The Importance of Imagination, Part 1

Enter the Imagination

Picture yourself exiting a train that you boarded miles ago by mistake. You’re not sure where the train was going, so you don’t know what station you are in now. You only know that you are in a large city. The sign in the depot informs you that no other train will leave for days. You decide to rent a car so that you can find food and lodging. As you pull out of the parking garage, however, you discover that you are driving through a blizzard. The air is so full of snow that you can barely see the pavement in front of you. Occasionally a swirl will allow you to glimpse tall buildings or other features of the city. When you get close enough, you can sometimes spot a street sign, but the names are meaningless to you. In the meanwhile, the snow is piling up on the windshield and the glass is fogging over. Before you have driven half-a-mile, you are completely lost. You have no idea how to find your way.

This picture is a metaphor for the human condition. Our world is like the city. It is not merely a random collection of particulars, but an ordered system. If we could perceive the order, we would be in a position to get where we needed to go—assuming that we knew where that was. Our problem is that our senses are so bombarded with events and objects (i.e., with facts) that we are simply overwhelmed by the blizzard. This problem exists at three levels. First, the sheer number of facts is immense. Even a small room comprises more events and objects than we could take cognizance of in a lifetime. Second, our sensory apparatus (by which I mean not only the senses themselves, but our ability to register and relate facts) is limited and easily overwhelmed. It regularly shuts out most of what our senses do actually detect. Third, our ability to register and relate facts is directed, not by a neutral intellect, but by a will that determines in advance to arrange at least some facts in certain ways. In brief, we are caught in a blizzard with snow piling up on the windshield and the glass fogging over.

Somehow, what we need to do is to build up in our minds a map of immanent reality (“the city”) that will allow us to navigate its contours and, eventually, to leave it safely. This map will provide us with an internal image of the city. Such an internal image, if accurate, is capable of directing us even when our vision of the facts is largely obscured.

Everyone without exception attempts to construct such an inner image of the world. We begin the process of mapping this image before we are even aware that we are doing it. Tradition and education impose upon our minds large pieces of the total image. Investigation and reason allow us to fill in certain gaps. We all use an inner image or mental map to navigate through an immanent reality that we can only dimly discern.

Over time, this inner image may become so habitual that it feels natural to us. We begin to mistake our map of reality for reality itself. Occasionally, however, we encounter circumstances that remind us that we are navigating by a map. We sometimes come abruptly upon a dead end for which we are not prepared. We may take a turn, only to discover that we aren’t going where we thought we were. At such moments, we bump into reality itself.

Or we may find ourselves surrounded by people who navigate by an entirely different inner map. At those times, we experience what is called “culture shock.” The shock lies, first, in recognizing that their image of the world seems as natural to them as ours does to us and, second, in realizing that our map often sends us careening into these others, resulting in damage that can be quite real. If we are surrounded by a sufficient number of these people for a long enough time, we will be forced to learn significant portions of their map. Otherwise, we cannot survive.

We are all guided by an image of the world. Our image may be more or less in agreement with the images used by others. It may be more or less in agreement with reality itself. Nevertheless, such an inner map or image of the world is indispensible for human existence.

To say that we are all guided by some inner image of the world is to say that we imagine the world. Imagination is, in the broadest sense, the capacity to form images. Since each of us puts together an image of the world, each of us imagines the world. Certainly we do not all imagine the world the same way. One person imagines it to be thus and another person so. The point is, however, that without some inner image by which to navigate—without imagining the world—we would simply be paralyzed. None of us would go anywhere and none of us would accomplish anything, either for good or for evil.

We imagine the world. This observation is truly fundamental to a right understanding of human existence and of the human condition. The question is, Where does this inner map come from? How do we construct an image of the world?

The Holy Scriptures I

George Herbert (1593-1633)

Oh Book! infinite sweetness! let my heart
Suck ev’ry letter, and a honey gain,
Precious for any grief in any part;
To clear the breast, to mollify all pain.

Thou art all health, health thriving, till it make
A full eternity: thou art a mass
Of strange delights, where we may wish and take.
Ladies, look here; this is the thankful glass,

That mends the looker’s eyes: this is the well
That washes what it shows. Who can endear
Thy praise too much? thou art heav’n’s Lidger here,
Working against the states of death and hell.

Thou art joy’s handsel: heav’n lies flat in thee,
Subject to ev’ry mounter’s bended knee.

This essay is by Dr. Kevin T. Bauder, president of Central Baptist Theological Seminary (Plymouth, MN). Not every professor, student, or alumnus of Central Seminary necessarily agrees with every opinion that it expresses.