The mind of man is a picture gallery, not a debating chamber (Macneile Dixon).
Seeing the world around us helps us to see God’s truth. “I have multiplied visions, and used similitudes” (Hosea 12:10, KJV). “Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact” (Emerson).
Language is visual, words are pictures, and metaphorical language is the link between the world within us (imagination) and the world around us (creation).
The Bible is a picture book that often uses imagery to reveal God’s truth. Bible words are often picture words.
“Fancy” escapes the real world and makes an alternate world, while “imagination” penetrates the real world and creatively makes it into a new world.
“Images feed concepts; concepts discipline images. Images without concepts are blind; concepts without images are sterile” (Sallie McFague).
People come to church to see visions, not to hear reasons (Halford Luccock).
Lasting moral changes in human personality must involve the imagination.
In preaching a text, we begin with truth as a picture (sight), which then becomes a mirror (insight), which then becomes a window (vision). We preach the truths behind the pictures in the text, not the pictures themselves.
When you study a text, ask first, “What is the point?” Then ask, “Where are the pictures and how do both fit together?”
“Language is the house of being.”
—Martin Heidegger
“Let it not be said that I have said nothing new. The arrangement of the material is new.”
