Recently I've read two books. Both are excellent and I recommend them. Skye Jethani's book The Divine Commodity: Discovering A Faith Beyond Consumer Christianity. And Frederick Buechner's book Telling the Truth: The Gospel As Tragedy, Comedy & Fairy Tale.
A topic that arises in both books (frankly, it comes up a lot if you are a Christian who likes literature) is childlike imagination. Both authors promote the notion of our need for childlike imagination -- we adults are too quick to "understand" things and not willing enough to "believe" in magical worlds. Again, this kind of talk crops into Christian discourse almost every time C. S. Lewis or J. R. R. Tolkien are mentioned. And always those who bring up this theme of childlike imagination use the passage from the gospel when Jesus says that we need to come to him like a child.
Who am I to suggest otherwise? But I'm not sure I agree with the emphasis Buechner or Jethani (and many others) place on childlike imagination. Childlike imagination, it seems to me, makes a good point. It does not, though, make a good goal.
Wasn't it Dawkins or Hitchens who recently decried fairy tales? To grumpy atheists like these men, childlike imagination is the pits. It would be a good starting point for them to look anew at the world with the humble and open-minded imagination of a child. Yet, eventually even imagination should mature. I think of the old professor in The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. He was completely able to imagine a magical world, and he was not at all childlike.
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