Weak on dragons
Judging by our behaviour in public and private many of us are all belly and pelvis with no head or heart. Winston Churchill was certain that anyone under forty who was not a radical had no heart and anyone over forty who was not a conservative had no brain. Jesus came urging us to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, strength and mind and so make use of all our faculties and sanctify all the areas in which these varied aspects of us work.
Some religious people are all emotion and others are all
reason and because this is so, or nearly so, one group has little or no
interest at all in what the other feeds on. Such polarisation is not
confined to religious people—you can see it everywhere you look, with
poets and novelists to the right of us and scientists and the
"practical" people to the left of us.
Karl Barth insisted that we can't understand the Bible
without a good imagination and around the same time in Glasgow,
Scotland, prominent preacher G.H. Morrison was making the same point.
Though I wouldn't know exactly how I'd go about proving it I still feel sure that we can't live a full life without a good imagination.
In the area of biblical studies my impression is that our sense of its truth and that it presents God's
truth makes us a bit afraid of the Bible. Because we believe that every
word is precious we're suspicious of anything that might obscure its
truth-content and "imagination" strikes many of us as not quite friendly
to truth. We're certain that the power of the Bible is its
propositional truth and that its power over us comes only via the
intellect so that whatever approach we make it must be heavy on
intellect and technical approaches. The capacity to imagine or to dream
doesn't seem to have a lot in common with getting at the truth-content of the Scriptures.
I'm sure that's a mistaken impression. Catechisms at
their best are very useful and they mean to get at the truth and get it
out and I'm sure it might be possible to master a catechism without a
lot of imagination. I suppose it would be like mastering any other
synopsis of "truth" put out by teachers. I don't see students with their
tests in front of them indulging in dreams and visions (unless the
student was G.K Chesterton). In any case, the Bible is anything but a
catechism!
It's easy and difficult to define "imagination"
but clearly it suggests the ability to "image" things, to take
abstractions and make them concrete by visioning them, by giving them a shape.
People who can do that well without seriously distorting the truth
they're working with are richer than the rest of us whose only avenue to
life and truth is through the rational capacity; the weighing of
arguments, the proving of premises or constructing a sound and valid
syllogism. Creeds and catechisms certainly have their value (within
limits) but they get to the hearts of people by the intellect while the
Bible, in addition to that, often sneaks up on us or woos us by telling
us a story or by a poem or painting a verbal picture of worlds in
collision and ocean waves crashing against each other. It's filled with
metaphors, parables, hymns and irony, heroes and villains, lambs and
dragons. Of course, the intellect is needed to produce and work with all
these but the Bible is no "geared-only-for-the-intellect" production.
It assures us that sometimes the will of God is seen and understood only
by those with the right heart—that too is needed to understand
scripture (see John 7:17, Matthew 5:8 and Romans 12:2 and elsewhere).
The narrative nature of scripture (with its many varied
types of writing) carries forward not just a massive number of moral and
spiritual truths—it develops and forwards the Story of something God is
doing and means to complete. He has an actual and concrete agenda. Jack
wants to build a house, Jill wants to create a lovely garden and God
wants to bring his beloved creation to joy-filled and holy glory. Each
of those truths makes contact with the intellect but in their purpose
they involve more than rational truths. The Bible not only tells us what
God has in mind, it is one of the instruments he uses to accomplish
what he has in mind.
The Bible inspires as well as informs, it enables as
well as enlightens, it feeds the emotions as well as the intellect and
it appeals to our hungers as well as our rationality. The capacity to
reason is never scorned much less jettisoned but the Bible simply will
not tolerate the idea that God made us as breathing computers or that
our rational ability is not shaped and enriched by all the other
faculties and capacities God has gifted us with as well as our
experiences.
There is a real danger in reading the
Bible as if it appeals only to the intellect and if the one reading in
that fashion happens to be a teacher/preacher, the danger and the damage
spreads. There must be truth! But the truth about God
is not simply the kind of thing that is exhausted by an intellectual
grasp of it and, come to think of it, I don't believe that any truth about anything
can be grasped fully merely at the intellectual level—even mathematical
equations (but that's another discussion for another time).
I'm certain of this: the Bible is a book of wonder and
mystery and excitement because it deals with God and his commitment to
the human family and the creation at large. It takes seriously our world
and the conflicts that go on in it; it speaks of victories and losses
and long-term assurance that the hope of the righteous will be fulfilled
because that hope comes from the God of good hope! Bless me, even
Hollywood with all its blindness can sometimes see that and if Hollywood
can see it, what is wrong with us that we can't? We go to movies
(sometimes) based on good biblical research that offer a faithful
dramatic re-telling of the story and we're thrilled to the heart, come
away inspired and more determined than ever to follow the Master. And
then what? We gather as a church and work with scripture as if it were a
catechism! Shame on us if we turn such a Book into such a book!
Micheal Flaherty, of Walden Media, reminds us that C.S
Lewis thought that Eustace Scrubb's education was "weak on dragons". At
the start of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader Lewis introduces us to "a boy named Eustace Clarence Scrubbs, and he almost deserved it."
Of our poor Eustace Lewis remarks: "He liked books if they were books
of information" but he had no time for heroes, talking animals or the
world beyond facts and figures, quantities and measurements, proofs and
empirical realities. It was no surprise then that he didn't know what to
expect in a dragon's cave, Lewis explains, "but, as I said before,
Eustace had read only the wrong books. The books he read had a lot to
say about exports and imports, governments and drains, but they were
weak on dragons." Yes, there lies a major problem with a host of us, our
reading and reflection is weak on dragons.
I hurry to make the point that I've known some
accountants and others who worked in jobs dealing with quantities and
figures that would have run off with Don Quixote in a heartbeat. I
recognise too that some mathematicians glory in the adventure of
mathematics—thank God—but when they do they have got their imagination
in gear! Listen to them sometime—their speech and imagination are on
fire!
This I know, Jesus taught plenty but he never used a syllogism. I
don't say he wouldn't—only that he didn't and as he taught he urged
people to unharness their imaginations and see truths that weren't there
before their eyes.
To teach the Bible by passing out information as if
we're getting ready for the Big Examination in the Sky is hardly the way
to enlist the hearts and minds of people in a war that is going on
right now. There is more to the truths of the Bible than correct
information because the central truths of the Bible are about God and he
isn't a "subject" in some cosmic curriculum.
Let us, then, become familiar with heroes and villains,
dragons and damsels, heroic deeds and honourable men and women. If we
do, we might discover that we are reading and teaching the Bible better
than we ever have done. And if that happens
maybe before long we'll be startled by young people who have enlisted in
the War rather than swotting for an upcoming information-test.
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, theabidingword.com.