Exploring the Social Imagination

Monday, February 17, 2014

God's Imagination not Man's

God's Imagination not Man's
What does that mean? It means that we should not live in social man's imagination but in God's. Yes, God has a social imagination, his is omnipotent. That does not mean though that we are not part of His. We are. However, our imagination has been corrupted, just read Genesis. We must now struggle with choosing between man's and God's. We have not been forsaken in this struggle; we can be renewed through God's word, if we choose. Why should we choose or why should we have to? Because we are part of a supernatural imagination and in that, we are like a program inside a larger program, one that is greater than the one we are in. In order for super fast information exchange, we have free will, the freedom to choose. Either choice will continue the program, though because it is a corrupt program, our choices will have an effect on our being saved and uploaded to the next program level.
God wants us to choose his imagination, the Bible is our guidebook. He wants us to know that we have the most freedom in choice because we are not locked into one set of possiblities. Choosing to live in man's social imagination locks us in to a finite number of possibles, and many times just one possibility.
For instance, God warns the people to not ask for a king, because a king will only take from you and make you live under him. 1Samuel 19 We want a king over us, Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles. 
Let us back up to 1 Samuel 6, Give us a king to lead us, ... 1 Samuel 10 Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking him for a king. he said, This is what the king who will reign over you will do: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots. Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants...

This describes man's social imagination not God's. If you try to argue that it does not apply to today, you are mistaken. It most certainly does. Whenever we ask government to do for us what we can do and should do for ourselves using God's imagination, then we are doomed to an end... man's end.
Thomas Jefferson said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself...Why, because even the best of man's government is still man's.  Is any government doomed then? Yes, it was thought and still should be considered as such in these times. Patrick Henry said " The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government - lest it comes to dominate our lives and interests."
What measure then can we take to ensure that man will not be the end of man? Live in God's imagination.

1 comment :

  1. Gods imagination is the only imagination that is free of trouble. In it we find the answer ti every problem and every dilemma. We find the answer to being lost and cut-off from him by sin. We find the answer to why we are here. And we find true freedom and reality there as well. God's imagination is so vast and unfathomable and yet He made us to share it together. He wants us as one with Him and each other. The joys that await us when he restores it back to it's original glory will be beyond breathtaking!

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