Monday, February 26, 2007

Imagination

Whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus (Colossians 3:17).

In last Thursday's devotion, I wrote of the concerns some people have with children's literature. I pointed out that imagination in children has often been discouraged by adults, but that imagination is necessary for invention and, more importantly, faith in God.

But we dare not dismiss the concerns of those who fear unrestrained imagination. Already before the Flood, human imagination was leading mankind into great peril: God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually (Genesis 6:5). Every human being is corrupted with sin; this means that our imaginations are prone to dreaming up things that anger God and oppose His goals for us.

When passenger-filled aircraft were used as weapons of terror on 9/11, many people wondered who could conceive of such a horrid idea? At the end of WWII, Americans were aghast that Germans had dreamed up buildings designed to do nothing more than kill human beings by the score. Some of the men who envisioned the atomic bomb felt great remorse following the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Human imagination is capable of producing terrible suffering.

Is God to blame for such things? Of course not. God gave us imaginations so that we could trust in His promises and build a better future; it is our own fault that we misuse the creative talents He has endowed us with. God intended that we design tools, not weapons; that we compose words which uplift the soul, not debase it; that we create pictures celebrating beauty, not perversion. It is the sin within us that twists our God-given imaginations into cesspools of corruption.

Nevertheless, we should not be afraid to be to dream. Because of Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross, our sins are forgiven; the Holy Spirit has entered our hearts and shows us positive ways to use the creative spark that the Lord has gifted us with. It was from such a spark that the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. was moved to say the words "I have a dream". It is because of God-given creativity that we have indoor plumbing, satellite communication, and modern medicines. The Lord made David a musician whose Psalms still lead our hearts in worship, and He has enabled countless musicians to lay in our hands the gift of our hymnbooks.

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