Words'nTone

I read bumper-stickers.  Someone has to, or all those people are wasting space on their vehicles for nothing.  While cruising on I-95 the other day I saw a bumper-sticker that read, Reality is for those who lack imagination.  My mind immediately knew it was backward.  It is not that reality is for those who lack imagination, but imagination is for those who lack reality. Now I know I am punning on a pun, as well as pushing, stretching a silly bumper-sticker idiom toward some meaningful referent.  And, yes, I think once any profound concept or idea is relegated to a bumper-sticker and stuck to one’s vehicle immediately diminishes that concept or idea, but nonetheless, I comment.  This one is worthy of at least a few lines In the Margin here.  Some of you have read my posts regarding my use of “imagination” as a biblical principle.  (Some fear that for some reason—hopefully they’ll get over it.) But this plastered auto-slogan got me to thinking about our imagination.  I know (I think I know) that the point of the bumper-sticker slogan was to make a slight on those who choose reality over imagination at the most, and at the least to point out that those who have a good imagination are superior to those who need or are “in reality.” But this is a bit skewed:  We are called, in the Bible, to have an imagination because we do lack reality.  In fact, reality is such, that only those with imagination can, indeed and in fact, understand and fathom—maybe even glimpse at—reality.  We are called upon in texts like Ephesians 3:20-21 to imagine what the church is like, and imagine the power it has in Christ Jesus.  In some sense we cannot have reality unless we can imagine it, for it is through our imagination—our God-given ability to imagine—that we are invited into the realities of God’s creation.

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