book Heaven1, God has given us an imagination, let us use it. 

Imagination must be trained as well, making sure it bows to God, as we dwell on “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise” (Php 4:8 – ESV). But note the one word in there: “lovely”. Have you ever considered the loveliness within the Bible? Have you tried to flesh it out in your mind, so that you can enter into it? Indeed, I wonder how much vision and imagination intersect. Perhaps imagination leads to vision. And God-guided, biblical imagination can be a tool to draw people to Christ; only let it be truth. So let us practice imagining the Bible. Let us enter into the stories, thinking of what people looked like, sounded like, smelled like, moved like. Let us read the poetry as what it is: the deep cries of humans to God—put the emotion in there as you read it out loud! As we read the prophecies, let’s close our eyes and conjure up the circumstances and the images that God himself had written down. And as we do this the Bible will become alive in ways it has not before. Let us imagine that and train others to do so as well.

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  Randy Alcorn, Heaven (Sandy, OR: Eternal Perspective Ministries, 2004).