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From the Christian History Archives: Clyde Kilby's reflections on C.S. Lewis' journey Into the Land of Imagination . . .

Every normal person is blessed with imagination. Imagination operates ceaselessly and is capable of tying together even grotesque elements of matter and spirit. The apple which is said to have fallen on Isaac Newton's head launched him into a set of meanings which culminated in his laws of gravitation and motion. In his theory of relativity Einstein combined complicated mathematical equations with images of trains rushing into distant space. The best scientists know that great discoveries are not made simply by experiment and reason but sometimes in mental gyrations as great, even as delightfully humorous, as Alice's adventures down the rabbit hole . . .

Owing to the Great Mistake of Eden, life tends habitually to settle into the prosaic and ordinary. Indeed, is it not symbolic of fallen man that a steady smell of roses leaves them odorless? Imagination is necessary to the worthwhile life . . .

Some devout Christians fear imagination is inevitably evil, yet the Bible is almost embarrassingly imaginative. Lewis insists that the reader of the Bible, without losing sight of its primary value, must always remember that it is literature. Most emphatically, he says, the Psalms must be read as poetry. We remember such highly imaginative passages as Let the floods clap their hands, let the hills be joyful together, and Christ as a great storyteller describing a man who built his house upon sand and a sower who went forth to sow. He compared the kingdom of heaven to a grain of mustard seed and described Himself as the true vine. God, the greatest of imaginers, gives all men power to imagine, just as he gives them free will. Either can lead to steady and joyful devotion to Him or else to everlasting misery . . .

Lewis accepted imagination as one of the great and varied gifts of God. As a Christian he saw it a worthy avenue of spiritual witness. He believed, however, that it should never become a device or frame on which to hang a sermon. For Lewis, the principle on which we must daily operate is a simple honesty which takes its life and its liberty from a living experience of the triune God.