"Because ours is an age with a will to fiction, the role of imagination is extremely important. Men who will not be governed by God’s word will not be governed by reality, because reality is not of their making. God having created all things, reality reflects the mind of God, not man. Hence, it is the essence of sin to resort to imagination to escape God’s law world...It is essential to imagination to create a man-made world and a man-ordained decree of predestination. It is the essence of sin to demand such a world.” R.J. Rushdoony, Systematic Theology Volume I, pp. 474, 475.
This quote just hit me SO hard, especially that sentence in the middle: "Hence, it is the essence of sin to resort to imagination to escape God's law world". That is just a very good description of my life a few years ago. I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be a writer so much that I stopped being a Christian, because God didn't want me to be a writer. He made that perfectly clear, but I ignored Him. Afterwards, my life was almost consumed by imagination--I would imagine scenes from my stories, mostly, over and over and over again. Or I would spend hours obsessively writing out the things I'd imagined, and then not be able to sleep because I couldn't stop my imagination from continuing with the story, with what happened next. I loved my characters, knew them better than I knew myself.
It's taken me a long time to understand this aspect of myself. I still struggle with it, sometimes, and God has been so patient with me; when I'm upset, sometimes I will want to do nothing so much as escape into one of my stories. I can control everything in that part of myself, in that other world; I can do whatever I want to the characters, and they can turn into wonderful people anyway. I think a lot of it is also boredom; real life can be boring--doing the same things week after week, working hard, doing what you know you're supposed to do. And my storylands were just so exciting, full of emotion and adventure and self-discovery (of the characters, not me).
And that is why the above quote just really struck me, I think; my storylands were such an escape for me, not only from the boredom of everyday life, but also from the fact that I was ignoring God. In my world, a human being could become essentially perfect all on their own, or with the help of a few close friends. And it was just so addicting, this ability to escape to another world!
This quote also made me feel less alone, unique. I suppose other people escape into dream worlds, but I never really thought about it; the fact that this theologian thought it was important enough, enough of a problem, to write about it, write about the problem of imagination and how it is such a sin when it's used to escape the reality of God and His world, was a bit mind-blowing, but also comforting. I'm not the only one who has ever struggled with this.
I know, how prideful could I be, right?
Anyway, a related topic that I've struggled with a great deal is the subject and content of my reading. I love to read, by the way, and fantasy books are some of my absolute favorites (all my stories were fantasy as well). I think I love it more than any other genre because so often it features characters who are forced to make a choice between right and wrong, and they often grow tremendously in the process (some really good scifi books/shows also do this). But I also love the epic quality of a lot of fantasy stories, and the sense of magic and wonder of so much that goes on around everyone. So I've struggled recently with whether I should read fantasy and scifi books--they can serve the same function as my Storyland at times, escaping from reality, and can sometimes trigger the desire to return to thinking about my stories. I have prayed a lot about this, and oddly enough, I haven't received any overarching demand from God to stop reading/watching fantasy and sci fi. I do pray about every book before I begin to read it, and I have been refused some books.
I think this is related to how I've approached reading lately. I've been reading to develop my mind and spirit, and I often discover God in a book, or at least read something that makes me think about what I believe. This is true even in fantasy books, even when they challenge my resolve to not think about my stories anymore.
I just took a break in writing this to go delete everything on my computer, and anywhere I backed it up, that had to do with any of my stories. And then emptied my trash, just to be on the safe side. It felt very strange. Momentous, and yet as simple as clicking 'Move to Trash'. A few months ago I recycled all my hand-written notes, but I didn't feel God telling me to delete the typed-up copies yet. Maybe I wasn't ready. Even now, I felt a bit of dismay at the thought of deleting those stories--there was no turning back from that, no getting the stories back (whereas a lot of my hand-written notes I kept for no real reason and I'd already typed them into my computer). I'm not sure I feel any different after deleting them, but then again, maybe I do. I trusted God enough to do what He asked, to delete those stories that I spent hours writing and thinking about. I'm not good enough to be totally at peace about it yet--I still have a nagging little nervous feeling, that I did the wrong thing, that I might have needed/used those stories someday. But I did what God asked, and it was something that needed to be done, and I think I'm also relieved, because now there's no chance that someday in a moment of weakness I'll go read one of my stories, maybe even edit it a bit.
"You do not desire a sacrifice, or I would offer one. You do not want a burnt offering. The sacrifice you desire is a broken spirit. You will not reject a broken and repentant heart, O God." Psalm 51:16-17
I know, how prideful could I be, right?
Anyway, a related topic that I've struggled with a great deal is the subject and content of my reading. I love to read, by the way, and fantasy books are some of my absolute favorites (all my stories were fantasy as well). I think I love it more than any other genre because so often it features characters who are forced to make a choice between right and wrong, and they often grow tremendously in the process (some really good scifi books/shows also do this). But I also love the epic quality of a lot of fantasy stories, and the sense of magic and wonder of so much that goes on around everyone. So I've struggled recently with whether I should read fantasy and scifi books--they can serve the same function as my Storyland at times, escaping from reality, and can sometimes trigger the desire to return to thinking about my stories. I have prayed a lot about this, and oddly enough, I haven't received any overarching demand from God to stop reading/watching fantasy and sci fi. I do pray about every book before I begin to read it, and I have been refused some books.
I think this is related to how I've approached reading lately. I've been reading to develop my mind and spirit, and I often discover God in a book, or at least read something that makes me think about what I believe. This is true even in fantasy books, even when they challenge my resolve to not think about my stories anymore.
I just took a break in writing this to go delete everything on my computer, and anywhere I backed it up, that had to do with any of my stories. And then emptied my trash, just to be on the safe side. It felt very strange. Momentous, and yet as simple as clicking 'Move to Trash'. A few months ago I recycled all my hand-written notes, but I didn't feel God telling me to delete the typed-up copies yet. Maybe I wasn't ready. Even now, I felt a bit of dismay at the thought of deleting those stories--there was no turning back from that, no getting the stories back (whereas a lot of my hand-written notes I kept for no real reason and I'd already typed them into my computer). I'm not sure I feel any different after deleting them, but then again, maybe I do. I trusted God enough to do what He asked, to delete those stories that I spent hours writing and thinking about. I'm not good enough to be totally at peace about it yet--I still have a nagging little nervous feeling, that I did the wrong thing, that I might have needed/used those stories someday. But I did what God asked, and it was something that needed to be done, and I think I'm also relieved, because now there's no chance that someday in a moment of weakness I'll go read one of my stories, maybe even edit it a bit.
"You do not desire a sacrifice, or I would offer one. You do not want a burnt offering. The sacrifice you desire is a broken spirit. You will not reject a broken and repentant heart, O God." Psalm 51:16-17
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