Imagine - How to Meet God in Scripture
Half of the US population used the Bible regularly in 2019 (48%), according to the American Bible Society. Presumably, those who use the Bible hope to make a connection with God, deepen their faith, and increase their fulfillment in faith. It’s surprising then that only about half of those who use the bible regularly (24%) of the US population seem to discover the connection and transformation they’re looking for.
For many the Bible feels like an archaic book full of confusing language and unfamiliar people and culture. Instead of drawing us into a dynamic friendship with God, we’re left scratching our heads. What if it didn’t have to be this way?
Protestant tradition, despite its emphasis on scriptural engagement, may be partially responsible for our struggle to discover the transformation we seek. There is a strong tendency within Protestantism to emphasize the Bible as uniquely authoritative and a subsequent desire to make this authoritative volume accessible to all readers. These tendencies are valuable, but they create a practical problem. If everyone can read the Bible for herself, what’s to stop her from wild, or even potentially harmful, interpretations?
The Protestant solution has been to lean toward reason when it comes to biblical interpretation, creating systematic theologies to establish a kind of boundary lines between orthodoxy and heresy. These boundary lines allow for individual interpretation and discussion but insist that such discussions take place within a broader rational tradition. One can argue for or against a literal seven-day creation narrative and not be, ‘out of bounds,’ provided one is arguing in good faith and according to rational principles. This tradition is valuable, but it too creates a practical problem, what to do with human emotion.
If reason provides one lens for scripture engagement within Protestantism, emotionalism provides the other. The tendency to conceive of scripture in emotionalist categories can be seen in the same American Bible Society study. Surveying views of the Bible’s overall intent, the choices on the survey were: (a) a rulebook or guide to live the best life, (b) knowing what God expects of me, and (c) a letter from God expressing love or salvation. Of these three choices two are highly rational (rules or expectations) and one is highly emotive (a love letter).
If our choices for scripture engagement are either rationalism or emotionalism it’s little wonder we struggle to discover the relational connection with God we’ve been promised.
Think of a relationship with another person. Using your reason, you may learn a lot about someone, but you don’t really ‘know’ them. For example, you may read People magazine and learn all about your favorite celebrities, but the people themselves still remain strangers. On the other hand, you can be attached to someone emotionally but not really know or understand them. A toddler, for example, is highly emotionally attached to their caretaker, but doesn’t have the capacity for a mature relationship.
The problem in relating to another person rationally or emotionally is not that either reason or emotion are bad, but that they are incomplete. Relationships with other people, and with God in scripture, require imagination. Why? Because imagination creates the context for empathy.
When a friend shares the story of their being bullied by a boss or coworker, we don’t have to have had the same experience to empathize with their experience. We can imagine what it’s like to be bullied. We can imagine what it’s like to worry about an unhealthy work environment. And, having imagined, we can show empathy to our friend.
What if the struggle to make a connection with God, deepen our faith, and increase our fulfillment in faith is a struggle of imagination? What if we treat the bible like it’s a divine people magazine, enabling us to collect lots of information about God, while God himself remains a stranger? This is precisely what we do when we come to the bible as a rulebook. Dreamily and wistfully, pining for a particular emotion as we read scripture also misses the point. It’s imaginative reading of scripture that puts us in a place to know God. In imaginative reading we immerse ourselves in the story of God’s interactions with people throughout history. It matures our relationship with God from ideas and emotions to empathy and friendship.
Imaginative reading invites us to use observations about language, context, repetition, and conflict, to place ourselves in the midst of the unfolding drama. We then imagine the story as a participant within rather than an outside observer. Reading with the heart and imagination deepens the learning and transforms habits of heart and mind in ways that reading for information, understanding, and even moral exhortation does not.
For example, one of the most profound of Jesus’ teachings is found in Luke 10:25-37, the parable of the good Samaritan. The parable emerges out of a lawyer’s desire to experience the eternal life Jesus was preaching about. A lawyer asks Jesus, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” (v. 25). Jesus’ response points out that the lawyer already knows the answer. If he wants to experience God’s life, he needs to love God with everything he has and love his neighbor as himself.
Jesus’ challenge, “Do this and you will live” (v. 28) masterfully draws out the lawyer’s real obstacle. Loving our neighbor as ourself is much easier said than done. And so, as lawyers do, he asks Jesus to define his terms. “Who is my neighbor?” (v. 29).
What does this story look like from the inside if, for example, I imagine myself as the lawyer? Suddenly, I’m alert to the desire to have God’s life. I imagine spending days wrestling with the Holy Book trying to accurately apply its insights to my life. I imagine a gnawing feeling in my gut that tells me I’m missing something. I long for God’s life, not just for me but for my whole community.
And I feel stuck. Then I imagine myself as the lawyer seeing Jesus. That he knows something about God’s life is evident in the authority with which he speaks and heals. What is it? What does he know or understand about God’s eternal life that I lack?
Placing myself inside the story helps me to see that the lawyer and I aren’t that different. This means that the story of the good Samaritan is not simply a moral tale Jesus tells about being nice to those in need, but it’s a key clarification to what it means to have life with God. It’s as much Jesus’ response to me in the twenty-first century as it was to this unnamed lawyer in the first.
The story of the good Samaritan does not answer the lawyer’s question directly. Jesus describes a scenario where a wounded and vulnerable man is left on the side of the road to die. Religious experts notice the man and pass him by. In a remarkable twist Jesus has the religious and ethnic outsider, a Samaritan, experience splagchnizomai, a graphic description of compassion, that literally means a movement or churning of the inner organs toward the wounded man. It’s not just that the Samaritan “feels bad” for the wounded and vulnerable, he aches internally, seeing the earlier traveler’s plight. This gut-wrenching compassion compels the Samaritan to act. The Samaritan, a man outside the law of God, disadvantages himself for the sake of this nameless, faceless other. Then comes the punchline, “Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” Jesus said (v. 36).
This story from Jesus answers the lawyer’s question by re- shaping the lawyer’s and our definition of neighbor. Neighbor is not defined geographically, ethnically, or categorically, but by the compassion and activity of the one who sees others in need. According to Jesus, we do not first decide who our neighbor is and then practice hospitality, compassion, or mercy. We first practice hospitality, compassion, and mercy, and by so doing become neighbor to those around us.
If I’m reading this story imaginatively, from the inside, I feel its sting. Do I experience splagchnizomai when I look out the window and see kids on the playground of the failing school across the street? Am I willing to disadvantage myself for them? What about the neighbor across the hall with a broken leg, the one fighting breast cancer, or the mom heartbroken about her son?
As I read from the inside, God’s invitation becomes clear. Like the lawyer I want to justify myself. “Don’t you see the people I’m hosting at my apartment every week? Don’t you see the effort we’re making to raise kids and build community? Why don’t I feel like I’m experiencing eternal life?” Jesus’ response, “Which one of these was a neighbor?” is as unsettling as it is beautiful. It touches the nerve of loneliness and invites ruthless self-examination. What if my “community building” activities are less about compassion for others and are instead motivated by a desire for acceptance, approval, or affection? What would it look like to “neighbor” others out of concern for their situation?
As I ponder these questions, something like hope stirs inside. Even though today my love for my neighbor was self-serving, perhaps tomorrow, perhaps one day, I will be a neighbor and experience life with God in the ways I long for.
What if all of our times in scripture led us to these kinds of connections? What if we read with our imagination and discovered ourselves drawn into a dynamic friendship with God?
