Discipling the Diseased Imagination

Note: From, Discipling the Diseased Imagination (Baker Academic, 2026). Reprinted by permission of the publisher. Citations have been omitted.

I have always loved stories about dragons. Much of my fascination owes to the works of J. R. R. Tolkien, whose legends of Middle-earth tell of dragons like Ancalagon the Black, Glaurung the Golden, and Smaug the Impenetrable. In the tradition of Norse mythology, Tolkien’s dragons are insidious and bewitching, cunning and cruel, living embodiments of the lust for domination and destruction.

We are drawn to stories of dragons because they tell us something true about the world. Indeed, dragons (or something like them) also appear throughout the Bible. They fall into the category of “chaos creatures” and may be found in the depths of the sea, in the wilderness, or in the heavenly places. Monsters like Leviathan (Job 41:1) represent creation unsubdued – “nature red in tooth and claw” – the danger that lurks in the wild places of the world. As humans seek to steward creation, they do so aware of their vulnerability in the face of these powers. Although originally a part of God’s good creation (since nothing is evil in the beginning), these creatures come to represent evil’s rebellion against God as the story continues. It is not for nothing that the book of Revelation names the devil as the “great dragon” and the “ancient serpent” who “leads the whole world astray” (Rev. 12:9). Dragons remind us that we must reckon with evil. We are also drawn to stories of dragons because they teach us that dragons can be defeated. In Tolkien’s stories, Smaug is killed by Bard’s arrow, Glaurung is slain by Túrin’s sword, and Ancalagon is cast from the sky by Eärendil. In Scripture, the enormous red dragon is identified primarily to assure us of his defeat. We are promised that despite the power of evil, it is not strong enough to stop God’s work in the world (Rev. 12:8).

Although that is good news, we wonder what it means and what it will take to subdue the dragonish impulses we feel inside us. The way of the dragon is manifest whenever we see our neighbors as obstacles or objects, things to devour or possess. We feel it in our pride and wrath, in our deceit and despair. We find it in the craving for glittering things, the obsession with our own reflections, and the longing to sit atop the pile in the place of God. Who will rescue us from the dragons within?

Think of the incorrigible Eustace Scrubb in C. S. Lewis’s Nar-nia books. Eustace happens on a dead dragon’s horde and decides to keep it for himself. Falling asleep in the dragon’s cave thinking “greedy dragonish thoughts,” he wakes to realize that he has become a dragon. Because he has been bewitched by diabolical desire, his appearance is magically altered to match his dragon-like heart. The dragoning of Eustace offers a powerful image of the danger we are in. We, too, live in a world of dragons, and unless we are vigilant, we, too, may fall asleep in the dragon’s lair and be conformed to the “pattern of this world” (Rom. 12:2). Unless we resist with all our might, we, too, may follow the way of the dragon instead of the way of the Lamb.

Can our dragon-sickness be healed? One remedy, Tolkien believed, is to read dragon stories that expose us to the truth. Similarly, Lewis tells us that Eustace might have known better than to fall asleep in a dragon’s cave if he had been raised to read “the right books.” Both authors held that exercising the imagination with fairy tales might help readers recover their health, training their powers of discernment and cleansing their souls with mythic truth. The point is that there is a vital connection between the stories that shape our imaginations and the kind of beings we become. When we fail to care for our imaginations, stronger medicine is required,an intervention like the undragoning of Eustace. But how do we undragon our imaginations?

Discipleship as Imaginative Repair

This question and this book represent a shift in my thinking rooted in misgivings about traditional models of discipleship. Early in my academic journey I was encouraged by a mentor to find a founda-tional question to orient my vocation, and it didn’t take long for me to find it: What does it mean to disciple the imagination? I became convinced that the imagination is at the heart of discipleship: What we imagine must be transfigured and trained by the true and beautiful story found in Scripture. For the last decade I have been trying to understand how the imagination works and how theology can nurture the imagination for cultural discipleship.

I am still convinced of the value of my keystone question. But in recent years I have started to wonder whether my research question assumes too much. My working model of discipleship was a train-ing regimen composed of gospel truth and spiritual exercise. This is a common thread in books on spiritual formation: We preach truths and prescribe practices in hopes that both will take root in our hearts.

And yet, many well-intended plans for spiritual growth devolve into information transfer and behavior modification. When theysuc-ceed, they reinforce our sense of mastery and control; when they fail, they produce frustration and shame. Something has gone wrong. The failure of these methods to form Christians in the image of Jesus Christ invites us to examine what we have missed along the way.

Indeed, this book has been borne out of a deep sense of lament at my own failure to be formed, a failure shared by the church more broadly. Why does it seem like so many devout believers have been unable to escape the gravity of more powerful cultural, political, and economic currents? Why are we unable to imagine better futures for ourselves, for our neighbors, and for the places we live? Are our imaginations too diseased to be discipled?

Healing Imagination

When I started this book, I told people that I was writing about the imagination and prayer, the “eyes of the heart” and the “cries of the heart.” But this led some to think that I was writing about imaginative prayer practices. Although I consider some of these practices along the way, my primary interest is more foundational. Rather than offering new ways to pray, I’m interested in exploring the pull of “vain imaginings,” the delicate relationship between prayer and perception, and the recovery of the imagination’s proper function.

That is to say, if the imagination is to be discipled, it must also be healed. Accordingly, I understand discipleship both as an exercise in the healing of diseased imaginations and as training for the active life of love and justice. By focusing on the imagination, I am highlighting the way discipleship happens according to the stories we tell and our sense of what is possible. By focusing on healing, I am offering a corrective to models that emphasize habit and discipline.

To be clear, healing and training are not necessarily opposed. But much depends on whether we view discipleship from the perspective of an elite athlete training for a triathlon or an accident survivor relearning to walk. Both kinds of training require discipline and self-denial, but the second kind of training is truer to the Christian account.

Because we’re focusing on healing, it will also be helpful to learn from other disciplines oriented in that direction, like psychological science. Tanya Luhrmann’s work on prayer has been particularly valuable to me, especially her list of seven“metacognitive” aspects of prayer that contribute to well-being:

Detachment: resisting your thoughts
Attention: shifting your attention toward something else
Absorption: getting caught up in your imagination
Attachment: cultivating a positive emotional relationship
Catharsis: experiencing intense emotion as healing
Narrative: praying to someone with whom you have a history
Hope: claiming a better future

In what follows, I explore these themes in light of Scripture and as interpreted by Christian theology, which is itself an imaginative tradition shaped by encounters with God. Each chapter considers one aspect of imaginative discipleship: perception, play, resistance, attention, absorption, attachment, emotion, history, and hope. Corresponding to each theme is a diagnosis of an imaginative disease along with a discussion of how these ailments might be resisted and healed. Each chapter concludes with an orienting prayer that contains the main idea of the chapter; when taken together, they form a longer prayer that captures the larger project.

Justin Ariel Bailey, dean of chapel and professor of theology, Dordt University