The Missing Piece in Christian Thinking (It's Not Logic)
Cameron (00:00:00)
Hello and welcome to Thinking Out Loud. I'm your co host, Cameron McAllister.
Nathan (00:00:04)
And I'm your co host, Nathan Rittenhouse.
Cameron (00:00:06)
We like to plunder content. I mean, it's it's a friendly thing from myself. Yes. I was recently on ⁓ the channel of a friend of ours, Dan Patterson, questioning Christianity, by the way, with Dan Patterson. Go check that out. It's a great channel, lots of fantastic interviews. Dan Patterson is a wonderful thinker and apologist, and he's a good friend. We've known him for many years. So go. And he he wrangles snakes.
Nathan (00:00:09)
From yourself.
Nathan (00:00:30)
Little Australian accent always helps.
Nathan (00:00:36)
Why not?
Cameron (00:00:36)
I'm not kidding. Yeah, why not? So, I mean, y this is as close as you know to the apologist and crocodile hunter slash crocodile dundee is you're gonna get. All right. How cool is that? So I was on that podcast. He wanted to talk to me about the role of the imagination ⁓ in knowing, the epistemic value of the imagination, if you will, and how we piece together reality, how we form a holistic understanding. ⁓ And ⁓ it was ⁓
Nathan (00:00:43)
⁓ Combo.
Nathan (00:00:55)
Mm-hmm.
Cameron (00:01:05)
His well he was he was asking some questions there bec because ⁓ people who run in apologetics circles or who are interested in apologetics tend to discount the imagination a little bit. So I had some
Nathan (00:01:17)
Yeah, but which is weird 'cause I think they use it more than they they realize. But anyway.
Cameron (00:01:21)
They do. ⁓ They do. The imagination does have a bad rap, ⁓ and ⁓ so the first order of business is usually to ⁓ address that head on a little bit. But anyway, we thought we would talk about that here as well, since we know that TOL listeners are probably interested in the same topics and hey, we can nerd out on that ourselves. ⁓ huh.
Nathan (00:01:42)
Just imagine you're in a conversation about the imagination. What could be more TOL? Here we go. Tell us t tell us what you said, Cameron, and then we'll decide whether or not we like it.
Cameron (00:01:47)
Absolutely.
Cameron (00:01:51)
All right. Well, I define the imagination, borrowing from Malcolm Geit. He has a Malcolm Geit has a very helpful book where he looks at this and it is called Faith, Hope, and Poetry. This came out with it's a little pricey. Came out with Ashgate Press, which is a small press. So yeah, it was about it's I think about fifty dollars or so. It's a really good book. A lot of analysis of poetry in there, which that might sound boring. It's not when it's Malcolm Geit. He is first of all a beautiful writer and he understands these.
poems. The poems he's selected are wonderful poems themselves. But the real joy of that book is also that he talks extensively about the imagination. And he defines it like this, and here's how I defined it as well, but he he calls the imagination an active power of perception. And he also calls it this this is a little bit more controversial, I think actually, and Nathan I suspect might have some follow-up questions. He calls it reasons
twin faculty. So ideally speaking, the ema yeah, so chew on that for a second. The imagination is working with reason to help us put together a holistic picture of the world. The imagination is very centered on how we make sense of our experience, not just how we gather information and data, but how we actually make sense of it as well. I'll I'll provide some concrete stuff in a second, but let me just pause there because
Nathan (00:03:19)
Yeah, no, I'm I'm not immediately ⁓ I like the way that those are phrased. ⁓ let's throw some well, because there there this opens up two two trains of thought. There's the there's the imagination about what is real, and there's the imagination about what isn't, and actually then there's the imagination of what isn't real but could be. And and I think that third one for me is is where I spend a lot of time. So I I don't spend a ton of time in my imagination thinking about
Cameron (00:03:19)
I see wheels spinning.
Mm.
Cameron (00:03:35)
Yes.
Cameron (00:03:38)
Mm-hmm.
Cameron (00:03:45)
Mm-hmm.
Nathan (00:03:50)
⁓ rainbows and unicorns and dragons and mytho myth mythological stuff in that sense. I I do have well, I mean, isn't it Kierkegaard in Fear and Trembling when he talks about the the ⁓ you talk about falling or jumping off of a cliff or something where you you can you could think about committing suicide and it's scared like you could think about falling and you get scared from the thought of like you're standing on a ledge and you look like the fear of heights, you can imagine what would happen if you fell and therefore it gives you
A sensation that protects you. So you you haven't fallen off the the cliff, but you can imagine it. And so there's like that, that's just engaging reality. Or say you're trying to make a decision about should I go to school here, here, or here? Should I buy these cars? Should I marry this person? Whatever. You're you're running simulations in your mind. And then ⁓ that so for me, the idea of it being the twin of reason works very well there. And that you're making the
Cameron (00:04:35)
Mm-hmm.
Nathan (00:04:49)
You're engaging reality based off of the reasonable outcomes of what it is that you can foresee in the different possibilities that may or may not actually be there, ⁓ but the fact that you can envision them helps you make the best choice about the future.
Cameron (00:05:05)
Very helpful thoughts. So let's make a couple of observations. Let's talk a little bit about where the imagination goes wrong or some of the dangers of the imagination. That's really important because they are real and we are fallen human beings. So we have to address those. This is where I think a lot of people who are concerned for reason and ⁓ you know, concerned with reason and rationality, whether they're apologists or not, this is where their concerns about the imagination come in. So let's pull in an apologist on this topic. Probably one of the most incisive, and that's Blaise Pascal.
Pascal has some rather unflattering things to say about the imagination because it is so powerful. And so part of what Pascal will say is the imagination ⁓ is always going to get the almost always going to get the upper hand over reason. It's going to overrule reason. And here's the sp and he always gives really good, concrete examples. So his example is he says imagine a judge who is the very picture of impartiality in the courtroom.
Nathan (00:05:53)
Hmm. Hmm.
Cameron (00:06:04)
He's very a just man, makes good sound decisions as in his capacity as a judge. But let's say this judge now takes off his robes and, you know, that funny wig, leaves the court courtroom ⁓ and ⁓ goes to a church ⁓ to hear a sermon. And he sits down in the pew and then the minister gets up there and delivers what on paper ⁓ is a very good sermon. But the problem is the guy needs a haircut and he has a weird reedy voice.
And those factors alone mislead the judge. His imagination overrides his reason, and he pronounces an unjust ⁓ kind of assessment of this minister and what he said. So that's one that's one example, but he's just talking about the the power of image. So think about the whole world of marketing comes in here. Or even think about influencers, right? The online world is awash with people who
Nathan (00:06:46)
Yeah.
Cameron (00:07:02)
Very canily know how to look the part of of of whatever success they're proclaiming. They may know absolutely nothing about investment banking or finances or cryptocurrency or fitness. They may know know nothing about the human body, but goodness, this guy has a six-pack. So that's the liability of the imagination. The image ⁓ tends to predominate there. So that is that
Nathan (00:07:23)
It so is it false causation or is that too simplistic?
Cameron (00:07:27)
No, I mean, I think he I think it's I think we can concede that is a real danger. So let's let let me give you two categories here, Nathan, and then see if you if you like this or if you want to add more to them. And they're both bad ones. These are these let's just label these the misuses of the imagination. ⁓ One would be idle fantasy. So you you mentioned rainbows and unicorns. Imagine also, this isn't always bad. Sometimes it's a harmless diversion when you're younger, but imagine the teenager.
pretending to be a rock star in front of a mirror or something like that. That's that's a use of the imagination, but you're not actually doing anything. It'd much better if you actually picked up an instrument and played it and started practicing, but just rather than just engaging in an idle fantasy, right? So there's so there's fantasy. I'm using fantasy
Nathan (00:07:59)
Yeah, okay. Yeah.
Nathan (00:08:12)
Well, there's an ol there's an old word here we should bring in which would be pining. ⁓ 'cause 'cause and that's not just a teenage thing too, or you're you're you're longing for some ⁓ non reality to come into existence and then it becomes captivating in that sense. So yeah, I think pretend, play, envisioning, all of that is fine, but there then can come a point in which the pursuit of the unreality begins to distort the thing that you're yeah.
Cameron (00:08:17)
Hm.
Cameron (00:08:36)
Yeah, pretending exac so fantasy, pining, pretending to be something that you're not, whether you know athlete, rock star, whatever, celebrity, you name it. The other one would be lying or dishonesty. So when you tell a lie, especially if the lie gets really elaborate, it's very you're gonna get very imaginative. Teenagers become more and more adept at this. You know, little kids
when they start to when they tell lies, they're they're they're pretty lousy at it usually. ⁓ Their souls are still shining through too much for them to conceal too much. I like how Dallas Willard used to say a baby has not yet learned how to hide its soul. Little kids ⁓ get are getting better, but they're still not that great at it. Teenagers, you f you can find real full blown dishonesty and you can get real elaborate lies, whether it's, you know, about where were you last night or, you know, sneaking around, that's also a use of the imagination.
And it's a bad one. I mean, in it goes to extremes. You know, the Puritans were really some Puritans were so pious that they condemned fiction because it's a lie, as they would say. I d I don't that so that's that's so there's I don't believe that by the way, but fantasy and dishonesty are too maybe throw in passion there. The image where the image ⁓ so predominates the guy who needs a haircut, like me, who who
Nathan (00:09:42)
Right. Yeah.
Cameron (00:09:57)
Delivers a perfectly good sermon, but it doesn't look the part. He hasn't s he doesn't have the dignity and he doesn't look successful. So therefore he gets misjudged. Those are all real. Those are real dangers of the imagination. So I just wanted to lay those out there and say, we're gonna we wanna confront those. We wanna be honest. It's true. But now I wanna move on to a more, I think, expansive or holistic view of the imagination, which Nathan was taking us toward. Because you were talking about things. See, I think another
Another area where we go wrong is we hear the imagination ⁓ and instead of thinking, it's it's bad, it's a liability, it's we put it up on some sort of a pedestal and say, yeah, this is this is what really creative people have and this is what the people who work at Pixar have and this is, you know, the imagineers at Disney.
Nathan (00:10:45)
Well what we don't say is the people who make the best moral decisions have well developed imaginations.
Cameron (00:10:50)
Exactly. No, we don't. Because it is true. We're operating with a very limited sense of the imagination if we just relegate it to ⁓ creative people or artistic endeavors. It's on conspicuous display there, but that's not that's not that's too narrow. That's not true. Everybody has an imagination. So I want to get to what Nathan just said, but I also want to bring in those practical examples again. If you're thinking about
Nathan (00:10:52)
But it is true.
Cameron (00:11:15)
investing in a property or you you let's say you open up a savings account with a view to buying to a car. These ⁓ or if you're working with a blueprint, but you can see you know from the blue blueprint you're able to actually you're you're more than just a draftsman, you can actually see the finished project. Those are all very practical examples of the imagination. So it's an active power of perception. It works it's not there. But what you were getting at Nathan, which I think is one of the more profound
Nathan (00:11:35)
Yeah. You're imaging something that isn't actually before you.
Cameron (00:11:43)
Found examples ⁓ is ⁓ the ability to see things as they could be, or to see things otherwise. So think about the, you talk about the immoral imagination. I think a really great example to point to is the abolitionist movement. You could have, if somebody somebody were a fatalist, they would say, no, this is just the way it is. We have to accept chattel slavery. It's it's heinous, it's horrible. I don't like it, but let's be realistic.
This is just the way society is. That is, among other things, a failure of the moral imagination. You I w I'd like to hear you say a little bit more about that, Nathan. Yeah.
Nathan (00:12:19)
Yeah. Well well s so so there's there's two parts that are standing out to me here as I think about this. One is the there's there's the there's the capacity to see the way things could be, and then the capacity to see the way things ought to be. And that ⁓ i is a is a wrinkle in here in my mind because you can you can I was I was watching two little boys run around on the roof of a house ⁓ and ⁓
Cameron (00:12:49)
What could possibly go wrong?
Nathan (00:12:49)
Well well yeah, l local example. ⁓ And and one turned around, got down on his belly, swung his feet down under the gutter, waved his foot around till he found a tree branch, and then climbed down. And the other one wasn't as thrilled about that process back and the and the boy on the ground looks like, Hey, it's it's not a big deal. You just you know, you just have to trust that once you start hanging your foot will find a branch, even though you can't see it. And the boy on the roof said, It's not that I'm scared, but I can see more ways that this can go wrong.
Than you can.
Which probably was true. The the the the the first one down the tree wasn't thinking of all the ways that that could go wrong. The second one was like, hey, there's a s significant risk here to ⁓ myself, the house, the gutter, and the tree. Like there's a whole ⁓ range of ways in which I can envision what what could happen here. So there's a sense in which that can be a a paralyzing limitation to see what could happen. But then I think as Christians specifically to say, okay, here are
fifteen varieties that are ⁓ of ⁓ available in my mind of what could happen in this situation, but then to decide which one ought to happen is a whole nother layer. But the imagination is necessary for both categories.
Cameron (00:14:04)
Let me tease that distinction out for a second, because I think that's a really important way things could be versus the way things ought to be. So an an interior decorator can walk into a fixer upper, Chip and Joanna Gaines or wh whoever they are, ⁓ and they can see the space otherwise. That's great. But somebody else could be driving through the inner city. I have a friend who is in who is involved in this this kind of this very kind of work ⁓ and ⁓ see the need
the impoverishment, but also see other buildings that could be put to use as real facilities for housing, for recreational centers ⁓ that would help some of the the children in this area to be to have community and to be reintegrated in an important way into society and culture and pro possibly set up for a different future. There's an ought in that second scenario. The first one, there's nothing wrong with with an an interior decorator going into a space and ⁓ beautifying it.
And making it making it into a home. That's beautiful. It's even noble in some cases. But there's something very powerful about somebody else who looks into a city, sees all of this space that's being unused, and also connects it with all of this need in the area and sees how it could serve a vital function in helping people. There's an ought there in that second one. There's a moral imperative. You can't do it without imagination either way, ⁓ and you can't do it without hope is is kind of gonna play an integral role in
Nathan (00:15:20)
But you can't do without imagination either way.
Cameron (00:15:29)
with with the with let's call it the redemptive imagination. You're gonna need hope there as well because if you're a fatalist, you're not going to get any project of that kind of restoration off the ground too well. Or at least it's gonna be a whole lot harder for you. If you've got hope, ⁓ that that might be the needed spring in your step to get moving.
Nathan (00:15:56)
Well, that's an interesting thing is to okay, so we don't get to choose whether or not we have an imagination, right? Or do or it's part a part of personhood. Yeah, I I like that. And so I and I think as we get into the conversations about what does it mean to be human, this will be a become a more important topic in that. ⁓ but let ⁓ let's r let's loop this back around to like, okay, let's not make it about
Cameron (00:16:02)
No, it is just part of a of personhood, yes.
Nathan (00:16:25)
you know, what to have for lunch. But what about things like contentment, satisfaction, internal peace, the ability to ⁓ to to to see and to sense ⁓ the way that things are ⁓ that don't have physical manifestations but are ⁓ real components of what it means to ⁓ have a good life. The the the ability to
Cameron (00:16:31)
Yeah.
Nathan (00:16:52)
⁓ help help me you you're nodding like you know what I'm talking about, but help me tease out more the the role of the imagination and contentment, basically, I guess is is what I'm poking at.
Cameron (00:16:54)
Yes.
Cameron (00:16:58)
Sure.
Well, contentment is a huge topic right now, huge question. And I'm actually really encouraged that it is. Some of the signs of that, by the way, are the either ⁓ courses on on some of the ancients, on especially Stoicism, very, very much very popular at Ivy League schools, but also great books programs. Also in in the shadow of the AI revolution.
Nathan (00:17:18)
Mm-hmm.
Cameron (00:17:27)
There's a little counter, it's not actually so little anymore. There's more of a counter sort of mental revolution happening and a resurgence of interest in classical learning. And this is not limited to Christians at all, but there's a there's a deep hunger for for the great, great works that have nourished the the the imagination of humanity down the ages. But really what so let's go back to contentment here for a second. I just bring that all in because those are all factors here. What you're talking about.
Is a rich inner life. And that is what is missing from a lot of people. No, so when I say a rich inner life, I don't mean fantasy. I don't mean you got a head full of really entertaining reels. Lord knows we don't need more of that. I mean, we all have that friend who sends us 20 reels a day, and actually some in their idle fantasy imagines that we're watching all of them, right?
Nathan (00:18:02)
But that's not but it's not fantasy.
Cameron (00:18:22)
No, we mean I I need to hunt this quote down. I need to because I keep bringing it up and I keep butchering it because it was said in a very eloquent manner. But the the president of the University of Chicago a number of years ago, speaking to humanities graduates, said, What we aim to cultivate here are people who have minds that are interesting places to be. So i that's not exactly how he said it, but basically you want to have a rich inner life, not filled with fantasy.
Not filled with diversions, but with rich thought, rich sources of contemplation, good rich questions that you're pondering, ⁓ rich ⁓ it's not inform wisdom. And this used to be the aspiration ⁓ of colleges. In the past, if you look at the history of the college ⁓ in America, I mean there's a big there's a massive shift that happened when we aimed to follow the the research model.
And the research model first took hold in Germany. And we we the aims of universities, but w were then just colleges, changed dramatically. It became much more about preparing you for a career, became much more about there's nothing wrong with research. Ba Nathan and I both love research and have benefited from it. But initially, college was also preparing you to be a a good person. It sounds weird to say that, but it was. It was prepared if you were a man, it was pre preparing you to be a gentleman. It was preparing you to be a cultivated person.
And it was preparing you to have a rich inner life. And this is why the the capstone course was often all right, but taught by the university president and it was about how to live the good life in all of these how far we've come. ⁓ Yeah.
Nathan (00:20:00)
Well, but here's here here's what's funny about what you're saying is is so I was just interneting around here a second while you're saying that because it reminded me. So Aristotle's definition of leisure is is not idleness or passive entertainment, but the highest state of human endeavor. It's the state in which ⁓ we engage in activities that are valuable for their own sake, such as philosophical contemplation, civic participation, and the cultivation of virtue ultimately leading to human flourishing.
So actually the goal of education was leisure, but leisure wasn't an absence of work. It was the Danger, it's what you just said, but I I thought I thought if I could footnote Aristotle to back up what you're saying, maybe that meant something.
Cameron (00:20:38)
Well we tend to th well
Very good. Well, but also, I mean, we that's so foreign to us today because we we operate with this ideology of being productive all the time. And so ⁓ we tend to think that if we're not ⁓ actively producing something ⁓ or or just in involved in some frenzy of activity, we're wasting our time. That's an so I'm gonna recommend a book here. It's a very famous book, Joseph Pieper's
Leisure as the basis for a culture. That's a good book. It's not
Nathan (00:21:18)
Sounds like that title's pretty on point for our conversation.
Cameron (00:21:21)
It is. I mean, yes, it is. And I I first it was assigned to me when I was in my, you know, in my graduate program. But it's a very valuable book and would highly recommend it. I know that Alan Noble, you know, who's who's written a number of really good books, Disruptive Witness ⁓ and Get Out on Getting Out of Bed among them, he he he that book has been very, very important for him. He's brought it up repeatedly. It's ⁓ very if you like this conversation we're having right now, you gotta read that book. So Joseph Pieper's Leisure as the basis for culture is very
Very helpful here. But yeah, a rich inner life. I think a lot of people, you can't have contentment without a rich inner life. And I want to make a can I make a really important distinction here though, Nathan? So no, that's say look at yeah, we're finishing each other's sentences these days. It's really scary. We're we we ⁓ you know me too well. Well, my concern is that. Yeah, but so there is a modern therap or a late modern therapeutic assumption that.
Nathan (00:22:02)
It's not self care or self help or selfishness.
Nathan (00:22:09)
Nah. ⁓
Cameron (00:22:20)
We have within us all that we need. ⁓ All the inner resources are within us. I mean, it's very Emersonian too. You know, it's you he basically would say, you know, when when something really reaches your soul and stirs your heart, that's the God within you responding to the God without. Okay. That's not at all what I mean by a rich inner life. A rich inner life, ⁓ I would mean, let's see if I can actually do justice to this in words. ⁓ You're not, ⁓ this isn't.
These these are not the embers of your own inward spirit. This this is something that is brought about through community. It is brought about through a moral education and an imaginative education. It is brought about by really, I mean, whatever think about that verse, you know, whatever is you'll you'll you'll have it ready to hand, Nathan. But yeah, whatever whatever is noble, whatever is excellent, dwell on these things. I mean, that's a motto in many.
In the best sense, in many of the classical educational spaces, it's really it's finding from discerning voices, having them bring to you, hey, this is the best of what's been thought, written, and said by human beings. It's withstood the test of time. You may not get it right away. It might not jive with all your sensibilities right way right away. The algorithm might not have thrown this at you, but you know what? It's worthy of your attention.
And so dwell on these things. Let's do so in a disciplined manner for a little while. And by doing that, you fill your mind with beautiful thoughts. And you are cultivating a rich inner life. And then also in the process, your own voice comes to bear on this, your own personality comes out. But I don't know if I'm doing justice to that, but I mean that's that those are the dynamics of a rich inner life. It's a it's a guided tour of contemplation where you're yeah.
Nathan (00:24:15)
You know, there's there's a there's a weird paradox here that I'm just thinking, and maybe we should give some practical ⁓ practical tools of stepping into, you know, like if if people say, Yeah, I I I get it, I need to. But there's a there's a parad there's something odd here, ⁓ where if I'm if I'm reading a
I d want to give an example. Say say I'm reading a rich piece of literature. ⁓ I I I evaluate the quality of a book by how much I stick my finger in the closed pages and just stare into space and have my own original thoughts that spool off of it. So I'm not reading it to download it. I'm reading it to be prompted to think about my own life in the context in which I live, and my own thoughts are kind of running little ⁓
eddies around the main current of thought. And so there's a there's an individual self-assessment that comes through it. At the same time, I'm engaging with a text that you probably also have also read. And then we have a common referent point for so so the ⁓ the communal and the individual isn't clearly separated out for me when you're working through a a classic piece of ⁓ literature or art or
Cameron (00:25:29)
Right.
Nathan (00:25:36)
an idea. It I I I don't know what to say about that other than I just see that it's there.
Cameron (00:25:38)
There's a great
No, it's right. And that dynamic is there. So there's there's the individual piece of you bringing your own personality and sensibility sensibilities to bear on the text. Now, here's ⁓ hear me very carefully here. This necessitates you actually engaging with a primary source. So you actually reading Shakespeare. Don't read about Shakespeare. Don't read some new interpretation of Shakespeare or who he was or h how many Shakespeare's there were. ⁓ Actually reading Shakespeare. So you bring your own personality into the mix.
But then also having that the commons. I want to call it the commons. Use the word common. But yeah, the artistic commons. That's that's a reference point for all of us down the ages. And it's it builds community. It's a source of rich teaching, but it's also a source of just wonderful conversation. You know, when you dip into great literature, the one way of saying this is you're joining the great it's called the Great Conversation. There's also a fantastic essay on this, very famous from T. S. Elliott.
Called Tradition and the Individual Talent. If you were an English major, you had to read this essay, but it's worth reading that because ⁓ it goes along with what Nathan was just saying. But yeah, a couple of I want to give some practical pieces of advice here too. I mean, yeah, so reading primary sources, but also let me give you a specific example. So we have all right, we have a really contentious political scene. An election's coming up. So what could you do? Well
You you could listen to Tim Miller and ⁓ other people, you know, and angry podcasts, and you could read Angry Screeds, or you could read Julius Caesar by Shakespeare, which will give you some timeless, amazing ⁓ words to describe a sense of political ⁓ anger, betrayal. It's all there, but in in beautiful language that has captured something vital about the human spirit. So
Cameron (00:27:38)
That's just one specific example. Read some of the Yeah.
Nathan (00:27:42)
Well, the tr the the ch the challenge here though, I think, sp specifically speaking as Christians, is as our old old friend Tom has told us, that there is no biblical mandate to read the Bible. All of the references are to meditate on scripture. ⁓ and s and so there's a difference between reading and meditating. And so I I think one of the things that's lost is that if I don't have the ability to thoughtfully engage the ideas of a r of a ⁓ it's gonna be hard to translate that back into just my Bible reading time.
So th this is a necessary skill for reading scripture. And we haven't really talked on touched on that yet, but that is where this ultimately is going is ⁓ is it's getting weirder to try to hold the my engagement with scripture in a unique now it is unique in that I think God is ⁓ has inspired and is speaking through it and it's it's it's teaching deep cultural truths. But unless I can ⁓ and spiritual and ⁓ how to relate to God, how to relate to people, how to relate to creation, that that fullness.
But unless I have the ability to read in that way that I've probably cultivated in other aspects aspects and elements of life, then it's going to be hard for me to even read scripture well, I think.
Cameron (00:28:50)
Well, anything rich that we take in requires us to slow down. Scripture is rich. It's accessible to all of us. It's rich. ⁓ And it st not only does it stand up to scrutiny, it is ⁓ it is made for reflection. So you're gonna have a hard time ⁓ with scripture, you're gonna have a hard time with works of art if you just wanna cram stuff in as information and just
Nathan (00:29:15)
It's like trying to eat a cheesecake as fast as you can.
Cameron (00:29:17)
Correct. Yep. You gotta and it not only that, I mean you're you want to you want to slow down ⁓ and put your finger in the book and pause and stare into space. You can't do that if you're just trying to it you I mean you can't download Brothers Karamanzov, for instance. It's too rich. But it's not it wasn't written to be downloaded. ⁓ It's written to get you to get your to really make you cogitate and think.
Nathan (00:29:41)
Okay.
Cameron (00:29:47)
And we don't like that though. It but although that's what we want more of. If you want a rich inner life, you gotta slow down, get off that content treadmill.
Nathan (00:29:55)
Okay, so this is this is the pushback though with Cameron's gonna somebody's gonna say, Cameron, you and Nathan have the the privilege in life of having the time to read. That's partly true. ⁓ we are employed in the in the task of ⁓ reading and translating a lot of things to a lot of people. The flip side is you and I read a lot of stuff that has nothing to do with thinking out loud. Well, I mean, we probably pretty much always draw everything in from one way or the other, but ⁓ I I don't have more time to read in my life.
All of us pretty much have the same amount of time. It's what are you choosing to read and what are you willing not to do in order to have time to read? ⁓ That's the cause not not every week of my life is the same, and so there's a great f fluctuation here, but ⁓ there's a lot of stuff that you and I don't do that enables us to do that. ⁓ but then there's there may there may be some things that don't take a huge amount of time, maybe journaling and stepping into I'm just going to reflect on yesterday or my hopes for this day.
Where you're starting just to think about yourself in time, in a situation, and don't try to write a novelette every day, just two or three sentences of here's what happened, here's what's going on in my mind. So you're thinking about what you were thinking about the day before. It's a good starting point there. ⁓ and then I I think also one of the well, anyway, we could we can go on and on from there, but then the ability to to see to see yourself from other people's perspectives, ⁓ to have empathy.
For other people requires imagination. To have compassion requires imagination. To be able to say, if I was in that situation, how would I feel? How could they best be encouraged in that? Requires imagination. To ⁓ I mean so it's it's a it's a crucial part of the in of the experience of being human. It's also the prerequisite to telling a good story or to communicating an idea, to say, can I understand how I sound from somebody else's perspective? ⁓
So imagination is necessary for communication. ⁓ I think I could go on and on here of just saying that we're for it.
Cameron (00:32:02)
It's very it's an important part of our our personhood and how we make sense. It's a gift. Very well said.
Nathan (00:32:07)
It's a gift.
Nathan (00:32:11)
A communicable attribute. Use it.
Cameron (00:32:14)
Yes, use it well. You've been listening to Thinking Out Loud, a podcast where we think out loud about current events ⁓ and Christian hope. ⁓ And if you like what you hear, like it, share it, and subscribe. If you'd like to support us financially, you can do that by going to www.toltogether.com