Faith & Imagination, Pt 3: Failure of imagination

This is a really tough post for me. I've taken three stabs at it and this is my fourth. I know the point I want to get across, but it eludes my ability to explain it.

You might have heard the phrase "failure of imagination." It is a phrase that leaders use to take responsibility for problems that they failed to anticipate. The hope, of course, is that others will understand that they are not shifting blame, but they have no good explanation for why there was a failure to anticipate the problem.

I have always been fascinated by that phrase. You have to consider the tone of the person claiming to have a failure of imagination to understand whether they "mean it" or not. And you have to take into account how common the problem is that they "failed to imagine". Is it a problem that occurs every day? Once a week? Once in a thousand years? Then you develop a sense of trust for the person.

But in the life of faith, I think the phrase "failure of imagination" takes on a new depth. Let me explain...

When we are first saved, we're "babes in Christ" (borrowing from Paul's description.) Depending on the experience that led to salvation, we're approaching everything in a wide-eyed, deer in the headlights kind of way.

Because our understanding is fresh it is also incomplete. I believe God graciously allows new Christians to experience a vibrancy that provides a very real sense of emotional completion. I think some of this is the sealing of the Holy Spirit. But it is something I've noticed more often among the newly saved.

Then the process of blessing followed by testing occurs. We LIKE the blessings. If we're new to the faith and have good spiritual "parents" that continue to disciple us in the faith, then we even remember to turn these blessings into thanksgiving. It's easy at first. It's like the Holy Spirit is prompting us on how to relate to God. The Newsboys picked up on this concept in a song they did called "Spirit Thing":

It's just a spirit thing,
it's just a holy nudge,
it's like a circuit judge in the brain.
It's just a spirit thing,
it's here to guard my heart,
it's just a little hard to explain.

It pushes when i quit,
it smells a counterfeit,
Sometimes it works a bit like a
teleprompter...
When it's teleprompting you,
I pray you'll let it through,And I'll help you with the how..

The Newsboys sing the song in order to celebrate the mystery of the working of the Holy Spirit in our lives. We can't always put a finger on it, but we know when the Spirit is there. Jesus said it was like the wind blowing through the leaves of a tree. You can't SEE the wind, but you know it's blowing because the leaves are moving.

I made this point earlier in this series, but it is so important to the connection between imagination and faith. When you see the leaves blowing, what do you imagine the wind looking like?

For me, when I think hard about the wind, it turns into a stream of molecules that flows in the same way that water flows over rocks in a stream. The molecules flow quickly and slowly. they group together in one area (creating high pressure) and flow sparsely in another (creating low pressure.) When those molecules run into something...like a leaf...then Newton's Laws of motion come into play, especially the second law: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Now if you aren't trained as a chemist/scientist like I am, you may IMAGINE and describe wind differently. If you are a poet, you may use poetic language. If you are a mother, you may use the language of caution and remind your children to "bundle up". Each person "sees" the wind differently in our imagination.

So what is failure of imagination? I think that occurs when we see it as "just the wind". You know...what was that sound? It was "just the wind." The spiritual equivalent is taking the work of the Holy Spirit for granted. It can go so far as to deny the work of the Holy Spirit. We're warned very specifically in scripture by Jesus that it is unforgivable to credit the work of the Holy Spirit to some other process.

But where's the warning for just taking the Holy Spirit for granted? It's like I said earlier...when we're young in our faith, it's as if the Spirit prompts us to be amazed by God's interaction with us. So what prompts us when we become mature in the faith?

Our imagination!! Not the part of it that invents from whole cloth. Instead I'm talking about the part of our imagination that sees what is truly there but is not visible. "What is faith? It is the confident assurance that what we hope for is going to happen. It is the evidence of things we cannot yet see." (Hebrews 11:1-2 New Living Translation)

When we fail to consider God's promises, when we fail to take into account past blessings, when we fail to give credit to the Holy Spirit for the Spirit's work, the failure is due to unbelief...to lack of faith. It is a failure to imagine that God's reality...which is invisible...is stronger than the reality that we can see with our physical eyes.

I'm not chastising you if you have experienced this failure to imagine. In fact, the whole point of this post is that true leaders take responsibility where others don't by admitting that the problem may be simply a failure to imagine.

One of my favorite passages is about just such an admission of spiritual failure to imagine:

Mark 9:17-27 New KJV Then one of the crowd answered and said, “Teacher, I brought You my son, who has a mute spirit. 18 And wherever it seizes him, it throws him down; he foams at the mouth, gnashes his teeth, and becomes rigid. So I spoke to Your disciples, that they should cast it out, but they could not.” 19 He answered him and said, “O faithless generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you? Bring him to Me.”

20 Then they brought him to Him. And when he saw Him, immediately the spirit convulsed him, and he fell on the ground and wallowed, foaming at the mouth. 21 So He asked his father, “How long has this been happening to him?”

And he said, “From childhood. 22 And often he has thrown him both into the fire and into the water to destroy him. But if You can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.” 23 Jesus said to him, “If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes.”

24 Immediately the father of the child cried out and said with tears, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!”

25 When Jesus saw that the people came running together, He rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, “Deaf and dumb spirit, I command you, come out of him and enter him no more!” 26 Then the spirit cried out, convulsed him greatly, and came out of him. And he became as one dead, so that many said, “He is dead.” 27 But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he arose.

So translating into modern words what did the man say to Jesus? "Lord, I trust you, but I am failing to imagine how what you are saying is possible. Help me imagine it as possible."

Maybe the next time you encounter a difficult situation, you can think back to this phrase:

"Lord Jesus, I believe in you, but I am failing to imagine you delivering me in this situation. Help my unbelief!!"