Failure of Imagination

Lydia Dyck
sophomore biology major
Goshen College

For the last couple of years Candy and I have been receiving, with appreciation, the Advent (and Lenten) devotionals written by students, faculty, and staff of Goshen College, in anticipation of our move to Wisconsin and sharing life with Milwaukee Mennonite Church, though that anticipation was not always intentional. The one that came today clearly articulated something I have been fully convinced of for over 50 years. It was written by Lydia Dyck, a sophomore biology major from Durham, Ontario. I was marveling at the insight of someone so young, and then realized that was about the age that this idea came into focus for me. Her comments are based on Matthew 1:18-25.

“In literary terms, a dilemma can be defined as a situation where the hero or heroine must decide between one of two bad outcomes. Now, you’d think that in fiction the hero could say, “Now wait just a minute, I don’t want either one of those. I don’t want to jump off a cliff or battle this evil villain to my death. Instead, I’m going to pull out some of this chocolate cake I’d been saving and share it with the aforementioned villain, and we can discuss the coolest sword moves of the age.” If we take a step back from this scene, we can see that the hero did not actually start with a two-option choice, the situation presented him with hundreds of possibilities, but the difference was that the hero had enough imagination to see them.

“Take Joseph as an example. A righteous, hardworking man who sincerely tries to be a good person all his life. When a culturally disgraceful situation arises and Mary is suddenly with child, he plans to do the best thing possible in this dilemma; to dismiss her quietly. Joseph’s failure in this situation is that he doesn’t use his imagination. If he had thought past the dilemma and been creative, maybe asking Mary what really happened, he might have seen the situation in a different way.

“How often are we blinded by binary choices like Joseph? How often have we gotten caught up in the simplistic or overly complicated options that our society gives us about the trends we must follow or the ways we must act. We need to realize how special a gift creativity is. Let’s try to think past the limiting options that dilemmas wave in front of our faces and be the creative human God made us to be.”

I am convinced that much of the violence, hostility, and fear in our world is the product of a failure of imagination. These sorts of cultural slogans are blatant acknowledgments of failure of imagination.

·         The only protection from a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.

·         Criminals and enemies (North Korea, Iran, ISIS) only understand violence, so we must answer them with violence.

·         If you want to protect your family, you must buy a gun and learn how to use it.

·         We have no choice but to use military or the threat of force to secure peace in the world.

I have long believed that essential to the call and mission of the followers of Jesus in our world is to refuse to go along with such fatal, catastrophic binary thinking as a failure of imagination, but to stimulate and insist on the hard work of greater imagination when it comes to addressing these serious threats in our world. If Christians become co-opted by the advocates of violence and force, we lose our witness to the real power of the Prince of Peace. I suppose, I have just given away my Anabaptist perspective that long predates my participation with the community of Milwaukee Mennonite Church. So be it.