Imagination and Faith

Imagination and faith are dancing partners and I think there’s some confusion about which of them is to lead. We all like certainty.  We all like to be in the position of “having arrived.”  Of course spiritually this is a figment of our imaginations.  It is spiritual laziness and a reluctance to pick up our crosses and follow Jesus.  I just don’t think there’s any religious position a person can take that exempts us from spiritual growth, including, and especially, the religious ritual of “being saved.” “Being saved,” does nothing but license a person to sit at leisure in false certainties, in his or her own imagination.  It inclines people to look out at others who are struggling or exploring with God as condemned sinners.  It provides an excuse to suppress fact and the pursuit of facts that may confront the false certainties.  Witness recent efforts at legislation to restrict scientific inquiry for political or religious reasons. My imagination is something I recognize for what it is, that is, imagination.  It is my vision of how things should or could be.  But there is no guarantee that the fruits of my imagination are a good thing since I’m inclined to be lazy, self-serving and a pleasure-seeker. Faith, on the other hand, is trust.  It’s trusting that someone outside myself, a Higher Power, knows better and is better disposed toward my life and health.  Faith allows, actually requires, that I trust another entity, and am dependent on that entity for life itself.  Faith opens the door to learning from the very embodiment of love. Trusting God then, I can use my imagination to envision a better world.  And it’s ironic, it seems, that visions sometimes have a way of becoming reality.