What should a Christian imagination look like?

“You can sing about the Light, or you can sing about what you see because of the Light. I prefer the latter.” ~ T-Bone Burnett

“I would rather be told an R-rated truth, than a G-rated lie” ~ Ken Gire, author of Reflections on the Movies: Hearing God in the Unlikeliest of Places

I’m going to be honest with you…I find that blatantly “Christian” music/books/art (to clarify, let’s just say that by this I mean anything one would usually find in one’s local Christian bookstore) is often just a matter of “singing about the Light” over and over (to use T-Bone’s great image) or just another avenue for “evangelizing” which after a while becomes trite and shallow. My frustration is not that I don’t think this stuff has its place, it’s that this has such a monopoly on what the evangelical Christians I know sing, listen to, read, and look at (perhaps this is an unfair generalization, but it does seem to accurately describe the folks I interact with daily). I’ve been wondering what effect this seemingly one-dimensional approach has on us? So here are my questions that I would love to hear your thoughts on:

What does it mean for a Christian to have a "Christian imagination"? What is the role of the imagination for living the Christian life? What is its role in the arts? What should the "Christian arts" (if we want to argue that there should be such a thing) look like? What would the purpose be for them?

Endings and beginnings: A Lenten-influenced first word

When I chose the title for this blog, I’m going to be honest, I was just trying to come up with a catchy name. I was in the middle of a “man crush” on Josh Ritter’s music and was reading Walter Brueggemann’s book “The prophetic imagination”. Brueggemann had an excellent analysis of the manner in which empires create a sense of the “eternal now” (the powerful belief system that there is nothing better that is ever going to come along) and Ritter’s song “Like Leaves and Kings” struck me as a wonderful reminder that arrogant assumptions about the permanence of things (e.g. Francis Fukuyama’s argument that we are at the end of history and that liberal democracy and capitalism are the final resting places) are incorrect and reflect a misguided hope.

But before I could get too smug and laugh at the misguided beliefs of “people like that” I was reminded that I, too, attempt to create a sense of permanence about myself. I live my life as if there will be unlimited tomorrows with little sense that my life will come to an end. I all too easily say “goodbye” to friends and loved ones with the assumption that, of course, there will be another “hello”. I let time and my schedule dictate my life while telling myself that there will be good “relational quality time” later on. This is where Lent punches me in the face. From Ash Wednesday where I am reminded that it is from ashes that I came and to ashes that I will go, to Good Friday where I see God the Father forsake God the Son to death, I am reminded that all things must fall.

In the little English-speaking Anglican church I am attending in Bucharest our pastor spoke of sin as anything that separates us from God, while salvation is that which brings us back into relationship with God. When we say that Jesus was without sin, we are meaning more than that Jesus never had a sinful behavior, we mean that Jesus was always in right relationship with God the Father through God the Holy Spirit. It is this solidarity with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit that Jesus is constantly tempted to abandon during his life. During the Lenten season the Church begins to contemplate on the multitude of ways that we, individually and corporately, are not in right relationship and solidarity with God. As I reflected on the patterns in my life that keep me from right relationship with God I began to yearn for an ending of those things. Those patterns that had established themselves as “permanent” and “just the way that I am” began to come into view as something else that needed to fall. And this is the terrifying part about Lent, because when things end we want to control and know what will begin. Christ’s passion in the Garden of Gethsemane becomes our own...endings aren’t often experienced as pure delight (even if they are the ending of negative things) and are more often experienced as anguish. Christ was so convinced about God’s promises and life that he went to the cross and experienced God-forsakenness trusting God to bring about something new. My hope and prayer for my brothers and sisters in Christ and myself during this Lenten season is that we will enter into the terror of “endings” and trust in the God of beginnings no matter where that leads.