Imagination has always been my retreat. I've had an active imagination from childhood and into adulthood. It is a powerful tool in our development of concepts and ideas. What does bravery look like? Well, we can imagine ourselves in brave acts. What does love look like? We do the same thing. And on to the list are topics from kindness, humor, justice etc. We internalize and imagine what all these things feel like, look like and how they are demonstrated.
This is true for any concept. We are told about nationalism. Well, after a few patriotic movies, songs and speeches we can imagine it! The only tangible place it rests is in our imagination. And I can only think that this is how people groups started to be able to interact peacefully, through shared imaginations. Yuval Noah Harari discussed this in "Sapiens A brief History of Humankind." Shared imaginary myths like nationalism, religion, concepts like human rights or Socialism have no reality outside of shared beliefs. But they are powerful!
For a long time I was under the shared imagination of the concept of "original sin." This was the kingpin in the teachings of Christianity. I internalized the shared story of the Garden of Eden and could give a pretty thorough description of what I imagined. I took some images from books, sermons, movies and came up with what I assumed each person looked like and sounded like. And as I went deeper, it became more real to me! Just like imagining what the last stand at the Alamo felt like or being in the front row at a Beatles concert. Vivid in parts and vague in others.
I could imagine a moment in time where a brunette woman (her breasts would be covered by astronomically long hair) is reaching towards some type of fruit at the insistence of a snake. And then imagine the temptation, grief, hurt, pain and self-loathing that followed that first bite. The shock of a different world opening up with a concept of sin and curse. And in a way, when we all hear the story and internalize it, the entire outlook of the world changes.
It did for me.
All of a sudden, I felt dirty and naked, just like my caricature of trembling Adam and Eve hiding from the presence of God. Whenever I did something that could be "sinful" I felt the collective shame of a thousand imaginations! Also, I went to church where each mind wraps around the entire concept and joins together to make sense and clarify imagination. Retelling of bible stories about sin, a fresh perspective on the garden. Shining a light on a particular sin so that it colors your mind in a different hue. Sharing "struggles" of our ability to control areas and experiencing the guilt.
Then I go back to the day I really started to consider where my concept of sin came from.
What if that had never happened. No actual historical event where a snake talked to a woman in a perfect garden... In fact, it didn't make a lot of sense except as an allegory.
So God made the tree? And the snake? And he knows all things? And he still allowed Satan to be created, rebel, be cast out, sneak into a garden where you put a tree that could be used to disobey you? And then... punish the two most beloved creations made in "our" image?
Sin started to look like a familiar story. A familiar shared concept that enters the imagination and takes root. In a similar fairy tale to the story of ingenuity in the "Three Little Pigs" and determination in "The Little Engine That Could."
It blew my mind when I really considered it might not be true. And then when you realize the hundreds of thousands of years that brought Homo Sapiens to Canaan when this was supposed to have happened, the story has a lot in common with any other collective fable.
Shared imagination can be powerful. This is how we get to civil rights, nationalism, and the idea of freedom itself.
But its time to look at what we internalize and discuss what it's origin story is.
If its a cartoon tree in a caricature forest and that's what makes us hate ourselves for swearing, having sex and enjoying a beer, it might be time to get rid of it.
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