You probably never thought of your imagination in that way before. Perhaps because we tend to think our imagination is for our own pleasure. It's like this magic screen in our minds where we can project whatever images we want for our own enjoyment. And we have an abundance of entertainment available to us to cast upon these screens. Hollywood is all-too-eager to accommodate our need to be fascinated with fantasy and fiction, empathetic and heroic characters we will never meet, and stories with conflicts that get resolved in a span of two and a half hours.
Take, for instance, just about any sci-fi movie. There's something so satisfying about seeing justice come to evildoers via a journey of ups and downs, culminating just before the climax to a hopeless point, when some attractive, exciting, charismatic superhero steps in with the help of some supernatural power. Even though we intellectually know that this is fantasy, our emotions have now been conditioned to wish this kind of denouement were possible in our own lives. So even though one part of our brain knows this shouldn't be taken seriously, another part of our soul is wishing and wanting for it to be true. Similar to addictive preservative-riddled foods, these films are designed to hook us in. If they don't accomplish this soul experience in the viewer, then they probably wouldn't be considered a successful film.
However, most of us have learned the hard way that fantasies don't really satisfy anything, and fictional characters can't form a real relationship with us. These kinds of a stories are constructs of an industry borne by the world. And if something sourced in the world is sticking to our imaginations, that's something we Christians ought to pay attention to. But it seems so normal in today's culture to welcome whatever popular media is filling our souls that the result of these images, stories and in some cases, obsessions even, tend to go unchecked. But what are the ramifications for the Christian?
Most of us have learned the hard way that fantasies don't really satisfy anything, and fictional characters can't form a real relationship with us.
Many people are (unfortunately) familiar with the experience of giving their heart away to the wrong person. The result is a broken and fragmented heart (that can find healing and wholeness in Jesus, thankfully). But have we considered the consequences of giving our imaginations over to a movie or show or music? It's not hard to see the effects that certain works of art and entertainment have on our soul-man. Whether it's a marvel movie or a rom-com or a Broadway musical, our emotions can become so engaged in certain works that they make us feel “known”, “validated”, like “I’ve found my tribe”, etc. It's almost like giving our heart away to a person.
In the same way we can have ungodly soul-ties with other people, we can have ungodly attachments to works of art and entertainment that create soul ties with that work. We can engage with, agree with, and align emotionally with a film/show/song/etc. on a soul level, without a witness on the spirit level. In other words, my soul can easily get satisfied by something that the Spirit of God within me is not in. That can cause a fragmenting between my soul and my spirit. My true identity is found in the Spirit of Christ in me, not necessarily my soul-man, until my soul is renewed and sanctified to the point of being One with the Spirit. That is a process we are in daily (Romans 12:1-2). But we will slow down the renewing-of-our-minds-and-souls-process, and maybe even inhibit it, when we make more room in our minds for worldly images and fantasies than for the Spirit of God. It’s not even just about worldliness - this is not a religious issue of Godly vs. ungodly. It’s about a false reality - Truth vs. lies. So much of what comes out of the Hollywood machine are lies and counterfeits of God, ourselves and the world we live in. Hence when we operate out of a worldview shaped by these images and storylines, we are essentially operating out of a pseudo-identity.
Our Lord wants so much better for us. Furthermore, He’s jealous to fill that space in our imaginations because He died for it. It’s where He wants to live. Most of us have probably never realized what a sacred and precious space that is to our Lord, simply because we don’t realize how precious and valued we are in His eyes, that He would care so much about every single thing we behold with our eyes and ears. But if we allowed ourselves to become more aware of how these things affect us, we would see that everything we behold with our natural eyes and ears will affect how we see Him, and the world He’s created. It also affects how we see our own lives, and what we expect Him to do with them. Not to mention how we see ourselves, sometimes as too big or too small. And when we fill that space with junk, we have less of Him in us.
Whatever we get from that movie or musical is a counterfeit of what He wants to give us for real.
The good news is, this unhealthy soul connection can be broken by an act of the will and with the power of Christ in us. It can also act as a starting point to have a dialogue with the Lord. Why do I have this ungodly soul tie with this film? What is my soul longing for that I am currently not allowing You to satisfy in me, or didn’t know You could satisfy in me? He can lovingly reveal the root because He knows us that deeply, more than anyone else, including ourselves. This is where His grace and love are unlike anything we could ever get from Hollywood. He will so graciously and patiently have these dialogues with us, because He is that jealous for us (James 4:5), and longs to inhabit all of the space within our souls (1 Corinthians 3:16). Whatever we get from that movie or musical is a counterfeit of what He wants to give us for real. We acquire fantasies through our relationship to these mediums, but He replaces the fantasy with His REALITY! The Lord’s reality is that we can have His will, His way, His plan, and even His dream, and recognize that what He wants is ultimately what we want - when we are surrendered and submitted to Him. Yes, there is a price to pay, because it means most of our problems and struggles take more than two and a half hours to be worked out. It means that we might not get the happy ending with the marriage to the good-looking leading man or lady. It means that there’s no marvel super hero to intervene with it appears as though evil is winning. But we get something that Hollywood and Broadway could never ever give us: intimacy with Jesus.
In fact, when we give our hearts to the arts or to entertainment, we actually forsake some of the intimacy we could have with our Lord. We seek answers to our problems the way the movies deal with problems. We expect things to work out the way we have seen them work out with our natural eyes in the movies with the Hollywood endings. Or we settle for the perspective depicted by a film with a far less hopeful worldview than that which the Bible offers.
Do we think the Lord of the Universe who lives in us is less interesting and engaging than Hollywood? Do we think He wants us to be bored and for our imaginations to be blank? He walked Abraham out to where he could see the sky filled to bursting over with stars so that Abraham's imagination would be filled with that imagery when he needed to trust God's word that he would be the father of many nations (Genesis 15:5). The Lord gave Jeremiah specific images to confirm that He would accomplish His word to Him (Jeremiah 1:11-14). Jesus constantly used parables to describe the Kingdom of God - it is currently an invisible Kingdom, after all, so how else will we understand it if not with the help of our imaginations? The Bible is filled with examples of the Lord using sounds, music, dance, and anything that He can project through our eye and ear gates onto our imaginations to give us an impression of His character that we cannot yet taste or feel with our natural senses.
To put it another way, He gives us the Arts to learn more about who He is and how He loves us. The Arts can provide the imagination with wonder about Truth, not fantasy - who the Lord truly is. They can feed us images of hope, love, justice, victory, and His promises coming to pass - the possibilities are as vast as Heaven itself. The imagination is a crucial and precious space to Him, one that can lead us to His inner chamber and can engage our hearts to fall more in love with Him. Why else would He use such vivid imagery in the Song of Solomon, an entire book of the Bible dedicated to a passionate, poetic love story? (for more on the Lord’s love for us expressed through Song of Solomon, see this sermon given by Pastor Nathan and Dr. Robyn Kassas at TORCC-NY here.)
He gives us the Arts to learn more about who He is and how He loves us.
I hope that the artists out there are seeing how important our role is as citizens of both Heaven and Earth. We are conduits of imagery that can help people develop attachments to either truth or fantasy. It is a very powerful role, and one that requires a high level of responsibility. It starts with ourselves - what are we filling our own imaginations with? Are we inviting the Spirit of the living God via His Logos Word, His Rhema words and His presence in us to fill the screens of our souls? Are the images in our imaginations causing us to fall more in love with Jesus? Or are we filling them with the synthetic materials of the world? When our own souls are filled with and fed by the Spirit of the Lord Himself, we will have much to offer in what we create for the world to ingest.
Virginia Hart Pike is the Artistic Director of REGA Arts, as well as a voice teacher, and composer/lyricist/bookwriter. Much of the content shared in this blog was learned through the teachings of Dr. Robyn and Pastor Nathan Kassas of TORCC-NY.
REGA Arts is a Christian Theatre Company with the mission of training and raising up Christians to have a career in the theatre industry, and creating new works of theater. It is affiliated with Times of Refreshing Christian Center, NY (TORCC-NY) as its spiritual oversight, under the leadership of Dr. Robyn Kassas, Dr. Tony Kassas, and Pastor Nathan Kassas.
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