Neriah: One of the rooms is haunted. By my dead grandmother.
Jesus: Ooooh, I’ll take that one!
(“Thunder,” The Chosen, Season 2, Episode 1)
I don’t believe in ghosts. While as a Christian I certainly believe in a spiritual world beyond the one we can see, stories about old grandmother so-and-so’s ghost coming to wreak havoc in revenge for her unfinished business don’t fit well with a biblical view of what happens after death. Their paranormal cousins, vampires and werewolves, fall into the same category: imaginary. But like most people, I enjoy a good ghost story from time to time.
As we approach Halloween, it can be tricky for Christians to figure out what to do with ghost stories and fantasy in general. Should Christians engage with or consume stories or media featuring elements that don’t fit into our worldview? From the negative reaction to The Chosen’s humorous #JediJesus meme back in October of last year, it’s clear that this is more than just a Halloween or ghostly issue. People didn’t like seeing Jesus combined with the Star Wars fictional universe, which doesn’t exactly incorporate a Judeo-Christians view of God. I think each person needs to figure out what’s appropriate to enjoy for themselves, but for what it’s worth, here’s what I think based on what I see as the difference between imagination, belief, and faith.
Imagination:
- “the act or power of forming a mental image of something not present to the senses or never before wholly perceived in reality”
- “a creation of the mind” (Merriam-Webster)
Imagination as a word is a bit nuanced. In the first sense, imagination is a necessary skill for understanding anything we can’t see, but we’ll come back to that later. In terms of fiction, imagination allows us to create and enjoy ideas, places, people, and stories that aren’t a part of our reality—they exist only in the mind (and on the page, screen, etc.). In other words, imagination allows us to enjoy a good ghost story without actually believing in ghosts.
To enjoy stories about things we know aren’t real, such as in a book or movie, it requires something called suspension of disbelief. To suspend one’s disbelief means “to allow oneself to believe things that cannot be true” (Merriam-Webster). For example, to enjoy Winnie the Pooh, you must first suspend your disbelief that stuffed animals can talk. In fact, in order to recognize Pooh as a bear, you must suspend your disbelief that bears can be yellow and wear red shirts. You set some of your knowledge about real bears and stuffed animals aside so that you can engage with the story. To enjoy a ghost story if you don’t believe in ghosts, you can suspend your disbelief long enough so that you get that creepy-crawly feeling, which you enjoy because you know deep down that it’s not real. But the ability to enjoy a ghost story doesn’t mean you now believe ghosts are real.
Belief: “conviction of the truth of some statement or the reality of some being or phenomenon especially when based on examination of evidence” (Merriam-Webster)
To suspend one’s disbelief is not the same as to believe. Belief is based on reality, on reason, and on acceptance based on evidence of something you come to know is the truth. When we accept Christ and His view of the world, that is belief, not imagination. We know what God has said in His Word is the truth, not just another story that we must suspend our belief to enjoy. We become convinced that Jesus is a real person, that He is the Son of God, that He died and rose again, and that He has forgiven our sins and is preparing us for eternal life with Him. But faith goes a step further, beyond just belief.
Faith: “the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods” (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity)
According to Lewis’ definition above, faith is what helps us live out what we believe and hold on to it no matter what’s happening to us at the moment, no matter if it currently seems to be true. Again, this isn’t based on imagination, but on reason and evidence. However, as Lewis points out, emotions and imagination don’t always match with what our reason tells us.
Even though faith is based on what is real, not what is imaginary, imagination is a crucial skill for developing belief and faith. Here’s another definition of faith from Hebrews 11: “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see” (Hebrews 11:1). In order to understand and believe in what we “do not see,” we need imagination in the first sense I mentioned earlier—forming in our mind the idea of something that’s not available to our senses. We tend to understand best through images and stories, so without imagination, we would have a difficult time making our faith a real thing. We must use our imagination somewhat in order to picture what we’re believing in, what would have happened in the past, what might happen in the future. However, that doesn’t change the fact that we believe Jesus is a real person. Although our imagination of Him might be off, He Himself is not imaginary. That is what separates our use of imagination around things we believe in vs things we simply suspend our disbelief to enjoy.
For example, when we enjoy things like ghost stories or Star Wars, imagination is not faith. We suspend our disbelief in order to be entertained for a little while. Enjoying Star Wars doesn’t mean you now believe in the Force the same way you believe in God. But faith and imagination aren’t entirely separate. Sometimes, things we know to be imaginary can help us understand our faith better and make it more real to us. For example, as you may have noticed from how often I reference them, two imaginary properties have had a huge impact on my faith: C.S. Lewis’ Narnia and Dallas Jenkins’ The Chosen. I know Aslan is not Jesus; He was imagined by Lewis. But Aslan helps me imagine what Jesus might be like in a way that makes my faith more tangible. Likewise, The Chosen is speculative imagination based on biblical truth (not claiming biblical authority) but imagining what the disciples may have been like lends them a life in my understanding that they never had before.
To sum up, imagination is a tool that helps us picture things we cannot see, which can aid our faith in the things we believe are true. But imagination also allows us to simply enjoy stories by suspending our disbelief for the sake of entertainment. I think it’s perfectly fine for Christians to enjoy fantasy. The rub is that we need to be able to recognize the difference between suspension of disbelief and belief—between imagination and faith. So if we choose to enjoy ghost stories, we should do it “with our brains on.”
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