James H. Cagle
“These six things doth the LORD hate: . . . An heart that deviseth wicked imaginations” (Pro. 6: 16, 18 KJV). “But this thing commanded I them, saying, Obey my voice . . . But they hearkened not . . . but walked in the counsels and in the imagination of their evil heart, and went backward, and not forward” (Jeremiah 7: 23, 24 KJV).
The word “imagination” is used eight times in Jeremiah (Jer. 3: 17; 7: 24; 9: 14; 11: 8; 13: 10; 16: 12; 18: 12; 23:17). This is because it was the wrong use of the imagination that turned the people of Israel away from God and His Word. Their imagination had them worshiping images or idols which are vanity and which made the people vain (Jer. 2: 5).
The imagination has to be used in order to worship idols because they are images of false gods, created by the imagination, and whose powers are only imagined. By following these false gods and rejecting the one true God, the people of Israel went backward, or into a moral decline, until they became thoroughly corrupt and God had to judge them.
The imagination is a gift from God and He does not condemn it but does condemn the way the evil sinful heart uses it. There is much good that has come from the proper use of the imagination. Things have been created through the power of the imagination that has helped to make life easier for all. But there is also much evil that has been done from the improper use of the imagination. Things have been created and been done through the power of the imagination that have not been good.
As with Israel and the generation mentioned in Genesis six, so it is today that people either follow God’s Word, which is universal, ultimate and objective truth or they follow their imagination, which is subjective truth. It is always a choice between these two. We choose to follow the reality given by God in his Word or the alternate reality that we conjure up with our imagination.
People act out their imagination. They live or walk according to their imagination and not the Word of God. Doing so has always corrupted any and all societies. Noah’s generation did so. The Canaanites that Israel conquered did so, and Israel did so, and so are we today.
When people cannot deal with reality, and no one can without Jesus Christ, they escape to and live in the Land of Denial and live their life based on their imagined world. When in order to gratify the unbounded longings of the sin-sick heart, people construct a fairyland with characteristics beyond what the law and order of the universe can really furnish, they have then entered the regions of the fantastical.
The fantastical that is far removed from the world of reality or possibility can be acted upon through pretention but can never be realized. Because you cannot experience what does not or cannot exist. It is one thing when people pretend to be something they have imagined and live according to that in private. But, when laws are made from people’s imagination to govern all society and make society accept what is imagined as real, then we, too, have corrupted ourselves and are headed for God’s judgment.
Evolution, global warming, and transgenderism are some things that came out of man’s imagination, because they rejected the facts and the truth in God’s Word. These do not square with reality, and yet there are laws that protect these lies and make society treat them as truth to our own ruin.
Homosexuality – among both men and women – is the first and most evident sign of a society upon which God has turned His judgment (Rom.1:18-32). This will happen because we followed our imagination instead of God’s Word.
