Imagination and Faith
Imagination and Faith
R.A. Young
Growing up, I kept a stack of my ten favourite books at the foot of my bed — primarily for ease of access, but also because they didn’t fit on the shelf. I’m sure there’s nothing too unusual there. What I want to point out is the fact that nine of the ten books were fantasy.
That hasn’t shifted an inch in the years since. I’ll write essays, nonfiction, I’ll read history and theology and papers (and cereal boxes), but my heart still lies in the realm of the imagination. For a long time, it never occurred to me to wonder what it was about fantasy that so attracted me, but when I delved into answering that question a few years ago, what I found made me love the genre all the more.
(The substance of the following post is taken mostly from a presentation I gave on the subject two semesters ago; other ideas not cited are thanks to a presentation by Vigen Guroian last semester.)
Fantasy has a bad reputation, particularly among Christians. It makes us nervous — and for good reason too, what with its emphasis on danger and peril, its praise of magic or condoning of occult practices, its tendency to draw us away from reality and (the assumption goes) down darker and darker trails of the subconscious. To all that I must say, fair enough. But I also must share how I find fantasy’s virtues to outweigh its dangers.
Generally speaking, any story can show us truths about our world, and fantasy is no different. As author Lloyd Alexander points out, “Fantasy is hardly an escape from reality. It’s a way of understanding it.” One doesn’t need to study allegories or analyse Aesop’s fables to find truth and reality reflected in fantasy — albeit sometimes in what J.R.R. Tolkien terms “far-off gleams or echoes.”
For one thing, there’s a very high and very real moral standard to fantasy. All the best stories (and most of the subpar ones as well) are able to spell out moral lessons in ways that are poignant and visceral. We read stories of unimaginable danger, and of heroes who approach fear with astonishing courage. We read about impossible sacrifices and decisions and love that is somehow still higher than the fantastical darkness it is highlighted against. Not to get ahead of myself here, but do you recognise any of that as a reality it takes some imagination to grapple with?
Nor is it only themes of love and sacrifice. Fantasy typically presents a comprehensible introduction to the very real idea of warfare — battle between good and evil. In fantasy stories we are introduced to good vs evil, light vs dark — hero vs monster, child vs witch, kingdom vs enemy. We can comprehend these stories, and they offer us a glimpse into what is a literally real, albeit spiritual, war. Perhaps there is the fear that fantasy could reduce such truth to the realm of the imagination — But for physical beings like humans, it takes imagination to glimpse, let alone comprehend, spiritual truths like this warfare.
My favourite example of truth found in fantasy, though, is how it exposes us to beauty. This, I gladly acknowledge, is (or should be, rather) true of all the arts. They are designed to show us the real and deep-seated Beauty of God’s creation. So when fantasy exposes us to aesthetics of nature, of peace, of grandeur, or majesty — far from marvelling at the author’s imagination, we are moved to marvel at the God Who created all fantasy is drawn from, and gave people imaginations to so rearrange reality.
A subset of all these preceding points is the themes of victory and rest — what Tolkien refers to as “the Consolation of the Happy Ending.” Obviously, not all fantasy has happy endings; read most of Hans Christian Anderson’s rather bleak fairy tales and you’ll be convinced all romances end in unpleasant bloody deaths. But to most fantasy, there is an idea that in the end, good triumphs. The heroes get the rest and the fame and the glory they undoubtedly deserve. Again, this is a point where fantasy clearly reflects the reality of certain aspects of the Christian faith.
To summarise this, I’ll use Tolkien’s words again: “The particular quality of the ‘joy’ in successful fantasy can thus be explained as a sudden glimpse of the underlying reality or truth.” So, fantasy encourages, or allows, us to use imagination to contend with unattainable concepts.
This brings us, though, to the idea of “joy” he mentions. There’s the flash of joy he describes, the joy of understanding. A sort of fierce joyous ache when you stumble upon true beauty, or catch a glimpse of objective truth, or are allowed a flash of insight into a particular question. Fantasy, as Tolkien points out, can be a source of this peculiar joy.
There is also, I’ve found, a sort of inspiring quality to fantasy that can’t really be matched anywhere else. When your mind is full of imaginings — whether fantasy or human attempts to grasp spiritual realities — it makes what you do see all the more exciting. “Fantasy makes reality luminous,” and again, “We should look at green again, and be startled anew (but not blinded) by blue and yellow and red. We should meet the centaur and the dragon, and then perhaps suddenly behold, like the ancient shepherds, sheep, and dogs, and horses — and wolves. This recovery fairy-stories help us to make. In that sense only a taste for them may make us, or keep us, childish.” In today’s vernacular, “childlike” probably describes better the reality Tolkien is suggesting. Imagination and faith are in a state of continual interplay, both childlike qualities. Inspiration, awe, and childlike wonder are shared by faith and fantasy — making both mundane and magical seem magnificent.
So, there is a joy to be found in fantasy and in the realm of the imagination. Fantasy can lead one, in a way, to a moral standard, to an understanding or at least appreciation of beauty. But actually, the continuity goes further than that. C.S. Lewis describes how glimpses of truth caught in imagination later drew him to the real, splendid truth of Christ.
“Such, then, was the state of my imaginative life; over against it stood the life of my intellect. The two hemispheres of my mind were in the sharpest contrast. On the one side a many-islanded sea of poetry and myth; on the other a glib and shallow ‘rationalism.’ Nearly all that I loved I believed to be imaginary; nearly all that I believed to be real I thought grim and meaningless.” But in turning to Christ, Lewis found that reality did after all include the depth and richness of virtue and joy and faith that he had attributed only to fantasy. Indeed, his love for fantasy prepared him for a love of higher and deeper beauty he found to be real in his faith.
Tolkien drives this particular point home in the climax of his paper “On Fairy-Stories.” “I would venture,” he writes, “to say that approaching the Christian Story from this direction, it has long been my feeling (a joyous feeling) that God redeemed the corrupt making-creatures, men, in a way fitting to this aspect, as to others, of their strange nature. The Gospels contain a fairy story, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories. They contain many marvels — peculiarly artistic, beautiful, and moving: ‘mythical’ in their perfect, self-contained significance; and among the marvels is the greatest and most complete conceivable eucatastrophe. But this story has entered History and the primary world; the desire and aspiration of sub-creation has been raised to the fulfillment of Creation. The birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man’s history. The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation. This story begins and ends in joy. It has pre-eminently the ‘inner consistency of reality.’ There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true, and none which so many sceptical men have accepted as true on its own merits. For the Art of it has the supremely convincing tone of Primary Art, that is, of Creation. To reject it leads either to sadness or to wrath.”
Far from suggesting that the Gospel is mere fantasy, he makes the point that fantasy is so attractive because it reflects deep and poignant truths about reality. So, sure, there’s something to be said for fantasy as a break from reality; I can’t deny that I’ve approached it that way many times. But I would venture to propose that if we approach fantasy as useless, or for that matter as dangerous, we’re missing what is actually a really cool gift of God.
Fantasy helps us to wrestle with truth, whether glimpses of ethics or beauty or a peek behind the curtain into the reality of war between good and evil. Fantasy does and should engage childlike senses of wonder and imagination. And it does and should, always, instill in us a sense of joy.
