Imagination Building Blocks
Getting started with a Sanctified Imagination
Quick Recap
We are currently in our series on the Sanctified Imagination. As a reminder, our imagination is that place in our minds in which all thoughts, images, and senses dwell (whether from ourselves or elsewhere) — disregard images of purple dinosaurs, unless that’s your thing.
A Sanctified Imagination is one that can imagine (and live into) a Kingdom future.
This article dives into the framework we’ll use to understand — and develop — Sanctified Imaginations.
I grew up in a time when many, the Church included, furthered claims that violent video games were a leading cause of the growing number of school shootings. I can still recall this being laughable to me, even as a teen, and it left those like me (namely male-millennial-video gamers) feeling incredulous. Halo may have contributed to us staying up late and drinking way too much Code Red, but it didn’t lead to mass murder.
In time I’ve grown to consider that rhetoric well intentioned, though ultimately unhelpful.
Unhelpful because it neither got to the root of school shootings nor to an understanding of the true harm violent video games could reap on young minds. Both topics were (and are) worthy of a deep dive, but the connection made between the two was tenuous, as any casual gamer knew.
Here, in this series where we will explore the intersection of our imaginations and our sanctification, I have no interest in tenuous connections. I am not claiming that if you consume bad media or have non-Christian friends you’ll do horrendous things. I’m also not claiming that if you consume “good” media and exclusively spend time with people inside the Church, you’ll become like Jesus.
But claiming the media you consume, the activities you participate in, and the community you cultivate has no effect on who you become is as unfounded and as unhelpful as saying violent video games cause school shootings.
Who you are (and therefore what you do) is a result of a massive amount of factors, many of which you have no control over. But there are a great many factors you, and you alone, can control.
And these factors are your Building Blocks.
Imagination Building Blocks
My boys are avid Lego builders. For them, those little plastic bricks become gateways to other worlds and adventures1. Watching their play evolve over the years — as both their collection of bricks and their life experiences have grown — has helped me develop a personal framework for how I think of my own imagination.
Let me explain.
If I drop a bunch of gray bricks in front of my four boys, I’ll have a castle in five minutes flat2. If, instead, I give them a bunch of brown and green bricks, I’ll have a forest and a little cabin. Pieces with wheels will become cars and trucks.
And so on.
Although they may choose to surprise me occasionally, generally the creations my boys build depends upon the bricks they have at their disposal. What they can imagine is, in some way, affected by the blocks put in front of them.
Our own imaginations work like that too. Our imaginations have building blocks, which are the mental artifacts used to cultivate an imagination. Or, another way of putting it: our imaginations can only work with the blocks they’re given.
A Quick Scenario
Consider two men. One who listens to the news on his drive home from work and relaxes in the evening with action movies. The other spends his car drive home calling friends and then spends the evening reading biographies of various people.
Each of them are dragged to a children’s party for a relative and end up engaged in a tense political conversation with someone they deeply disagree with (just assume some weird, multiverse thing for this).
In this example, all other things are equal.
Which of these men would you expect to be more inclined to love their political enemy well at this party?
Our answer to this (overly simplistic) example tells us a lot about ourselves.
Some of us struggle to see ourselves as malleable, as able to be affected by the content we consume and the lives we live. Who cares what we listen to in the car or watch in the evenings? That doesn’t have any bearing on what we do.
Except, I argue it has everything to do with what we do.
That second man in our scenario, who calls his friends and reads biographies, is far more inclined to look at another human and see the world through that person’s eyes. It doesn’t mean he will, but it means he is more equipped for the task.
The first man will have a harder time of it. Although he surely could choose to love his enemy, neither the news nor violent movies will (generally) impart building blocks of love to his imagination. Instead, his imagination will more likely default to the building blocks those forms of media shell out: building blocks of suspicion and fear of the “other” and an simplification of the world into an “us vs. them” paradigm.
Avocado Seeds
It turns out, avocado seeds tend to grow into avocado trees.3
We will reap what we sow. If you give one of my boys a few dozen gray Lego bricks, a castle fort you will get.
If you hand your mind a diet of news, bloody video games, gossip-centric shows, and pornographic videos and novels, you will get a life filled with anxiety, shame, suspicion, division, and unsatisiable want.
You may not get discipleship to Christ at all.
But if we give our imaginations excellent art, a copious amount of time with community, a discipline of service and giving, hours in Scripture, and moments of worship… we may get something closer to a life in service to Jesus.
But, this is a messy topic, and needs much more study.
Over the next few weeks we will break our building blocks into a few key categories, diving deeper into each.
They function as little death traps for my feet, but I’m told it’s a worthy sacrifice.
Upon reading this to me oldest, he corrected me. I would not have a castle, for the would require spires. Instead, they would quickly assemble a fort. Touché, Luke. Touché.
You can tell I’m a millennial because I’m using avocados as my example. This is me being as on-the-nose as possible.
I miss my Lego-loving boy time, so soak up every minute. Very thought provoking and on-point as always, Phil.