I grew up fearing the facility of the eyes. I used to be speculated to avert my eyes from certain television shows, movies, books, and pictures. When it got here to men, I used to be afraid of my gaze—and doubly afraid of theirs. Just the sale rack was dangerous if I desired to avoid envy and irresponsible spending. Even at 40, I still hide my eyes once I feel afraid.
But I’ve come to understand that for on a regular basis I spent worrying about where to not look, I must have spent rather a lot more time excited about what my eyes must be fixed upon. I feared what I saw would corrupt me. It never occurred to me that what I saw could also save me.
Scripture tells us faith begins with a vision. “Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” John the Baptist declares in John 1:29 (NKJV throughout). See your salvation, he entreats us. Look and be saved. John’s words seek advice from one other story of salvation through sight: the bronze serpent. When the Israelites wander within the wilderness, several of them die from poisonous serpents. Yahweh intervenes and instructs Moses to create a bronze serpent, in order that “everyone who’s bitten, when he looks at it, shall live” (Num. 21:8). Jesus compares himself to the serpent, saying, “As Moses lifted up the snake within the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up” (John 3:14). The serpent of sin has bitten us, and its poison courses through our blood. But if we take a look at Christ, we are going to live.
Scripture includes just a few suggestions on when to avert our eyes (1 John 2:16; Matt. 18:9), but much more continuously, it invites us to behold, to look, to listen. Behold often introduces the unexpected and charming. It asks us (quite literally) to carry on to what we see, to contemplate and be transformed by it. When John tells us to “behold” the Lamb of God, he’s not only telling us, “Look over here for a second.” He’s telling us to look so fastidiously, with such utterly captivated attention, that we’re modified by what we see.
The apostle Paul likewise directs us to gaze upon Christ in order that we could also be modified, speaking of Christians who, “beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the identical image from glory to glory” (2 Cor. 3:18). Both John the Baptist and Paul are clear: We behold Christ in order that we would grow to be like Christ.
This idea could seem easy enough. Then again, Jesus walked on earth in flesh for under a short while, so how exactly are we speculated to “behold” him now?
Thankfully, we have now an additional “eye” for just this occasion. It’s invisible, however it shapes how we see the visible world. It’s connected to the physical eyes, but separate too. Sometimes called the attention of the soul, it’s higher often called the imagination. And it needs our attention.
We perhaps take into consideration imagining as something energetic, a deliberate line of thought or game of make-believe. But ancient and medieval thinkers primarily considered the imagination as something received. They used wax and seals to elucidate how the imagination shapes our spiritual and character formation. Our souls are like wax, they thought, pliable and moldable. Wax takes on the form of whatever seal, or stamp, is impressed upon it. Imaginative forms, comparable to images and stories, are like seals that imprint themselves on us. We are transformed by—and into—what captures our attention.
Even the word imagination is expounded to imitation. Children imitate pirates, princesses, and superheroes, but additionally they imitate what they see their parents doing. And once we grow up, we don’t lose this imitative instinct. Our conversations may include a tangle of quotes from movies we love. We may echo the opinions of our favourite news channel. We may try to decorate like our favourite musician or influencer. If something captivates our imagination, we can’t be objective observers. If we behold something, it becomes a part of who we’re and the way we see the world.
But not all imaginative “stamps” are equal. Some are beautiful and good, and a few quite ugly. Paul warns us in Romans 12:2 (CEB) to not “be conformed to the patterns of this world.” These “patterns” may appear true, but they provide a false vision of what is significant. They distort and malform us, impairing our ability to accurately see God, ourselves, and the world around us.
Take the famous example of Don Quixote. He feasts so heavily on chivalric tales of knights, adventures, and courtly love that he puts on a coat of armor, hops on his old horse, and goes off looking for knightly adventures. No matter whom he meets or where he goes, he sees every thing as if it were one among his adventure books: A rundown inn becomes a castle, and an unattractive, scheming woman a stupendous maiden in need of rescue. Most famously, Don Quixote chases windmills within the mistaken belief that he’s ferociously fighting giants. He has been so shaped by the knightly imagination that no logic can ever persuade him he’s anything but a shining, heroic knight.
Today, we will not be putting on a coat of arms and brandishing a sword, however the patterns of our age—consumerism, nationalism, individualism, or moral relativism, to call just just a few—can likewise distort our vision and influence our beliefs, practices, and character in ways in which will not be so different from Don Quixote chasing windmills. We too could also be guilty of seeing a reality completely divorced from the truth we inhabit.
Indeed, among the most pressing problems facing the church today are rooted in a failure of the imagination. We often approach them as in the event that they were political or mental problems that may very well be solved with reason, but logic doesn’t work on a diseased imagination. The only solution to correct a malformed imagination is re-forming the imagination.
If we grow to be what we behold, we must be sure that what we behold is what we would like to grow to be. Becoming a people transformed into the image of Christ slightly than the patterns of our age requires reorienting our gaze and reshaping the wax of our imaginations. If we would like our lives to reflect Christ, we must imprint his image onto our souls. If we would like to align our lives with the gospel, we must let its story grow to be our story.
Ancient and medieval Christians understood that something as powerful because the imagination have to be shaped and disciplined. The first generations of Christians expressed their beliefs in each words and pictures. The fish symbol, for instance, is one among the earliest, most elementary professions of our faith: A fish, ichthys in Greek, acts as a symbolic anagram for Jesus (i) Christ (ch), God’s (th) Son (y), Savior (s). They also used anchors, phoenixes, palm branches, and lots of other symbols to profess their beliefs.
These easy symbols are an early example of a practice that forms the soul by forming the imagination. To be sure that their beliefs, practices, and character aligned with the gospel, ancient and medieval Christians practiced the “art of fashioning the soul,” a devotional exercise that intentionally chosen and imprinted images onto the soul. For centuries, Christians trained their spiritual eyes with sculptures, symbols, and stories, frescoes and friezes, morality plays and mosaics. They etched glass and illuminated manuscripts, designed churches shaped like boats and crosses, and decorated the places of the dead with the art of resurrection.
No matter which of the various forms it took, this art for fashioning the soul at all times sought to mimic Christ. Since beholding Christ captivates, surprises, and transforms, so too do these works of the Christian imagination. Filled with distorted faces and penetrating eyes, surreal shades of gold and blue, roses created from blood, and rainbow-colored panthers, the historic Christian imagination invites us to stop, blink, and behold the utter strangeness we see.
Many evangelical Christians have, unfortunately, forgotten or otherwise neglected our inheritance of the Christian imagination. But these works can still help form our souls by training us to see the gorgeous, upside-down truths of the gospel. Their strangeness disorients us, inviting us to look away from the unhealthy patterns of the world and to be stamped anew with love, gratitude, and a way of wonder rooted in the excellent news of the gospel.
Behold, the historic works of the Christian imagination still implore us, and grow to be like Christ. Look—and live.
Lanta Davis teaches classes on the sacramental imagination, beauty, and great texts for the John Wesley Honors College at Indiana Wesleyan University. She is the writer of Becoming by Beholding: The Power of the Imagination in Spiritual Formation.
