more on imagination

I was reading something that I wrote the other day and I wanted to add to it. I was thinking about an idea in a book I had been reading about C.S. Lewis, and his work Till We Have Faces in particular, called Reason and Imagination. In this book the author looks at how C.S. Lewis compares Reason and Imagination as tools to understanding truth. Maybe the following quote is a better overview.

"What interlocked for Lewis was a profound picture ... presented not in the apologist's form of his early works, enabling readers to 'see,' or understand, truths through the reason, but in mythical form, giving a 'taste' of Reality through imagination...Lewis, who in his thirties put his full trust in reason, came in his fifties to regard myth as one of the best means available for embodying and conveying the Truth."

This idea extends to how I learn truth and made me think about truth as conveyed in the Book of Mormon vs. in Isaiah. People often talk about how much they love the BoM for its clarity and plain speech. This is very valuable and important. And the principle that lies behind it would be that the Spirit always speaks to us in a way that we can understand. It is best to communicate--and that means saying things in a way that your audience will understand. But this principle also applies to Isaiah--which people often complain about being so complicated and difficult to understand. Isaiah and parables and psalms all give you the understanding that you will identify with at the time you read it. And often they appeal at a level deeper than logic, much more emotionally. The beautiful part is how these two things build on each other to make an unbreakable understanding--mental and emotional knowledge, reason and imagination.