make believe

It struck me, whilst engrossed in through film, Voyage of the Dawn Trader, just how good we have become at making things. Any land.castle or ship can be changed or created digitally, making stunning vessels and places which take our breath away.

We are so used to this fantasy world that it is easy to forget that only a few years ago the only access to the dreams of an author was through our imaginations. We could not have hoped to recreate Narnia in such a way that we might believe that we could actually reach out and touch it.

But as I watched I wondered whether we were not doing rather too good a job. Not because we are destroying our own imaginations, you only have to spend ten minutes with a group of primary school age children to realize that imagination is alive and well. No, what worries me is that when the imaginary becomes too real we might choose it instead.

Some people might level this charge at Christians. God, they might argue, is simply the product of over active and escapes imaginations. But that has never been the Christian view of imagination.

The fact that Jesus told us to be like children speaks highly of imagination. That eager anticipation and openness to ideas which children exhibit is part and parcel of imagination, seeing beyond our boundaries.

But Christian tradition is also clear that it is impossible to fully imagine God. We cannot hold all of God in any part of ourselves, but I would want to argue that we cannot explore the vastness of God or begin to grasp God's closeness without allowing imagination.

The film was beautifully made. I was sad to be back in the real world with Edward and Lucy at the end of it. But there is very real beauty here too, just sometimes we have to look for the hand of God in our real world with the daring imagination and eyes of a child.