“What I am here describing as imagination in its highest form is more properly to be called faith.” –Edward Robinson, The Language of Mystery
I don’t swear much. But there’s one situation that tempts me to let out a few expletives: when I just can’t get someone to believe they are loved by God.
Of course, we can all reel off the right doctrines:
“God loves us unconditionally, regardless of our unworthiness.”
“He has called us worthy and his own.”
“We are his children, made in his image.”
In our heads, we comprehend those sentences. But it’s another thing to embrace them in our hearts and live in light of their reality.
As much as we might want to hold this right theology, every one of us has experienced things—from family, culture, and the church—that have taught us the opposite. We aren’t always treated like we are loved unconditionally. Even without a history of abuse, we pick up untruths at an emotional level. Experience is a powerful teacher.
Here are a few of the untrue stories we can learn over a lifetime:
You are alone.
It’s all up to you.
There’s never enough.
God does not exist.
God does not care.
God is not at work in the world.
You will never be enough.
Suffering is a sign that you are forsaken.
Self-loathing is bad theology. Yet we live it on a regular basis. So it’s important to stop and ask if the theology we live is consistent with the message of Scripture: that God is always with us to guide, protect, provide, equip, and encourage. He is our Creator, and he longs for our wholeness and health, even in a broken world.
How can pastors help their people release a lifetime of internalized lies about God’s love?
The best way to reshape a lesson someone has picked up from experience is to create a new experience. And we can create those experiences though new imaginations of what could be true. Here’s how Christian neurologist Curt Thompson describes the experience of imagination in Anatomy of the Soul: “[You] are not simply engaging with some abstract dimension of your mind; you are in fact, changing the neural networks of your brain.”
Imagination is a vital part of our faith—not because we believe in imaginary things, but because the things we believe in aren’t always fully expressed in this broken world. If, as we read in 2 Corinthians 4:18, “we fix our eyes not on what is seen but on what is unseen,” then it takes imagination to have faith in realities that are not yet fully realized.
We’re not just randomly choosing pretty stories to imagine or believe. The point here is to learn to believe Scripture as truth, to invite the Spirit to redeem our imaginations according to the Word instead of the stories the world tells us.
Jared grew up in a family that struggled financially. His parents cared, but Jared, as the youngest, learned that if there was ever anything good to be had, he had to get to it quickly before others could take away his share. He and his siblings competed for their mother’s attention and affection. There never seemed to be enough to go around, whether it was food or love.
When Jared became part of our community, we joked every time he loaded up his plate with cookies at gatherings. But he began to notice other ways he had internalized that story of scarcity. He found it hard to trust that others would be generous, that he was safe. This lie made him react defensively. He felt cornered, but others didn’t see the corner that he felt backed into.
Over time we began to pray with him and discern that the things he had learned from home affected his ability to trust God. We invited him to wonder if there were things he believed about himself and about God that just weren’t true. Since he’d had years of negative experiences, it was hard for him to believe that, on a spiritual level, something else could be true. To replace these lies, we invited him to stretch his imagination, to open his heart to the possibility that, even if nothing changed in his family, a different reality was at work in his relationship with God. And slowly he began to test the things he wanted to believe.
Here are some of the practices that have brought significant breakthrough both in my own life and in the lives of those I lead.
Meditation
Throughout his book Anatomy of the Soul, Thompson offers various exercises to help rewire our imaginations, creating experiences that become positive memories of an attachment to God. Here’s a summary of one of them:
Imagine yourself in a peaceful environment. Allow yourself to sense God’s presence, in whatever way is meaningful to you. Imagine God saying, “You are my son/daughter whom I love; I am so pleased with you.” Visualize God looking into your eyes as he says these words. Do not turn away, do not resist. Allow yourself to be in his presence for several minutes. What do you feel? What do you feel God feeling?
Do this each day for six weeks. A regular practice like this “may lead you to a deep awareness of being known and cared for by your Father. Initially this may take place only during the meditation. Eventually, however, you will find that you can quickly access the positive images, feelings, sensations, and words you hear during moments of discomfort in everyday life, altering your response to an anxiety-provoking event.”
Find Yourself in a Good Story
Keep a list of novels with important spiritual themes to share with folks who are struggling to create a new vision of their relationship with God. As pastors we often suggest non-fiction reading, but there’s nothing like fiction to reshape our imaginations. The lessons that are so hard to apply may be easier to embrace when we watch Lucy or Bilbo learn them. Here are some of my favorite novels for discipleship.
Reflect on the Hexagon
I adapted the hexagon below from 3DM’s Life Shapes. (Thankfully 3DM encourages innovation of their ideas!) Mike Breen’s original idea (from his book, Building a Discipling Culture) created a hexagon based on the six characteristics of God as expressed in the Lord’s Prayer—Father, King, Provider, Forgiver, Leader, Protector—designating a segment of the hexagon for each characteristic. This hexagon is used as a reflection tool to visualize God in each of these roles in our lives.
To the hexagon I added what each of God’s roles says about us—if he is Father, I am a beloved child (Gal. 3:26). If he is King, I am an heir (Rom. 8:17; Gal. 4:7), and so on. The power of this exercise became especially clear to me when my small group taped out a large version of the hexagon on the floor and sat in it together, one segment at a time. After taking a few minutes of silence in each segment, we talked about how hard or easy it was to receive that aspect of our relationship with God before moving on through the hexagon. It was astounding to see how segments that were hard for me to receive were perfectly obvious to others. And they, on the other hand, struggled in the segments where I was perfectly comfortable.
Ask “How Would You Live …?”
I adapted this practice from a friend who probably got it from Brennan Manning. When someone is struggling to fully embrace a truth they claim (or want) to believe, I invite them to reach into their imagination by asking, How would you live if you really believed it? When they answer, I say, “Okay, start living like that.” I first learned the power of this when a friend turned the question around on me: “If you really believed God loved you unconditionally, how would you live?” As a workaholic, it didn’t take me long to say “I’d rest more.” So my friend challenged me to rest more, not only for the sake of relaxation, but to tell myself, while resting, “God still delights in you even though you’re not accomplishing anything.” And slowly I began to believe it.
Restory your Story
Mary DeMuth has created a ministry to help folks retell their own stories as God sees them. Her events and resources are helpful to all, but they have a special connection to folks recovering from abuse.
Mandy Smith is lead pastor of University Christian Church in Cincinnati, Ohio, and author of The Vulnerable Pastor.
