More on the Imagination

Robert Huston Smith in his book, Patches of Godlight: the Pattern of Thought of C. S. Lewis, summarized Lewis' view of the imagination. He wrote,

Although the imagination might entertain, its noblest and most essential function was that of guiding the mind toward the higher truths that gave meaning to existence. Lewis insisted that those who suppose imagination to be only a psychological or physiological activity of the mind are wrong. When functioning as it should, in secular as well as religious contexts, imagination is the most important means by which higher truths can be communicated...He was concerned to dispel the popular notion that whatever is imaginative is, by its very nature, false or nonexistent. What the ordinary person fails to conceive is that there are some aspects of reality that can be conveyed in no other way than imaginatively.

For an apprentice of Jesus the "baptized" imagination is a powerful and necessary means of understanding and discerning God's will. We undervalue it and/or underutilize it to our own detriment. God has given us imagination so that we might let it roam God's creation and discover things we could never discover in any other way. The vitality of the church depends, in part, on the imagination of its people.