The Wise Imagination

Educators and parents alike have a reliable tool for Friday afternoons: the sugary incentive. I still remember Mrs. Crow in Grade 1 treating us to popsicles after a good week, or the “penny jar” in Grade 2 that led to a class party.

As adults, we often expect children to exhibit intrinsic behavior (doing right for its own sake) without ever explaining the extrinsic beauty of goodness. We want them to buy into a system without showing them the “Great Incentive.” I am not advocating for more candy; I am advocating for a “Compelling Vision.”

As the philosopher Martin Buber famously noted, a habitual liar in his class once wrote a brilliant essay on the destructiveness of lying. The intellectual “lesson” was learned, but the character remained unchanged. Buber’s solution?

“A compelling vision of the goodness of goodness itself needs to be presented in a way that is attractive and stirs the imagination.”

The Logos: The Symbol of All Things

To understand how stories teach moral strength, we must look at the Greek concept of Logos. Originally meaning the foundation of an opinion, it evolved to mean the principle of cosmic order. It is the root of our word “Logic,” but also “Word” (from legō, to speak).

In the Christian faith, this reaches its zenith in the Gospel of John: “In the beginning was the Word (Logos), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” John is claiming that Jesus is the Symbol of God—the incarnate “Logo” of the universe.

If Jesus is the Logos, then He is the embodiment of Story. God didn’t just send a handbook; He sent a Person. He invited humanity to stop imagining what He might be like and to simply look at the Image He created Himself.

The Parable: The Unexpected Twist

It is no surprise that the “Great Word” Himself used stories—parables—to communicate His deepest truths. As Mary Ann Getty-Sullivan notes, Jesus was the master of the parable, using unexpected twists to draw listeners into new ways of thinking.

Parables are highly symbolic; they invite us to “experience” a meaning rather than just hear a lecture. They guide the imagination toward a particular outcome without being heavy-handed. They are the “Wise Imagination” in action.

The Gospel as the “Good Spell”

The history of Story culminates in the Gospel. While we often think of it as a set of facts, the etymology of the word reveals something more magical.

• Gospel: From the Old English gōd (good) + spell (tale/incantation).

The traditional meaning of “spell” evoked the power of the spoken word to hold people in a state of enchantment. This is the true power of the Gospel: it is a story so attractive, so “enchanting,” that it holds us under its power and influences how we live.

The Baptized Imagination

Children (and adults) do not need more didactic sermons; they need to have their imaginations stimulated. They need to be “engulfed by eudaimonism”—the happiness that comes from living in alignment with the “Goodness of Goodness.”

This is the elevated faculty George MacDonald called the Wise Imagination. When our minds are “baptized” with these divine images, our motivation becomes truly intrinsic. We do what is right not because we are afraid of the “penny jar” being empty, but because we have fallen in love with the Story.