Tis the Season

"If you turn on the television and see the horrors that are happening to people in the world right now, I think there's no better time to strive to have some kind of hope through imagination. I think it's a time to close your eyes and try to make a change, or at least hope to make a change, or we're going to explode." – Johnny Depp

It's December, and something I strongly feel about is something most people look at as a joke.  I believe in Santa Claus.  That's right, a 32 year old guy that believes he is real.

I wonder…Why do most people when they find this out about me, either not believe me or laugh it off?  Most people believe war can solve things like Communism, terrorism and Nazism, yet they don't believe in fairies, unicorns and dragons.  I cannot comprehend this.  Most people believe they can fall in love and have a marriage that will last the rest of their lives, but they don't believe in leprechauns and werewolves.  War has never wiped out an idea and more than half of marriages fail.  There is proof that they are not real. There is however no proof that Santa Claus, fairies, unicorns, dragons, leprechauns, werewolves and vampires are not real.

I believe we pick and choose the lies we tell ourselves based on what best suites our needs.  Maybe I shouldn't have said lies.  We pick and choose our realities.  I think it is time for us to re-imagine our lives.

We were created in the image of God.  The idea of us, animals, plants and the universe being created shows us that our God has an imagination.  We however are quick to kill our own imagination.  We are also quick to kill the imagination of others.

I have a friend named Mark.  He believes that his whole life is being filmed, kind of like the Truman Show.  I believe it to.  Why not?  Anyone who knows him would not be able to argue that the situations in his life are true and unscripted.  Is there harm in us believing his life is a show?  I doubt it.  I cannot prove that his reality is or is not real, so I choose to believe it is real.

It is the same with all so-called "mythology."  No one will ever be able to prove to me that Santa Claus does not exist, nor will I be able to prove he does exist.  What's the harm in believing there is a Santa Claus.  None.  What's the harm in not believing in him?  I believe there are ramifications to this.

C.S. Lewis commented on his Chronicles of Narnia by saying that they were not theological children's books, but rather books that opened up the imagination of children to a possibility of God.  The more outrageous things that we choose to not believe in, the smaller the door, of imagining a God that would love us enough to sacrifice his own son, becomes.  We choke the hope out of life and rather than an adventure it becomes an existence.  I think we were created for more than that.

I never, in the entire Bible, see God telling us the words "just" and "can't."  People often use these words, but they are shown to be pitiful excuses to back out of adventures God puts before them.  Christ gave us the ultimate example of conquering "just" and "can't."  If Jesus would have said, "I am JUST a man," or "I can't do this," He would have been a liar.  When there was a storm he calmed it.  When there was a leper, he healed him.  

There was only one time where he was unable to perform miracles and that was because of the people's unbelief.  They had narrowed their idea of what a Messiah should be down so far that Jesus no longer fit through the door of their imagination.

You can choose what you want to believe, but I will choose to believe that this world is bigger than what we choose to believe.  What I see when my eyes are closed and when my eyes are opened are both valid realities.  I choose to live in an adventure rather than in an existence the world says is okay to believe in.  The world says here is a rock and that's okay for you to believe in because you can touch it and see it, but I believe that rock might have an amazing story that can only exist through imagination.  The world says here is a rainbow and its okay for you to believe it's there because we can see it, but I believe there might be gold at its end.  The world says there was a man named Jesus, and he was just a man, but I say he is the Son of God and my Savior.

I don't ask you to believe everything I believe exists, just believe there is a possibility that those things exist.

-  I wrote this blog a couple years ago and there was a great response to it.  I wanted to start off this new blog with a message of openness and discovery.  Feel free to comment.  Please also feel free to submit anything from random thoughts on theology, book reviews (any kind of book is fine as long as it grasped your soul and shook it up) a song or song lyric that Jesus sang to you on the way to work or anything at all.  I want this to be a place where those of us that don't feel heard, can shout!  Thank you.