Imagination and Truth
By: Pastor Russ Ramsey
When you think of the Old Testament character Sampson with his long hair and strength, what do you picture? Is his hair dark? Blonde? In braids? Does he have bangs? And what about his physique? Is he built like a linebacker? Or since his strength is God-given supernatural strength, would he need to be any bigger than a place-kicker?
Everyone who has heard this and other Bible stories has imagined Sampson, or the burning bush or the storm on the Sea of Galilee, and everyone’s imaginations have come up with distinct ideas.
The stories of Scripture are filled with details that fill our minds with images, but they are also lacking in details, which our minds fill out. When I preach, sometimes I fill them out and offer my own speculations from the pulpit. This is not a bad thing, nor is it damaging to the truth of Scripture, so long as we keep a few guiding boundaries in mind.
In this current Advent Series, in certian places I have painted with a broad brush to offer a panoramic view of the story of God’s work among His people from Eden through the Exodus from Egypt. This broad-brush approach is a common method of teaching in Scripture. We see it in Peter’s sermon at Pentecost (Acts 2) as well as in Stephen’s sermon right before he was stoned to death. (Acts 7)
On top of this broad-brush approach, I’ve been working to present these sermons in the form a story—the story of the book of Genesis as it points to Christ. And knowing this is a bit different from how I usually communicate, we’ve devoted time each week to explaining my reasons for this structure to assure you I am not trying to come up with some new way of preaching. Story-telling is one of the ways God instructs His people to convey Biblical truth to their children, (Ex. 12:26-27, Deut 6:7) Jesus used parable to teach. Most of the Bible is narrative, and we need to know and understand those stories to understand the poetry and teaching coming from them. Stories are meant to evoke in us pleasure, wonder and a true sense of realism.
One issue we encounter here is: Along with reading directly from the pages of the Bible itself, are we allowed other ways of telling Scripture’s story (song, poetry, art, children’s bibles etc) and if so, how do we do that in a way that is faithfully under the authority of Scripture? If we are to tell the story of Scripture in any way other than simply reading the written page, we’re bound, eventually, to enter into the tricky waters of speculation. So how can we speculate faithfully?
In this series, there have been points where I have speculated as to how certain events might have transpired. This might be a bit unsettling to some so, using my previous sermon on Sarah and Isaac as an example, I wanted to talk here a bit about my own boundaries for speculation in telling the stories of Scripture in a way that is faithful to what Scripture is saying. I believe speculation is allowable in telling the story of Scripture if all (not just one, but all) of the following are upheld:
1. The speculation flows from the Biblical narrative. In Sunday’s sermon we talked briefly about Hagar, Sarah’s maidservant. I said Sarah thought of her and felt remorse and regret, I referenced Genesis 16 which tells us Hagar and Sarah’s history. There we learn Sarah did regard Hagar with contempt, and that her contempt was due to the fact that Hagar had conceived Ishmael. (Gen 16:4) So we know from the story of Scripture how Sarah felt about Hagar. And we know that the reason Sarah laughed at God’s promise that she would have a son within the year was because she had been barren her whole life and had tried innovative ways of giving her husband an heir (Gen 18:13)—which included Hagar. So to speculate that Hagar came to Sarah’s mind as she heard the Lord talking about her having a child of her own flows from the story of Scripture.
Had I then gone on to speculate about Hagar’s upbringing as the daughter of poor servants, and how she longed to be a princess, but no one ever looked at her with interest due to her social standing—that would have been speculation coming from nowhere. We don’t know Hagar as a child.
2. The speculation is probable. Speculation needs to not only flow from the Biblical narrative, it also needs to be reasonably probable. Not merely possible, but likely. One place I did this was in describing Sarah getting up at three in the morning to feed her baby boy and looking up at the stars and counting. I have no idea if she actually did this or not, but I’ll almost guarantee something like this happened, and often, because Isaac couldn’t have been older than three months at that point—and with four kids of my own, middle of the night feeding are often still in play at that age. Also, we know Isaac and his presence amused Sarah to the point that she named him Laughter—and that for her, the humor was very much about what God had done. (Gen 21:6) So I believe my speculation about a 3:00am feeding or something close to it was likely.
Had I gone on to imagine a pet goat that would sit with Sarah as she nursed Isaac, that not only would’ve been speculation coming from nowhere, but also very unlikely, since the concept of livestock as pets was virtually unheard of. Goats weren’t objects of affection, they were sources of food.
3. The speculation does not fundamentally change or direct the way we apply the Biblical account. Along with flowing from the Biblical narrative and being probable, faithful speculation also needs to be secondary, not primary. If my application hinges on my speculation being true, it is out of bounds. I believe we’ve seen this recently in our culture concerning a wealthy land-owner in the Bible and God’s desire to make us wealthy if we’ll only ask him to. You cannot take that application from the two verses found in 1 Chronicles 4:9-10.
In my sermon last week, I talked about Abraham bringing a knife to the mountain to slaughter his son Isaac. That much we know from Genesis 22:6. But I speculated about what choosing that knife must have been like—that Abraham tested them and thought about them. I even said the one he chose felt heavier than he remembered. Knowing what it was for, I imagine when Abraham picked it up to pack it, it was different than any time he had picked it up before. But we don’t know. I was speculating as a dad with a son of my own.
However, had I gone on to say that part of God’s test was whether Abraham would choose the sharpest knife and then made the application that like Abraham choosing his best knife, we too should give the best we have for the sacrifices the Lord requires of us, I would have been altering the way we apply this story which had nothing to do with Abraham’s knife selection.
I don’t believe we can avoid speculation when we interact with God’s word. We are called not only to be hearers of the Word, but doers also, (Jas 1:22) which means we are to take what we read and try to faithfully apply it to our situation, which inevitably means looking for overlap, which can’t help but draw some speculation. Nevertheless, Scripture needs to hold the authority in our application. What we imagine—and we all imagine—does not stand beside the written record, it stands under it, subject to its authority.
As a preacher, my hope and prayer is to preach the living word of God in a living way, but always faithfully. So when I speculate, my boundaries will be that such speculation will flow as probabilities from the text, but not be the details on which the application of the sermon rests.
And if you ever believe I have wandered too far from the Biblical narrative into the sinking sands of guess work, please let me know. I want to be a faithful servant of the Word.
