Has your desire for God withered? Is your affection for Jesus a fading flame? In the fight of faith, have you been mostly in retreat? Let me tell you a story.

In a house with three kids under three, few things happen the same way every day. Scheduled flexibility is the name of the game. Yet a few things happen so consistently they might as well be natural law — meltdowns moments before getting in the car, blowouts in brand-new clothes, senseless and ceaseless crying at the witching hour. And this.

My three-year-old son enjoys playing with blocks. He builds with the razor attention of an architect — for about ten minutes. Then interest wanes, and he wanders in search of new adventures.

However, without fail, the more fiery of my ten-month-olds finds her way to those lovely white pine blocks, picks a random one, and begins trying to gum the thing to sawdust. When Strider sees his sister holding that block — a block that failed to hold his attention moments earlier — well, I’m sure you can guess what happens next. The rivalry is real. And for a time, that pine square becomes more valuable than a hoard of gold beneath a dragon, and the war that ensues only slightly less intense than those in Middle-earth.

Now, how does this dynamic work? And more immediately important to you, what do toy blocks and tyke battles have to do with your dimmed desire for God?

You Imitate Someone

To answer the first question, Aurora’s desire for the block inflames Strider’s desire because we inevitably imitate those around us. Man is a mimetic creature.

Man is made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27). We reflect God in his world, in part, by mimicking him. Paul makes the connection explicit: “Be imitators [mimētai] of God” (Ephesians 5:1). Man is an imitative creature all the way down. It’s what we were made for.

But God designed imitating others to be a means of imitating him. Holy imitation is a community project. Paul in particular loves godly copycats: “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ” (1 Corinthians 1:11; 4:16). Because Paul shows us what it looks like to mimic Christ, we should mimic Paul. But he doesn’t stop with apostles. In Philippians, he exhorts his readers to imitate him and all who imitate him (Philippians 3:17). The writer of Hebrews doubles down on this mimetic chain, calling us to imitate godly leaders and all who walk by faith (Hebrews 6:12; 13:7).

A biblical principle serves as the concrete beneath these exhortations: when it comes to imitation, the question is not whether but what. John warns, “Do not imitate evil but imitate good” (3 John 11), implying that imitation is inevitable. Again, the question is not whether you will imitate — you will. But what will you imitate? Evil or good? Or better yet, whom will you imitate?

Mimetic Desire

We need to add one more piece to this puzzle before we return to our desire for God. From what I’ve said, you might imagine that imitation is always intentional and mainly pertains to actions. But we are far more imitative than that.

Proverbs especially emphasizes that we imitate others unconsciously. Thus, virtues and vices are contagious. To paraphrase Proverbs 13:20, wise he ends who wise befriends, and Proverbs 14:7, from a fool flee or like a fool be. Why? Because you cannot avoid imitating. “Bad company . . .,” as they say (1 Corinthians 15:33).

But the mimicry goes even deeper. We imitate the desires of others. Catholic philosopher René Girard calls this mimetic desire. After assiduously observing Scripture, society, and literature, Girard noticed that almost all our desires are suggested, given, mediated by others. We look at what others desire to learn what we should desire. So, we want most things because others want them first. In short, Girard concludes that desires require someone to model them.

Modern advertising exploits that insight. By showing an appealing person valuing some product, they model a desire for you. But this tactic is as old as the garden. Satan — the first advertiser — leveraged contagious desire to get Eve to ape his own serpentine lust for divinity. Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery because he made Daddy’s favor irresistibly attractive. And, of course, Strider, like a moth to flame, was drawn to Aurora’s block because her desire transformed it into the world’s most desirable block.

These examples show that when the object of mimetic desire cannot be shared (or is perceived to be withheld), envy and rivalry result. However, if it can be shared, mimetic desire forges deep friendships and reinforces our loves.

Company You Keep

Now, I hope you see how our irrepressible impulse to imitate — especially to mimic desires — connects with desire for God. If mimetic desire shapes our lesser longings — what we wear, what we drink, what we drive, where we eat, where we go to school — why would it not affect our longing for God?

“Perhaps you don’t desire God because you rarely see anyone else who desires God.”

Perhaps you don’t desire God because you rarely see anyone else who desires God. Just maybe, the pine block has lost its luster in your eyes because no one is trying to chew on it. To put it another way, the company you keep will significantly shape what you long for. You will look like whom you hang with. What you want is a function of whom you observe.

C.S. Lewis identified this principle as the very heartbeat of friendship.

Friendship arises out of mere Companionship when two or more of the companions discover that they have in common some insight or interest or even taste which the others do not share and which, till that moment, each believed to be his own unique treasure (or burden). The typical expression of opening Friendship would be something like, “What? You too?” (The Four Loves, 83)

For Lewis, friendship flowers from a shared love — like soccer or storytelling or theology. When that love is recognized and expressed — “What? You too?” — the shared desire is mutually reinforcing, multiplied and galvanized. Yet Lewis warns that this mimetic effect has a double edge because “the common taste or vision or point of view which is discovered need not always be a nice one” (100). The N.I.C.E. shared an urge that would loose the very gates of hell.

Yet the danger arises precisely because of the staggering goodness of friendship — a goodness that can give us more of God. When you surround yourself with those whose love for God burns bright, the desire for him is contagious. Stand near fire, and your clothes will catch. And with each friend added, the conflagration grows into white-hot worship because every person has unique kindling to contribute. Christian community is a mutual adoration society. You need other toddlers to cherish the block.

Show me the company you keep, and I’ll tell you what you soon will want.

Spotlight Your Models

So, saint, whom do you surround yourself with? Who shows you desiring God? Who are your models?

Luke Burgis (another philosopher) warns, “There are always models of desire. If you don’t know yours, they are probably wreaking havoc in your life. . . . Models are most powerful when they are hidden” (Wanting, 21). For the sake of your joy in God, put a spotlight on your models. Interrogate the source of your desires (or lack thereof).

To help you name your models of desire — both good and bad — consider these four categories.

1. Digital Company

Where do you hang out in Internet land? Who are your digital models? Who’s in your ear, and what gets your eye?

The Net acts as a mimetic amplifier. Instead of two toddlers desiring the same block, digital media enables thousands, even millions, to fight over the same status. The only difference is adults try to mask the mimesis my children do not.

Social media, especially, is an engine of desire. Perhaps your joy in God feels diseased because digital envy is rotting your bones away (Proverbs 14:30). Perhaps you don’t desire God because the podcaster you spend hours with each week doesn’t either.

2. Dominant Company

Who gets the lion’s share of your time? What friends are you around most often, and what is your common bond — your “You too?” Lewis not only knew but demonstrated how soul-shaping a pervasive coterie of friends can be. His group, called “The Inklings,” shared two loves — Christianity and imaginative writing — and the world still rocks in the wake.

Who are the most present models of desire in your life? Family, coworkers, classmates? Do they sharpen your ache for God or dull it? Is the dominant company in your life co-laborers for your joy, “exhorting one another every day” to treasure the triune God (Hebrews 3:12–14)? Mature men and women are models who show us not only how to live but, more importantly, what to love. And these models are not limited to the living.

3. Dead Company

Do you keep company with the dead? And if so, who and what desires do they model? If you are a reader, dead company matters immensely. Books put us into conversation with their authors, and many of the most important books put us into conversation with authors no longer living. They teach us — often explicitly — what to yearn for.

The great benefit of the dead is they often desire differently than modernity. And their deep longings can expose our own as tumbleweeds. Here’s Lewis again: “The real way of mending a man’s taste is not to degenerate his present favorites but to teach him how to enjoy something better” (Experiment in Criticism, 112). The likes of Augustine and Austen, Bunyan and Bavinck, Dante and Donne, Calvin and Coleridge tutor our tastes — and preeminently, that inspired cohort of the dead who penned the Scriptures.

4. Divine Company

Speaking of taste, if you want to develop a hunger for God, nothing will stoke that desire more than keeping company with God himself. The triune God is the ultimate model of our desires, and no one can love God more than God loves God. Unlike all other forms of mediation that work on us externally, God mediates his own desires to us from within. He gives us “the desires of the Spirit” (Galatians 5:17).

But the process is not automatic. We become like God as we see God, and we see God most fully in the face of Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 3:18–4:6). We are made and remade to imitate him (Romans 8:29). His desires for God and good are perfect, clear, fiery — and contagious. Jesus is our great mimetic model. As we learn to fix our eyes on him, his joy will kindle ours (Hebrews 12:1–2) and start a wildfire of holy desire.

Quest stories captivate us. Whether it’s Bilbo’s journey there and back again or Dante’s ascent to Paradise or Reepicheep’s voyage to find the utter East — we find the pilgrimage narrative irresistible, especially if the road teems with adventure and the hero is transformed into someone lovely. There is a reason The Odyssey has fired man’s imagination for three millennia, a long homeward trek past temptations and monsters innumerable.

We were made to go to God, the Home for our souls, made to enjoy God more and more forever, to really live. And the only way to get there is by following the Way crossing the only Bridge that brings us to God (John 14:6; 1 Peter 3:18). And we can only walk that Way when God’s own breath fills our lungs and animates our steps, when his Spirit sets us walking in a new direction as new creations on new adventures.

We love quests (at least in part) because we were made for a Godward quest led by God’s Spirit. And we can trace the contours of that sojourn by attending to the Spirit’s work in Romans 8. Abraham Kuyper rightly observed, “The Holy Spirit leaves no footprints in the sand.” But those led by the Spirit certainly do.

New Direction

In Romans 8:4, Paul divides the world into just two groups: those who walk according to the flesh and those who walk according to the Spirit. That’s it. Either the flesh directs you or the Spirit does. You are walking according to one power or the other.

Of course, walk is a metaphor, so what does it mean? The emphasis of walk falls not on pace but on direction. Picture a path. One way, the path leads up and into life. The other way leads down and down to death. All people move on this path, and eventually, they will get where they are going — either to life or to death.

Without the Spirit, death draws us like flies to filth. The pull is imperious, inexorable, irresistible. As sons of wrath, we march the wide way to death, following the course of this world, in lockstep with the discordant beat of sin’s siren call (Ephesians 2:1–3). In Eden, our first father forfeited the way of life, setting the feet of all his sons trudging ever downward. The world still rings with the clink, clink, clink of shackled feet chained to sin by choice and blood, making the trek to death. Can you hear it? Do you remember the sound of your own chosen chains?

But the Spirit breaks our bondage. He sets us free from the power of sin and death (Romans 8:2). He snaps the dark enchantment. He breathes life into those who walk in death. He wholly reroutes our hearts, puts us on the path to forever pleasures and full joys, and sets our feet dancing to his rhythm (Psalm 16:11; Galatians 5:25). The Spirit gets us walking in a new direction.

This “new way of the Spirit” leads us into the abundant life Jesus promised (Romans 7:6; John 10:10). We can begin even now to roam the garden paths of Eden — to “walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4). What was lost then, Christians increasingly enjoy now. God with us is realized by God in us. As Tom Schreiner writes, “The future deliverance from death has invaded the present world in the death and resurrection of Christ” (Romans, 294). The life the Father planned and the Son purchased the Spirit guides us into.

As New Creations

But this new direction results from a deeper change wrought by the Spirit. New direction comes from new creation. Who you are determines where you are going. The NASB captures this new way of being:

For those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who are according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. (Romans 8:5)

We were in the flesh; now we are in the Spirit. We were dead in trespasses; now we are alive with Christ (Ephesians 2:1–5). We were stonehearted; now we are softhearted (Ezekiel 36:26). We were enemies; now we are reconciled (Romans 5:10). In short, we were one kind of creature; now we are new creatures (2 Corinthians 5:17). The Spirit as “the Lord, the giver of life,” effects this change from the Father through the Son.

“The life the Father planned and the Son purchased the Spirit guides us into.”

And our new direction is evidence of our new creation (and no condemnation, Romans 8:1–2). The fleshly person does not and cannot please God (Romans 8:7–8). But the Spirit-led person can and will please him. Leading reveals lineage (Romans 8:14). Sons of Adam follow the flesh to death. The Spirit leads sons of God to life. Direction reveals desires. If the flesh rules, you will gratify its desires. But if the Spirit governs you, his desires will be yours (Galatians 5:16–17).

Just as a compass can be corrupted so that it no longer points north, the soul without the Spirit does not orient to God. Indeed, it cannot! It hates God (Romans 8:7). It points away from him. But the Spirit re-magnetizes the soul. He is the internal principle (the “law” in verse 2) that points us to true North.

How does the Spirit recreate and re-magnetize our souls? He dwells in us! “You . . . are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you” (verse 9).

Christian, you who have the Spirit of Christ, have you considered the wonder and weight of that reality? The Spirit of God lives in you and leads you. The Spirit who brooded over the chaos waters at the beginning of all things, the Spirit who gives life to what lives, the Spirit who led Israel through wild places by fire and cloud, the Spirit who descended like a dove on the long-awaited Messiah, the Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead with omnipotent power, the Spirit who fell like fire at Pentecost, the Spirit who blows where he will and begets whom he will, the Spirit who is the third person of the eternally happy Trinity — that Spirit dwells in you! How could you expect to be anything less than utterly altered by his presence?

With God in You

New creations really are new. Do not think that setting your mind on the things of the Spirit concerns just your thinking. The change involves “the whole existence of a person,” as Schreiner puts it (Romans, 405). Just as the heart in the Old Testament concerns all the inner life — thoughts, affections, and desires — the mindset here is just as expansive. Everything changes when the Spirit transfers you from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light (Colossians 1:13).

If the Spirit dwells in you, God is in you. Imagine you had access to my spirit. You could think my thoughts, know my desires, and feel my affections. God’s Spirit does just this. He pours God’s own love into us (Romans 5:5). He teaches us the very thoughts of God, revealing truth and rerouting the ruts of our minds. He is the mind of Christ in us (1 Corinthians 2:10–13, 16). He gives us godly desires (Galatians 5:16–17).

The Spirit gives us God’s own happiness. When Jesus said that his joy would be in us and our joy would be full (John 15:11), he anticipated this ministry of his Spirit — the same Spirit he rejoiced in (Luke 10:21), the same Spirit that embodied the love and joy of the Father in the Son (Matthew 3:16–17).

Augustine marveled at this mystic reality. He confessed to God,

When people see things with the help of your Spirit, it is you who are seeing in them. When, therefore, they see that things are good, you are seeing that they are good. Whatever pleases them for your sake is pleasing you in them. The things which by the help of your Spirit delight us are delighting you in us. (Confessions 13.31.46)

It boggles the mind, but the Spirit of God in man is God’s own life and fullness in man. Here is a new creation indeed!

On New Adventures

Is it any surprise that new creations going in a new direction embark on new adventures? And adventure really is the right word for the Christian life. To be on an adventure is to participate in a story, to embark on a journey perilous but full of promise, to engage in daring action in hope of glorious reward. We were made new, crafted by Christ, to walk these new paths and perform these great deeds (Ephesians 2:10).

But Spirit-led adventures are unlike the adventures we’re used to. On this adventure, if you walk, you will arrive. The end is written. The Ring will be destroyed; yet you must walk it into Mordor and throw it in Mount Doom. Again, you will get where you are going, but you really do have to go.

Paul highlights this fast friendship between God’s sovereignty and man’s agency:

If you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. (Romans 8:13–14)

The Spirit empowers the Christian life (“by the Spirit”), but believers act it out (“you put to death”). We must work the miracle. For Paul, the reality that “it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” does nothing to undermine the agency, yes, and the urgency of “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12–13).

Quest of Life and Death

What does this Spirit-led, man-walked adventure look like? On the one hand, it looks like death — if you put to death the deeds of the body. The way is soaked in the blood of slain sin. Dragon carcasses litter the roadside. Crosses, thick as a forest, mark where “the flesh with its passions and desires” have been crucified (Galatians 5:22–24). Trash heaps piled high with worldly lusts — sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, covetousness — lie smoldering by the way, torched with holy fire. The signs of wars waged and battles won are everywhere.

Pilgrim, if you walk by the Spirit, this is your adventure, your battleground. And there is no place for parley on this path! You must slay and crucify, torch and kill, and give no quarter to your dragon-lusts. Put to death the deeds of the body.

And if you do, you will live. This is the way of life (Psalm 16:11). There is no other. The way may be paved in daily death, but the end is eternal life. After all, we are walking in the footsteps of our older Brother, who endured the cross for the joy set before him (Hebrews 12:2). By his Spirit, we follow his direction, doing the will of his Father, sharing in his suffering, imitating his stride. The Spirit-led adventure looks like increasingly looking like Christ (Romans 8:29). By the Spirit, the adopted sons of the Father walk the way of the Son. The adventures of the Spirit never stray outside the happy land of the Trinity. Where the Spirit leads, there is the Son and Father, and there is eternal life (John 17:3).

From my childhood up, my mind had been full of objections to the doctrine of God’s sovereignty. . . . But I have often, since that first conviction, had quite another kind of sense of God’s sovereignty than I had then. I have often since had not only a conviction, but a delightful conviction. The doctrine has very often appeared exceedingly bright and sweet. Absolute sovereignty is what I love to ascribe to God.

I wonder how many can sympathize with the first line of Jonathan Edwards’s confession because they have never tasted the sweetness of “the doctrine” (Works of Jonathan Edwards, 1:xii–xiii). How many protest against the idea of God’s absolute sovereignty because they’ve never seen its “exceedingly bright” beauty? How can the doctrine come down from the heavens and delight us here on earth?

In his essay “Myth Became Fact,” C.S. Lewis gives us his answer for how to better experience what doctrine can merely explain: stories (what he calls “myths”). “In the enjoyment of a great myth we come nearest to experiencing as a concrete what can otherwise be understood only as an abstraction” (57).

If we want to experience the sweetness of God’s sovereignty that Edwards celebrates in the form of the story Lewis advocates, we can hardly do better than the creation account in Tolkien’s The Silmarillion. What we too quickly set to cool into the tidy ingots of doctrine, Tolkien presents in the molten form of myth.

The Ainulindalë

For those who don’t know, The Silmarillion is Tolkien’s mythological history behind The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, the roots of his tree of tales. He begins the story with the Ainulindalë, which serves as both a creation myth and a kind of musical theodicy, revealing how an all-good and all-powerful Creator can allow evil in his world.

Before unpacking Tolkien’s lovely portrait of providence in the Ainulindalë (which is just over three pages long in small font), let me offer two clarifications to help you make the most of reading it.

First, Tolkien states elsewhere the central theme of this mythology in no uncertain terms: “It is about God, and His sole right to divine honour” (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, 260). God and his glory run like a subterranean river under Tolkien’s world. Every reader (or filmmaker) who fails to begin at that fountainhead will necessarily do violence to Tolkien’s vision.

Tolkien sounds this central note in the first sentence of his legendarium: “There was Eru, the One, who in Arda is called Ilúvatar” (The Silmarillion, 15). Although Tolkien invents his own name for the Creator, his first line echoes the start of the True Myth: “In the beginning, God.”

Second, Tolkien builds on a long tradition that views the celestial beings or angelic “sons of God” as participants in creation. God himself pulls back the primordial veil and gives us a hint of this when he asks Job, “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? . . . When the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?” (Job 38:4, 7). Tolkien names these angelic beings the Ainur.

With the major players — Ilúvatar (God) and the Ainur (gods) — in place, let’s consider the beauty of God’s sovereignty in Tolkien’s myth.

Adorning the Theme

Tolkien begins his story by fronting the mysterious harmony between Creator providence and creature agency. After Ilúvatar creates the Ainur, he reveals his sovereign plan to them as “a mighty theme” of music — the central melody line of history. This theme begins in glory and ends in splendor. Just like Yahweh, Ilúvatar is the Creator, King, and Coherence of his world, and the central theme of all is his glory (Romans 11:36).

When the Ainur hear the theme, awe seizes them, and they bow before their Creator in silence. But their amazement only increases with his next words:

Of the theme that I have declared to you, I will now that ye make in harmony together a Great Music. And since I have kindled you with the Flame Imperishable, ye shall show forth your powers in adorning this theme, each with his own thoughts and devices, if he will. But I will sit and hearken, and be glad that through you great beauty has been wakened into song. (15)

The storyline is set in stone. It cannot be changed. Ilúvatar has declared it. And yet he invites his creatures to “achieve it” (20). For Tolkien, God is no machinist of automatons. He is a Creator of subcreators — a term that captures the mystery, dignity, and privilege of real creaturely agency. Though God is the Author, he intends his characters to “actually assist in the effoliation and multiple enrichment of creation” (Tolkien, On Fairy-stories, 79). The Master-Maker’s art flourishes in the hands of made-makers.

And what is the end of this cosmic polyphony? The pleasure of the Creator. He delights to see their work. The derivative beauty they awaken makes him “glad” because it mirrors his own original beauty.

Tolkien recounts the Ainur’s response to this commission:

Then the voices of the Ainur, like unto harps and lutes, and pipes and trumpets, and viols and organs, and like unto countless choirs singing with words, began to fashion the theme of Ilúvatar to a great music; and a sound arose of endless interchanging melodies woven in harmony that passed beyond hearing into the depths and into the heights, and the places of the dwelling of Ilúvatar were filled to overflowing, and the music and the echo of the music went out into the Void, and it was not void. (15)

This music of the Ainur adorning Ilúvatar’s theme is the musical history of the world “foreshadowed and foresung” (20). Yet, as in our own world, the music does not remain harmonious for long.

Notes of Discord

Good, good, good, very good — then dissonance. The pattern of the garden is mirrored in Tolkien’s myth. The music begins flawless, but soon arises “the discord of Melkor.”

As the theme progressed, it came into the heart of Melkor to interweave matters of his own imagining that were not in accord with the theme of Ilúvatar; for he sought therein to increase the power and glory of the part assigned to himself (16).

Melkor, a Satan-like character whom Tolkien calls “the Prime sub-creative Rebel,” tries to make his own music apart from God’s design (Letters, 191). There is no fear of God before his eyes, so he seeks to usurp heavenly hierarchy. He wants to wield the conductor’s wand. Yet he only manages to make discord — the inevitable result when creatures seek to jettison their creatureliness, when made things envy their Maker. Satan sought to ascend God’s throne; Adam tried to seize divinity; Melkor wanted his own theme. The notes may change, but the dissonance is the same. This rebel refrain echoes throughout our fallen world.

“God and his glory run like a subterranean river under Tolkien’s world.”

Melkor’s discord, like Satan’s and Adam’s (and ours), is contagious. As a result, many of the other Ainur attune their music to Melkor instead of staying in concert with Ilúvatar. A cacophony results, a sea of sound, a tempest of clashing tones.

But just here, Tolkien’s vision of sovereignty shines brightest. The rivalry of themes is a false one. Ultimately, there is only one theme — Ilúvatar’s. He makes new music through the chaos:

It seemed at first soft and sweet, a mere rippling of gentle sounds in delicate melodies; but it could not be quenched, and it took to itself power and profundity. And it seemed at last that there were two musics progressing at one time before the seat of Ilúvatar, and they were utterly at variance. The one was deep and wide and beautiful, but slow and blended with an immeasurable sorrow, from which its beauty chiefly came. The other had now achieved a unity of its own; but it was loud, and vain, and endlessly repeated; and it had little harmony, but rather a clamorous unison as of many trumpets braying upon a few notes. And it essayed to drown the other music by the violence of its voice, but it seemed that its most triumphant notes were taken by the other and woven into its own solemn pattern. (16–17)

Like a master conductor, Ilúvatar folds discord into his theme. Just when evil seems most triumphant — when the cross looms large and the grave yawns deep — it most serves the theme of glory. Tolkien, following both Augustine and Aquinas, holds that God permits evil in the world to serve his final purposes. The splendor of the happy ending “reflects a glory backwards” that reveals God’s good design from the start (On Fairy-stories, 76).

The Irresistible Melody

Shortly after Ilúvatar weaves the disharmony of Melkor into his grand theme, he stops the music and declares,

Mighty are the Ainur, and mightiest among them is Melkor; but that he may know, and all the Ainur, that I am Ilúvatar, those things that ye have sung, I will show them forth, that ye may see what ye have done. (17)

Ilúvatar transposes the music of the Ainur into being. As if a book were brought to life, Ilúvatar makes the music into a world and does so for a specific purpose — to display his sovereign glory. Echoing Yahweh’s words to Pharaoh (Exodus 9:16), Ilúvatar declares,

Thou, Melkor, shalt see that no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite. For he that attempteth this shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined. (17)

What a potent taste of the doctrine! In the end, sovereignty and agency mingle in perfect harmony. Not only will evil bow to good (Proverbs 14:19), but ultimately, evil must serve good (Genesis 50:20). All the schemes of Melkor will prove “but a part of the whole and a tributary to its glory” (17). And lest we imagine Ilúvatar had only the gods in mind, he says of men, “These too in their time shall find that all that they do redounds at the end only to the glory of my work” (42). All the rebellion of gods and men, in the final reckoning, serves but to amplify and accentuate the symphony of glory. For Tolkien, good wins because God is sovereign.

Again and again, Tolkien shows that Providence can make beauty blossom out of evil and its bitter fruit. Tolkien calls this surprising transformation eucatastrophe. Austin Freeman explains, “The eucatastrophic subversion of evil into good is the essential way that God has designed Middle-earth to function” (Tolkien Dogmatics, 208). As the greed of Gollum ultimately ensures the destruction of the Ring, God makes all discord ultimately serve his ends.

No matter how dire the situation, no matter how bent the Dark Lord may be, no matter how far the filth of Mordor spreads — even if Saruman breaks all the bonds of friendship and scours the Shire, though, with the very fires of Mt. Doom heating his heart, Frodo claims the Ring as “mine,” and even Samwise the Brave surrenders his last hope — yet the sovereign song takes up all the dark and the dangerous, all the evil intents and bent imaginings, all sin and sorrow, and makes them adorn the theme of glory.

Celebrating Sovereignty

In the symphony of sovereignty, God’s perfect providence and man’s real agency form one wonderful melody. The two seemingly distinct strains of music dance together, Providence leading and guiding the steps while creatures move in time. Even man’s missteps and discordant notes, God flawlessly weaves into the fabric of the whole so that when the final ovation comes, the standing cosmos will forever sing, “From him and through him and to him are all things. Blessed, blessed, blessed be he!”

Tolkien helps us taste the sovereignty Edwards celebrates. He shows us that God’s sovereignty transcends mere fact. It fires the imagination. It is at once imperious and mellifluous — an insurmountable wall for would-be rebels and an unassailable fortress for the faithful. Indeed, by his pen, the doctrine appears exceedingly bright and sweet.

Imagine a sin so terrible the stars shake in horror. Imagine a transgression that appalls the planets. Imagine evil that astonishes the angels, shocks the sun, and makes the moon shudder. What could be so bad that the Judge of all the earth calls the cosmos into the courtroom to testify against it?

Be appalled, O heavens, at this; be shocked, be utterly desolate, declares the Lord, for my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water. (Jeremiah 2:12–13)

God names two great evils: first, not drinking from the fountain of living water and, second, trying to drink from broken tanks that cannot hold water. According to God, evil — that appalls angels and shocks the heavens — is refusing to be satisfied in God and seeking to be satisfied anywhere else. Where we seek to be satisfied is a matter that concerns the highest heavens.

Parched Hearts

Jesus exposes the same arid evil in his gracious pursuit of a Samaritan woman. He has set his sovereign sights on making her a worshiper of the Father. He offers her living water, but she is wary (John 4:10, 13–14). Uninterested, incredulous, imperceptive, and, yes, a touch sarcastic, this woman will not surrender easily.

He identifies her broken cistern: “Go, call your husband, and come here” (verse 16). After she denies having a husband, Jesus replies, “You are right . . . you have had five husbands [literally, you have had five men], and the one you now have is not your husband” (verses 17–18). The love of our Lord here is surgical, exposing this woman’s parade of sexual encounters and her parched soul.

Like every other person, like God’s people in Jeremiah 2, this woman has an ocean-sized thirst, a pining deep as the soul, a yearning yawning wide as the human heart. And she has been trying to fill that abyss with men. She moves from man to man, cistern to cistern, trying to sate a longing only God can satisfy.

That is like trying to fill an ocean with a thimble. You might as well attempt to top off the Grand Canyon with a teaspoon. Don’t we all know the futility of this attempt? If you are an unbeliever, you live in this parched place. If you are a believer, oh, how tragically often we stray here.

“Our thirsty hearts are so prone to wander from the fount of every blessing.”

We each have our thimbles and our teaspoons. If honest, don’t you know what it’s like to scurry from mudhole to mudhole, thinking the next dirty mouthful will satisfy? The next drink, the next meal, the next partner, the next child, the next date, the next dollar, the next show, the next scroll, the next click — on and on. No stability of desire. Endlessly digging cisterns that can hold no water. Friend, these thimbles can never fill an ocean.

But Jesus offers us something to satisfy our soul-thirst.

His Ocean

Jesus uses three images to capture what he offers this woman and anyone else who will come:

If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, “Give me a drink,” you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water. . . . The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life. (John 4:10, 13–14)

The gift of God, eternal life, and living water — three images help us imagine what Jesus offers us — namely, enjoying the Father through the Son by the Spirit. In the immediate context, we know that God’s gift is the gift that is God, the Father’s gift of the Son. “God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son” (John 3:16). Elsewhere in the New Testament, the gift of God most often refers to the gift of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:38; 8:20; 10:45; 11:17; Hebrews 6:4; Ephesians 4:7).

Jesus later defines eternal life as knowing the Father and the Son (John 17:3), and from the rest of John, we learn that this knowledge comes by the witness of the Spirit (14:26; 15:26).

When we look at the image of living water, we find the same reality. A few chapters later, in John 7:37–38, Jesus says, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” Immediately, John comments that the living water here is the Spirit (7:39). And to come to the Son is to come to the Father (John 1:18; 14:7–9). They are inseparable (1:1; 10:30; 17:11). By inviting us to come, Jesus beckons us to swim in the ocean of Trinitarian fullness (15:11; 17:26)!

He means to satisfy her soul — and ours — by giving her God. He invites us into the infinite life and joy of the Trinity. But he does not merely beckon us to come to the fountain. No, he puts the fountain within us. We never need to run to empty cisterns again. By giving us his Spirit, Jesus gives us an internal waterfall of leaping life. He increasingly turns our desert heart into Eden with a spring that will never go dry.

Come, Come, Come

Why, then, do we still feel thirsty? How often — with dry tongues — do we echo the cry of the poets, “My soul thirsts for God!” (Psalm 42:1–2; 63:1)? Our joy is not always full. The garden sometimes wilts. We still say with this woman, “Give me this water.”

To answer, we must circle back to Jesus’s surprising words: “Go, call your husband” (John 4:16). Remember, to woo her to his well, Jesus shows her cisterns cracked and empty. By exposing her ocean-sized thirst, Jesus leaves her only two paths to take: return to the dry places or “come to the waters” (Isaiah 55:1). He leaves no other route open. She cannot continue to wallow in the mud and plunge into the ocean at the same time.

And neither can we. Our thirsty hearts are so prone to wander from the fount of every blessing. We often stray back to the mudholes Christ freed us from. Even after we believe, the drinking is not automatic. We must continually abandon waterless sins and come back to the fountain.

After all, Jesus does not eliminate our thirst. When he says, “Whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again” (John 4:14), he means, “You will need never go to another fountain. No more empty cisterns. You have unlimited, eternal access to the ocean.” After first tasting and seeing that the Lord is good, no one says, “That was enough for me. I’ve had my fill. Farewell, thirst.” God abhors that kind of stagnant religion. No, the desire of the saints is increased. But we must constantly bring that thirst back to the only one who can satisfy it.

We — like the Samaritan woman — have uninterrupted admission to the ocean. But we still must come. Living water is an already–not yet reality. We already have access to the fountain, but we have not yet drunk nearly enough. So come. Come each Sunday to savor the heady brew of Christian communion. Come each morning to drink down God’s word and make your soul happy in him. Come each minute in prayer “that your joy may be full” (John 16:24). Come, come, come, and keep coming!

The Spirit and the Bride say, “Come.” And let the one who hears say, “Come.” And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price. (Revelation 22:17)

“You shall not pass!” Is there any other line in literature that better captures the virtue of courage?

You likely know the scene. The Fellowship of the Ring has journeyed through the long dark of Moria, and now they are fleeing before a host of orcs — and Durin’s Bane. Gandalf sends his friends toward the exit before turning to face the Balrog on the bridge. With the cold white of Glamdring in one hand and his staff in the other, the grey wizard faces down the foe of fire and shadow.

“You cannot pass,” he said. The orcs stood still, and a dead silence fell. “I am a servant of the Secret Fire, wielder of the flame of Anor. You cannot pass. The dark fire will not avail you, flame of Udûn. Go back to the Shadow! You cannot pass.”

The Balrog heeds him not but steps onto the bridge. Gandalf is just visible before him, “glimmering in the gloom; he seemed small, and altogether alone: grey and bent, like a wizened tree before the onset of a storm.”

A sword of flame flashes out. Glamdring rings in answer. The Balrog falls back a step.

“You cannot pass!”

Again the foe ignores the command, leaps full onto the bridge, and brandishes his whip of fire. Gandalf raises his staff — the white light hovers for a moment, a single star in an abyss of night — and smites the bridge. Light blinds. Bridge cracks. Staff shatters. And the Balrog falls.

But in his final malicious act, the enemy lashes his whip around the wizard’s knees, dragging him to the edge. Gandalf meets Aragorn’s eyes — “Fly, you fools!” — sways for a moment, and then disappears into the heart of the earth (The Lord of the Rings, 330–31).

Tree Before the Tempest

For many of us, this scene is part of the permanent furniture of our imagination. The grey wizard stands strong against the Balrog on the bridge and, in the end, lays down his life for his friends. Here is a fortitude that deserves celebration. A Christlike courage worth imitating.

With Gandalf’s defiant cry echoing in our ears, let’s delve down to the roots of this courage by asking two questions. First, what motivates such courage? What steels him to stand firm, a tree before the tempest? And second, how can we cultivate that same indomitable courage to face down our own Balrogs?

The Deep Roots of Courage

To begin, what is the root of courage? What separates Gandalf’s fierce fortitude from Smeagol’s small-souled cowardice?

In his little book on courage, Joe Rigney defines the virtue as “a stable habit of the heart that masters the passions, especially the passion of fear, through the power of a superior desire” (Courage, 32). There are three facets to that definition:

Courage is a habit of heart — something we must practice and cultivate.
Courage governs our passions — it reigns over our snap reactions and instinctual responses, especially those of fear.
Courage governs by the power of a superior desire.

Notice that desire is the root of courage. But not just any desire — superior desire, “a deeper desire for a greater good” (30). Both “deeper” and “superior” imply that our desires are ranked and ordered rightly.

“The taproot of Christian courage is a tenacious treasuring of Christ.”

Courage flourishes within a proper hierarchy of desires — what Augustine calls ordered loves. Fittingly, in Scripture, courage is closely associated with the heart, the home of our loves and desires (e.g., Psalm 27:14). English makes this connection even more explicit, where courageous is synonymous with hearty, lionhearted, and the like. Courage reveals that you have rightly ordered desires and loves. Fortitude shows you put first things first.

We see this clearly in the example of Gandalf. Ordered desires held Gandalf on the bridge. Yes, he valued his own safety. (That’s why he didn’t throw his life away fighting innumerable orcs.) But his desire for the safety of his friends and, more importantly, his desire for the good of all Middle-earth went far deeper. His ability to face down the Balrog on the bridge was the fruit of those deep roots. To borrow a description of history’s greatest act of courage, we might say that for the joy set before him Gandalf despised death and defeated the Balrog. And that joy in a greater good was the source of his courage.

Now, those of us who are Christian Hedonists know what our deepest roots should cling to. The triune God is the highest good in the hierarchy of goods. He is most beautiful and desirable. Thus, the taproot of Christian courage is a tenacious treasuring of Christ, a treasuring that rightly orders all lesser goods in relation to God, our first Good.

Too Easily Pleased

Before discussing how to cultivate these deep desires, it’s worth asking what makes us cowardly. What makes us flee when we should fight? What makes us surrender the bridge?

Well, if ordinate loves produce courage, the opposite must be true of cowardice and the opposite vice of rashness. Both vices, but especially cowardice, come when the taproot — which should sink down to the bedrock of the greatest good — remains shallow, just beneath the surface. That tree will be blown over by the first strong breeze. That man will flee when the Balrog steps onto the bridge. Shallow roots produce craven men.

In his sermon “The Weight of Glory,” C.S. Lewis helpfully exposes the source of these shallow roots:

Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased. (The Weight of Glory, 25)

That final line should haunt us: we are far too easily pleased. That is the habit of heart that breeds cowards and the foolhardy, “half-hearted creatures.” When our desires are too weak, when we are too easily pleased, when our longings for lesser things become disordered, we will not stand when we should — or even stand when and where we should not. Instead of a tree before a tempest, weak desires leave us like tumbleweeds, blown and tossed by the slightest breeze.

Gritty Habits of Heart

Now we return to our second question. If ordered desires make the difference between the virtue of courage and the vices of cowardice and recklessness, how do we cultivate deep desires? How do we develop Gandalf-like grit?

1. Look to the greatest Good.

When James teaches us how to combat the kind of disordered desires that form the soil of cowardice and death, what does he do? He orients our desires Godward:

All generous giving and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or the slightest hint of change. (James 1:17 NET)

James draws our attention to the greatest Good and connects all other goods to the Giver. He sends our roots deep. He puts the Sun at the center. This is the key to cultivating ordered loves and, thus, the key to courage. To have “a deeper desire for a greater good,” we must know and love the greatest Good. And all lesser goods must be loved for his sake, as his fatherly gifts.

Like James, Tolkien saw light and fire as powerful images of God. And so, in his legendarium, the Secret Fire is Tolkien’s name for the Holy Spirit. Thus, when Gandalf says, “I am a servant of the Secret Fire,” he is, in a sense, looking to the Father of lights, and that glance puts steel in Gandalf’s spine.

We see a similar galvanizing of Sam’s courage. At his lowest moment, crawling across the plains of Mordor, desperately needing courage, Sam sends his eyes heavenward, where he sees a white star:

The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach. (The Lord of the Rings, 922)

Sam’s vision rose higher than the danger around him. The gravity of good and of high beauty helped him govern the passion of fear, and he found the grit to carry Frodo up Mount Doom.

When we dare to look up at the Father of lights, the High Beauty, all his good gifts will fall into their proper place. Our souls will be shaped. Our desires will become ordered. Our roots will run to the right depths.

2. Imitate those who refuse to be far too easily pleased.

If you want to be courageous, mimic those who have stood against the Balrog on the bridge. Imitate Sam. Imitate Gandalf.

Imitate Moses — a greater wizard than Gandalf (Exodus 8:16–19). A man whose insatiable desire for the greatest Good led him to dare terrible things and face down mighty foes.

“By faith Moses . . . refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin.” He relentlessly refused to be far too easily pleased because “he considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward” (Hebrews 11:24–27). Moses had deep roots. He looked toward the high beauty of the promised Christ. And that strong desire fortified him to face down a Pharaoh, win a wizard battle, and endure the scorn of Egypt.

“The courage of Gandalf, Moses, and Jesus is not made in a day or a month or a year.”

And imitate Jesus. When offered all the kingdoms on earth, his desires were too strong to settle for a handout from Satan. When the virtues of our King came to the testing point, he applied his courage to the sticking point and performed the most valiant deed the world will ever know — because his desires ran deeper than death. “For the joy that was set before him, [he] endured the cross, despising the shame” (Hebrews 12:2). No dragon can stand before that strength of heart! Imitate him and those who do likewise.

3. Make your stand on little bridges.

The courage of Gandalf, Moses, and Jesus is not made in a day or a month or a year. Courage to stand before Balrogs or face down dragons or take up crosses grows slowly out of mundane, day-to-day decisions to refuse to settle for mud pies. Oaks of righteousness grow from countless Hobbit-like choices — choices not to click what you shouldn’t, choices not to join in ungodly laughter, choices not to be pressured into that third drink, choices not to say peace when there is no peace, choices not to call him a her, choices to defend the downtrodden, choices to initiate conversations, and a thousand others.

By the power of the Spirit, our Secret Fire, the stands you take on those little bridges will enable you to hold firm when the Balrog comes. You will acquire fortitude for long love in a hard marriage. You will have the stability to embrace the challenging blessing of children. You will gain the tenacity to put your own sin to death and lovingly confront the sins of others. You will develop the boldness to leave familiar comforts for costly missions — whether next door or across the planet.

Over time, you will grow deep roots. You will be “like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green, and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit” (Jeremiah 17:8).

Recently, my wife and I became fascinated with documentaries about mountain climbers. It started with Free Solo, which tells the story of Alex Honnold and his ascent of one of the most difficult rock faces in Yosemite National Park — without any ropes! We watched awestruck at what Honnold accomplished and, at the same time, appalled by the risks he took. What would drive a man to that?

Next, The Alpinist landed in our playlist. The film kept us on the edge of our seats as it followed Marc-André Leclerc’s obsession with solo climbing America’s most dangerous peaks. Leclerc’s longing to experience the highest heights eventually led to his tragic death.

Other tales of alpinism followed, and after watching scores of people ante up their lives to summit the loftiest peaks on the planet, my wife asked the obvious question: Where does that desire come from? Why do mountains so mesmerize us?

Curious Cravings

Now, you may not feel the allure of the alpine aesthetic as keenly as Honnold or Leclerc — or me. You may not ache to ascend the roof of the world or thirst for a glimpse of mountain majesty. But the practice of discerning desires — the ability to interrogate where your desires come from and where they lead to — sits right at the heart of wisdom (Proverbs 20:5).

As the Puritans were fond of pointing out, desires reveal the shape of the soul. Often man’s deepest longings — though they may attach to the wrong objects — unveil what God made us for. To paraphrase Chesterton, Every man who walks into a brothel is unconsciously looking for God. Can the same be said for everyone who walks up mountains? What does this desire reveal about your soul and mine?

Where Heaven Touches Earth

In the early 2000s, the United Nations declared 2009 “International Year of Mountains” and dedicated it with the slogan, “We are all mountain people.” Whatever the UN meant, that phrase summarizes well the role mountains play in Scripture. From start to finish, the story of the Bible swirls around mountaintops, and the people of God truly are mountain people. Let me explain.

In the beginning, God created everything, including mountains (Psalm 90:2; 95:4; 104:8). God made man, gave him dominion, and placed him in the garden of Eden on God’s holy mountain (Ezekiel 28:14). This Edenic peak is paradigmatic of all other noteworthy mountains in Scripture because here God dwelt with man. On the mountain, heaven touches earth. However, man’s stay on these blessed heights was short-lived. He chose death, and down he went from paradise.

Throughout the rest of God’s story, mountains grant a foretaste of when heaven and earth will be renewed — God and man together again. Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Elijah all met God on the mountain. The temple and tabernacle, both modeled after Eden, had their own mini-mountains in the form of the altar. And Zion towered over all other rival heights as “the mount that God desired for his abode” (Psalm 68:15–16).

Jesus regularly sought God on the mountain (Matthew 14:23; Mark 6:46). But more than that, Jesus was God on the mountain. He met man there in thunder and cloud (Mark 9:2–8), reuniting heaven and earth. All the alpine cords of Scripture climax in Christ. He calls his own to join him on the mountain (Mark 3:13), and from the mountaintop he commissions his new humanity to mediate his dominion to the ends of the earth (Matthew 28:16–20). And one day, those kingdom subjects will climb further up and further in to dwell with God on the Mountain forever (Revelation 21:10).

In Scripture, mountains stand as metaphors in stone. They are the place where heaven meets earth, where God descends to man. They are monolithic reminders of the enormous bliss of Eden.

Anatomy of the Ache

Given the prominence of peaks in Scripture, we should not be surprised that the human soul longs to climb. But can we say more about this desire? What is the anatomy of the alpine ache? In the allure of the mountains, we can identify at least five longings God placed in the human soul.

1. We long to exercise dominion.

In 1923, shortly after geographers identified Everest as the tallest mountain on earth, a reporter asked explorer George Mallory why he was hell-bent on summitting the peak. He famously replied, “Because it’s there.” Mallory died the following year attempting to be the first man to put Everest under his feet. Here we find the ancient drive to take dominion.

On the original mountaintop, God commanded man to subdue the earth (Genesis 1:28). The word subdue means to subjugate, to conquer, to take mastery over. I cannot help but imagine God issuing this commission with a smile. It was almost a dare. Knowing the very-goodness of the world he made, knowing the soaring heights and unsounded depths, knowing the waves and winds, knowing the wonders of water and the charms of snow, surely God delighted to invite man to explore this cosmic playground!

He sealed this desire for dominion in his image bearers, especially in the hearts of men. The urge to set foot on the highest heights in the most dangerous ways and direst conditions testifies to this hunger.

2. We long to see beauty.

Several years ago, my wife and I bought a van, converted it to a camper, and toured the South Island of New Zealand. I was a kid on a country-sized playground. I climbed every hill, cliff, crest, and mountain we could drive to. On those heights, I encountered beauty that could pierce like an arrow, seize like a vice, and brand like hot iron — majesty that kindled delight and awakened desire. I will never forget some of those moments, but not because of the marvels in front of me. Those experiences are etched in my mind because I know in my bones that I played on the border of what I was made for — to see Beauty.

“In Scripture, mountains stand as metaphors in stone. They are the place where heaven meets earth, where God descends to man.”

The psalmist knew this stab of longing well. Beauty pierced him through, and the ache would never leave. It dominated him. Like Captain Ahab, he had one all-consuming pursuit: to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord (Psalm 27:4). We were made to “behold the king in his beauty” (Isaiah 33:17). Our souls will be satisfied with nothing less than basking in “the perfection of beauty” shining in the face of Jesus Christ (Psalm 50:2).

The perilous majesty of mountains whets this appetite — by God’s design. All the wonders of lesser mountains remind us of the mountain of God. “His holy mountain, beautiful in elevation, is the joy of all the earth, Mount Zion, in the far north” (Psalm 48:1–2).

3. We long to participate in glory.

Still, don’t we want more, so much more than simply to see beauty? We want to be swallowed up in the beauty. We don’t just want to behold; we want to become. To touch is not enough; oh, we want to be transformed! We want to join the great dance. We want in.

To put it another way, we want glory; we seek it (Romans 2:7). We yearn to participate in the glory we were made for — the glory we even now restlessly reflect (Romans 8:29–30). Which of us would not trade all to hear on the lips of our Lord, “Well done! Enter into the joy of your Master”? This divine approval meets our deep desire for glory. As C.S. Lewis explains, “Glory means good report with God, acceptance by God, response, acknowledgment, and welcome into the heart of things. The door on which we have been knocking all our lives will open at last” (The Weight of Glory, 41).

That knocking reverberates from mountain walls and echoes from the highest peaks. One caption translates all the countless selfies taken on the world’s summits: “Is this not enough? Let me in!” When asked why he takes such climbing risks, Honnold replied, “If you succeed, everybody celebrates you as a big hero.” Honnold, like all made in the image of God, wants glory, but he is knocking at the wrong door.

4. We long to savor fear.

Have you ever wondered why so many people enjoy scary movies? Or why the very risk that makes extreme sports hazardous also makes them wildly attractive? Or why “danger tourism” draws so many? In part, the answer lies in our longing to savor fear.

There is something uniquely thrilling about fear. Yes, the pleasure is a sharp one. It boasts a razor edge, but it remains, nonetheless, a genuine pleasure. Thus, Nehemiah admits that the servants of God delight to fear him (Nehemiah 1:11). They worship in fear and rejoice in trembling (Psalm 2:11). They fall before God in awestruck adoration. We were made to fear.

Therefore, we seek out what Rudulf Otto calls numinous experiences. Encounters that make us feel small. Occasions that make us aware that we are mere creatures in the presence of a Creator wholly other. The alpine aesthetic preeminently grants this experience. Describing the magnetism of the mountains, Leclerc explained, “One of the coolest feelings a human can experience is to feel so small in a world that’s so big.” The wonder of mountains scratches this itch. It both feeds and fuels our desire to fear.

5. We long to dwell with God.

Here we come to the principle of our longing. The Bible shapes our imaginations to see the mountain as a place where the divine touches the dust. At the top, the physical world waxes translucent, and the presence of God peeks through. The winds that blow from the high country thrum with the hope that one day we will leave the shadowlands behind and ascend to the homeland we long for. The promise of the sunrise will burst upon us in the light of the Lamb.

Mountains awaken this sweet desire. We want to dwell with God. The booming invitation of Aslan to “Come further up! Come further in!” leaves us breathless. Shakes us to the soul. We ache to ascend to Eden — but better.

Massive granite arrows, mountains point beyond themselves to Someone far higher and more thrilling — to the One where all the beauty comes from. If we mistake them for the God they beckon us to know, they become stone idols, dragging their worshipers down. But if we heed their call to climb, we may admit with Lewis, “All my life the God of the Mountain has been wooing me” (Till We Have Faces, 87).

Two red finches dance around a bird feeder in my front window, their crimson wings painting the morning air. Beyond them, the rising sun sends golden light dripping through the leaves of my crabapple tree to pool in patches on the front lawn. A few towering cedars stand sentinel above. They nod their hoary heads in time with the silent breeze as if to give their approval to the sunrise. And nearer than all these, twin baby girls sit smiling, full of milk and flexing their newfound voices in infant glee. The scene is soaked in pleasures and fills my heart with a wild joy.

Perhaps you have had a similar experience and have wondered, as I did, whether this kind of scene makes God happy. Does he enjoy this lovely slice of creation with the same delight I do? Does he actually like what he has made? If we can answer those questions, not only will we gain insight into the fathomless gladness of our God, but we will also be better equipped to engage with God’s world as he does.

Trinitarian Fullness

To begin, yes, God delights in his creation! The Lord rejoices in the works of his hands, from the red finch to the rising sun to the little girls made in his image (Psalm 104:31). How could it be otherwise? God is no idolator, and so God is foremost in his own affections. From all eternity, the Father and Son have perfectly delighted in one another by the Spirit. This unfathomable abundance of life and love, beauty and joy is his Trinitarian fullness. And creation externally expresses some of this internal fullness.

Everything that is not God makes God’s divine nature and power visible (Romans 1:20). The world with a deafening voice declares the glory (Psalm 19:1). So, if God loves himself perfectly, how could he not take pleasure in his creation? Jonathan Edwards explains, “As he delights in his own light, he must delight in every beam of that light” (God’s Passion for His Glory, 157). To do otherwise would demonstrate a defect in his love.

Furthermore, no one can force God to do anything. He is the freest and happiest being imaginable. Therefore, if things exist (and they do), they exist because God is satisfied that they should be. As someone once observed, if God wanted to erase the universe, he wouldn’t have to do anything. He’d have to stop doing something. You exist, trees exist, stars exist, mosquitoes exist because it is God’s present pleasure to make it so. To riff on G.K. Chesterton, creation is the continual, exuberant encore of a God who delights in all that he has made. The sun rises each morning because God gives it a daily bravo.

Divine Hedonics

For Christian Hedonists, God’s happiness in creation comes as no surprise. But can we say more? Can we, as with fine wine, discern the different hints, flavors, and bright undertones of God’s pleasure in creation? Indeed, we can. In an analogous way, our human joys as subcreators give us a glimpse of God’s joys as Creator. So, what specific kinds of pleasure does God enjoy in his creation?

1. The Pleasure of an Artist

I have a juniper bonsai tree sitting on my back porch. I’ve cultivated — the correct term is “trained” — that tiny tree for years to fit the aesthetic standards of bonsai. It came home with me from the hardware store a wild bush, untrained, uncultivated, and unbalanced. But now it reveals a delightful symmetry — one long, graceful branch on the left harmonizing with two short ones on the right and topped with a tampering crown. I have invested much time, thought, and creative effort to make that bonsai tree beautiful. It is (even if not a great one) a work of art.

All trees are bonsai trees. God “trains” every tree on the planet. In my limited way, I cultivate my little tree with care and attention, but much lies outside my artistic control. Not so with God. He is not only exhaustively sovereign; he is exhaustively artistic. Every elm and ash, each birch and oak, the rowans, maples, poplars, and palms, the innumerable variety of trees — and yes, the crabapple in my front yard — are all God’s bonsais.

“Like sunlight through stained glass, triune beauty dances through the cathedral of creation.”

This bonsai principle extends far beyond trees. All of creation displays what George Herbert calls God’s curious art. He designs, erects, cultivates, paints, chisels, tunes, sculpts, fills, molds, finishes, and crafts all things to showcase his diverse excellencies. Realizing this led Augustine to pray, “The voice with which [created things] speak is self-evidence. You, Lord, who are beautiful, made them for they are beautiful” (Confessions, 11.4.6). Like sunlight through stained glass, triune beauty dances through the cathedral of creation, filling it with music, magic, and light.

When the divine Artist proclaimed his finished work “very good” (Genesis 1:31), he declared his aesthetic approval and artistic pleasure in what he had made.

2. The Pleasure of an Architect

Speaking of cathedrals, if you want to witness the genius of an architect, spend some time in a great cathedral. From the symmetry of the structure to the harmony of the whole, the particular attention given to each stone, and the symbolic significance of the materials, a cathedral puts the architect’s wisdom, power, and patience on full display.

In the same way, the cathedral of creation displays God’s genius. Scripture repeatedly connects the structure and order of the world with God’s wisdom.

O Lord, how manifold are your works!      In wisdom have you made them all;      the earth is full of your creatures. (Psalm 104:24)

God himself describes creation in architectural terms when he points out his providence to Job. The divine Architect “laid the foundations of the earth” and “determined its measurements.” He sunk the cornerstones of the cosmos, set the pillars of the world, and leveled the land. He circumscribed the sea and handcrafted the doors of the deep (Job 38:1–11). Absolutely nothing falls outside this sovereign construction.

Why did he do all this? Why did he construct the world in this way? For the same reason a great architect builds — because he delights in doing it. “Whatever the Lord pleases, he does, in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all deeps” (Psalm 135:6). God finds pleasure in orchestrating order and instilling degree. He loves hierarchy and harmony. Only the Architect can rejoice in the foundations only he sees.

3. The Pleasure of an Author

Although I am a bit biased, I suspect few pleasures surpass the pleasures of an author. Words make worlds, and wielding that magic thrills the soul. And it should! When our words make our internal life visible, we touch the very principle of our being — like seizing a lightning bolt. We exist because the Word speaks (Hebrews 1:3). Just like our words make what is internal external, God’s cosmos-creating words — words that we can taste and feel, smell and see — communicate his internal fullness.

The poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge captures the enchanting speech of God beautifully in his poem “Frost at Midnight.” Coleridge rejoices that when you attend to creation,

. . . so shalt thou see and hearThe lovely shapes and sounds intelligibleOf that eternal language, which thy GodUtters, who from eternity doth teachHimself in all, and all things in himself.Great universal Teacher! he shall mouldThy spirit, and by giving make it ask.

Creation is God’s “eternal language” — his never-ceasing speech act. Through this cosmic story, God “teach[es] Himself” to all with ears to hear. And the more he tells the tale, the more we desire to know it.

When Macbeth says life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, he’s only partially correct. Reality is indeed a story, but a perfect narrator, full of goodness and glory, tells it. God never struggles with his story, unlike even the greatest human authors. He never reaches for the right word in vain. He never fails to connect plot points. He never suffers from writer’s block. He never wearies of filling in the details of his characters — from tears shed to hairs on their head (Psalm 139:16). He is the perfect wordsmith. And because creation captures the story of his glory, because the tale ends in the happily ever after, he takes divine delight in the telling. He is the Author of joy (Hebrews 12:2).

4. The Pleasure of a Father

Finally, as a happy Father, God delights in sharing the goodness of his creation with his children. He rejoices in sharing his joy with us because he’s that kind of father. “It is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom” (Luke 12:32). All of it! Every square inch of creation — all that God has declared “very good” — he gives to his people.

Dads get a taste of this pleasure when we share new joys with our kids. I recently introduced my two-year-old to chocolate chip cookies, and — let me tell you! — that moment was far sweeter for me than for him. But there are two ways God’s pleasure as a father outshines mine. First, in giving us creation, God gives himself. The trajectory of our joy goes beyond creation. Like bright sunbeams, the goodness, truth, and beauty of creation give a glimpse of and guide to the Sun. In inviting us to delight in the tiny theophanies of creation, God gives us God.

Yet there is a deeper magic still. God invites us into his own joy. God put his joy in us by giving us his Spirit so that when we rightly delight in creation, we do so with our Maker’s own pleasure. Augustine explains, “When people see these things [creation] with the help of your Spirit, it is you who are seeing in them. . . . Whatever pleases them for your sake is pleasing you in them. The things which by the help of your Spirit delight us are delighting you in us” (Confessions, 8.31.46). It boggles the mind, but when saints enjoy creation for God’s sake and by God’s Spirit, God himself is delighting in the sunshine of his glory through them. Here indeed is fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore in the presence of a happy Father!

Your Maker’s Pleasure

God does not simply tolerate creation as if it were an unsavory means to a good end; he takes divine delight in the worlds he has made. His is the pleasure of an Artist, an Architect, an Author, and a Father. And our God is no miser, hoarding his happiness away. The whole point of creation is sharing his fullness with creatures for their joy in him. To borrow the words of Aslan, in creation, everywhere and in everything, God bids us, “Enter into the pleasures of your Maker. You are not yet nearly as happy as I mean you to be.”

Have you ever wondered why we don’t think about heaven more? In fact, if heaven is all that Scripture says, how do we manage to think about anything else?

Observing this tension, C.S. Lewis wrote, “There have been times when I think we do not desire heaven; but more often I find myself wondering whether, in our heart of hearts, we have ever desired anything else” (The Problem of Pain, 149). In other words, all our longings find their true home in heaven. And yet, if we are honest, we spend far more time thinking about almost anything else. Why?

I suspect we don’t think much about heaven because we don’t think well about heaven. Until we learn to think well about heaven, we won’t think more about it. But if we learn to think well — ah, then it will be impossible to avoid thinking more. We must learn to rightly imagine heaven.

The Heaven Satan Loves

One of the main reasons we do not think well is because Satan hates heaven and wants us to do the same. Randy Alcorn explains, “Some of Satan’s favorite lies are about Heaven. . . . Our enemy slanders three things: God’s person, God’s people, and God’s place — namely, Heaven” (Heaven, 10–11). Satan is the father of lies, and some of his most damning lies involve the life to come.

Satan promotes the floaty no-place of Far Side cartoons, where ghostly figures sit on clouds strumming harps. This image, built on gnostic (anti-body) assumptions, induces utter boredom, and so Satan loves it. Saints may enjoy a bodiless heaven now, but it will not always be so. Satan knows no body-soul creature could be fully content to spend endless ages like that. And there’s the point. If Satan can get us to buy into a heaven unearthly, ghostly, or (God forbid) boring, we won’t think about heaven. And if we don’t think about it, why would we tell others or orient our lives toward it?

That final vision of heaven is an illusion, a dark enchantment cast by an envious Satan to extinguish our excitement about heaven. We don’t long because we don’t look, and we don’t look because we have believed lies. So, we must learn to banish this hellish hoax by thinking biblically about God’s place.

More Real, Not Less

Paul was a man who thought well about God’s place, and so it dominated his thoughts. In Philippians alone, Paul says, “My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better” (Philippians 1:23) — a Christ-centered way of saying, “I long for heaven.” Later, he says we are citizens of heaven (Philippians 3:20). And he describes his whole life as a sprint toward a finish line: “One thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:13–14).

That “upward call” is the heavenward call — the summons to come higher and higher. Like the saints in Hebrews, Paul desired to reach “a better country, that is, a heavenly one” (Hebrews 11:16). The hope of heaven consumed Paul. Why? Because he thought well about heaven.

When our thoughts run in biblical tracks, we begin to understand that the joys of heaven will be full and deep and exuberant — pleasures enormous! We will not float as disembodied spirits strumming harps for eternity (however that works). Heaven will brook no boredom. It will be more solid, not less — more physical, more tangible, more diamond-hard, more real than anything we experience now. And yet, everything we experience now helps us imagine what is coming.

This, but Better

Paul himself teaches us how to think about heaven when he says, “No eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Corinthians 2:9). From these verses, we may infer that paradise will be better than the best things we experience now, better even than the wildest joys we can imagine.

“I suspect we don’t think much about heaven because we don’t think well about heaven.”

Now, I take Paul’s statement as a challenge because it means I can look at every good thing now and every good I can envision, and I can say of it, “Heaven will be this, but better.” You can learn to think well about heaven by enjoying all the good things in this life now, lifting them as high as your imagination can go, and saying, this, but better. After all, the best things now serve as a mere taste test, as echoes of the music or bright shadows of the far better country to come.

Let me apply this way of thinking well about heaven to three of the best gifts God gives now.

1. This Body, but Better

In heaven, we will enjoy new bodies. Christ “will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body” (Philippians 3:21). Secular propaganda leads us astray on this point and tries to make us more “spiritual” than God. But he made our bodies. As a master artist, he judged them very good (Genesis 1:31). He took a body for himself — and by taking, forever hallowed. When God became man, he definitively declared the permanent goodness of the body. No approval could be more final than the incarnation.

And so we will enjoy both souls and bodies for eternity — new bodies, better bodies, bodies like Jesus’s right now, bodies with glorified senses, bodies without disease or pain, bodies that can run with joy, work without exhaustion, see without glasses, live without aging — or better! And so when you enjoy your body at its best now in holy eating and sleeping and sex and running and sports and singing and hugs and work and laughter, think to yourself, this body, but better.

2. This Earth, but Better

Biblically speaking, when we talk about our eternal heaven, we mean the new heavens and the new earth. In the end, heaven is not the opposite of earth; heaven is earth redeemed and remade and married to the new heavens. As Alcorn says, “Heaven isn’t an extrapolation of earthly thinking; Earth is an extension of Heaven, made by the Creator King” (Heaven, 13).

Oh, what good news for those homesick for Eden! God created us to enjoy God’s presence with God’s people in God’s place. An earthly place with glorified trees and garden mountains, with unfallen culture and undiminished art, the taste of chocolate and the smell of bacon, with majestic thunderstorms and soul-stirring apricity — the warmth of the sun in winter. One day, paradise lost will become paradise regained and remade into a garden-city.

The new earth will be just that — new. Like our new bodies, we will recognize it. It will be free from the bondage of corruption and the ravishes of sin, but it will not be utterly different. When God renews this earth, no good will be finally lost, no beauty obscured, no truth forgotten. And so, every time you glimpse the gigantic glory of God here, think to yourself, this earth, but better.

But of course, the place is nothing without the person.

3. This Joy in Jesus, but Better

As Christians, we enjoy Jesus now. That’s what it means to be a Christian. We seek to enjoy Jesus in everything and everything in Jesus. But in heaven, our joy in Jesus will increase. It will grow deeper and sweeter. It will bloom and blossom. Our happiness will expand forever in every conceivable way. Why? Because we will see Jesus face to face. Our King will dwell with us bodily. We shall behold the Word made flesh.

This was the hope Job harbored amid his suffering:

I know that my Redeemer lives,     and at the last he will stand upon the earth.And after my skin has been thus destroyed,     yet in my flesh I shall see God,whom I shall see for myself,     and my eyes shall behold, and not another.     My heart faints within me! (Job 19:25–27)

Job fainted for the beatific vision, which will undoubtedly be more than physical but not less. If this hope of heaven is yours in Christ, then one day you, with the saints of all ages, will bask in the smile of Jesus himself. Our new knees will bow on a new earth, and we will join in the cosmic praise of Christ with new tongues. Can you imagine that?

Fullness of Joy

If you can, you are beginning to think well about heaven. You are learning to anticipate the place where God will satisfy all our longings with the pleasures at his right hand. When we finally set foot in the far green country, everything good we ever wanted — the longings we have cherished since childhood, the desires we downplay as adults, the yearnings that visit us in the silent moments and echo endlessly in our hearts, that sweet something we have searched for, reached for, listened for, hunted after — God will satisfy all. My whole being — body and soul — will cry out, “This is what I was made for. Here at last, I am home!”

Friend, we cannot hope for what we do not desire, and we cannot desire what we have not imagined. Therefore, let’s exercise our imaginations — our Bible-saturated, Spirit-empowered, Trinity-treasuring imaginations — to think well about heaven.

Heaven will be like this, but far better.

“Abandon all hope, you who enter here.” This warning stands etched for eternity over the gates of Dante’s hell. It is one of the most famous lines in literature, and rightly so. It marks the beginning of Dante’s descent, following the footsteps of Christ, into the heart of the earth — a sobering journey that puts both the fear and fitness of divine justice on full display.

Many are tempted to “abandon all hope” at just the prospect of reading Dante. Perhaps you were forced to slog through Inferno in high school or read a few excerpts about Beatrice in college. Yet few realize that Dante wrote his epic poem, including his descent into hell, precisely to offer hope to Christians in their pilgrimage through this life. He offers himself as a guide for all who would follow in his footsteps, a shepherd of the Christian imagination.

C.S. Lewis once observed, “Certain things, if not seen as lovely or detestable, are not being correctly seen at all” (A Preface to Paradise Lost, 67). In other words, you don’t really see reality if you don’t feel rightly about it. If you don’t see God as beautiful, you don’t actually see God. If you don’t see sin as utterly ugly, you don’t actually see sin. Like trying to see a rainbow in black-and-white, you don’t really see it without the color. And here Dante shines as such a valuable guide for us because he leveraged all of his poetic prowess to help his readers see and feel rightly about God and everything else in relation to him.

In short, Dante wrote for you. By shaping our imaginations, Dante aims to pull back the veil of appearances and show us what’s really real. Therefore, if we will journey with him, Dante proves himself wonderfully relevant to Christians today. To motivate you to embark on this pilgrimage, I want to examine one image Dante gives us in Inferno that helps us envision just how detestable our sin is.

Showing the Invisible

Before turning to Inferno, however, a word on the imagination and how Dante appeals to it. Dante holds that a disciplined imagination is essential for Christian maturity because it serves an indispensable role in tracing the Good, the True, and the Beautiful to their fountainhead in the triune God. He celebrates the fact that all things find their meaning and purpose in relation to God, who is

The ever-living One and Two and Three     that ever reigns as Three and Two and One     uncircumscribed and circumscribing all. (Paradise, 14.28–30)

Furthermore, Dante sees the incarnation of Jesus as the key to understanding everything. Just as the Word became flesh and revealed the invisible God, man can imitate the incarnation through the imagination. Our words form images that make invisible realities visible. Good stories help us really see.

“Dante offers himself as a guide for all who would follow in his footsteps, a shepherd of the Christian imagination.”

It should come as no surprise, then, that Dante has shaped and ordered the Christian imagination as much as any man besides Jesus. His labyrinthine fourteen-thousand-line poem, The Divine Comedy, is for the imagination a playground and a schoolhouse, a cathedral and an observatory, a courtroom and an art gallery. It is a story that springs up from the leaf mold of a mind saturated in Scripture and awed by “the love that moves the sun and other stars” (Paradise, 33.145). Thus, Dante can help guide us on the path of godliness and maturity.

Now, how does Dante employ the imagination to unmask the true nature of sin?

Sin Incarnate

In Inferno, Dante leads his readers into the depths of hell in order to illustrate what sin does to the soul. By presenting a host of sinners and their punishments, Dante paints soul-pictures to help us envision how sin leaves people bent and broken. In Dante’s vision, sinners embody the sins they cling to. To use the category we mentioned earlier, the sinner incarnates the sin. As Lewis puts it in The Great Divorce, the grumbler becomes a grumble. Fittingly, then, the punishments in hell are not tacked on after the fact. They are a picture of God giving sinners up to the intrinsic effects of their sin (Romans 1:24–32). Sin goes against the grain of God’s design, and Dante shows us what it looks like when you get splinters.

For instance, in canto 5 of Inferno, Dante presents those people who were dominated by lust in life as souls endlessly tossed to and fro by “a hellish cyclone that can never rest” (Inferno, 5.31). Like little birds in a blizzard, these souls are carried wherever the winds take them. This image perfectly depicts the sin of lust, which puts desire in the driver’s seat so that we are “led astray, slaves to various passions” (Titus 3:3). With this image, and a host of others, Dante helps us see the final destination of disordered loves.

The Soul-Picture of Ulysses

To look at a more involved example, Dante presents one of his most poignant and convicting soul-pictures in canto 26. In this eighth circle of hell, Dante meets the mythic character Ulysses, the mastermind of the Trojan horse and main character of Homer’s Odyssey. In Ulysses, Dante presents the embodiment of a sin that haunts the lips and keyboards of our own age — the misuse of words.

When Dante meets Ulysses, he recounts the story of his downfall. After a decade of fighting the Homeric wars, Ulysses finally returns home to his wife, son, and father. Yet he shamelessly admits that none of these bonds of love

Could drive from me the burning to go forth     to gain experience of the world, and learn     of every human vice, and human worth. (Inferno, 26.97–99)

Like the lustful, Ulysses is blown about by his passions. Like our first parents, he harbors a sinful obsession to obtain the knowledge of good and evil. Burning with this ambition, Ulysses uses his eloquence to inflame his war-weary friends with a desire to sail to the ends of the earth and storm the gates of Eden. However, before they can ever set foot on that hallowed shore, a whirlwind “to please Another’s will” sinks their ship, killing the whole crew. God quelled Job’s curiosity from the whirlwind, and Dante envisions the same for Ulysses’s folly.

In this image of Ulysses, Dante shows the destructive power of the tongue. Ulysses is a master rhetorician, and his words are poison. With just nine lines of speech, Ulysses convinces those he calls brothers to join him in his sin. He boasts,

I made my comrades’ appetites so keen     to take the journey, by this little speech,     I hardly could have held them after that. (26.121–123)

With carefully wrought words, Ulysses enflames the desire of others, enticing them into sin that ends in death (James 1:14–15).

The Fiery Tongue

The story itself is a parable of warning, but it is the punishment that finally unmasks the sin. Ulysses’s penalty involves being eternally encased in a tongue of flame, a flame kindled by the blaze of his own tongue. Here Ulysses embodies the sin of misusing words. And the punishment fits the crime for at least three reasons.

First, it is a kind of anti-Pentecost. At Pentecost, the Spirit rested on men like tongues of fire, freeing the tongues of men to set the world ablaze with truth. Yet Ulysses is imprisoned by his tongue, locked in his own lies. Second, as James tells us, the tongue is a fire, a restless inferno of unrighteousness (James 3:1–12). The fiery tongue kindles the world. Third, in life, Ulysses’s tongue devoured the lives of his friends. Now the very flame that consumed others eternally consumes the soul that wielded it. He entrapped with words, and now he is entrapped. The arsonist burns on his own pyre.

This image rightly haunts the imagination. It is truly terrible because the sin it reveals is detestable to God! Even as I write these words, I behold Ulysses as a blazing beacon of warning. My tongue, just like yours, is powerful. I can use it to help others enjoy God and see Christ. Or I can twist it to my own ends, subtly kindling my own ego and reputation. I can use it to bring life or, like Ulysses, to bring death.

Dante himself felt this danger. Staring at Ulysses veiled in flame, Dante determined to “hold my genius under tighter rein / Lest without virtue’s guidance it run loose” (Inferno, 26.21–22). Dante, gifted with great linguistic ability, knew he could lead others to ruin if God did not tame his tongue.

“Our words form images that make invisible realities visible. Good stories help us really see.”

And the warning of Ulysses is not limited to professional wordsmiths. With the help of the Internet and social media, the reach and speed of our words today make the danger all the greater. Ulysses’s “little speech” is no longer than an average text message or social media post, and they can be just as deadly. Like sparks in a forest, a few lines of misused words can set society ablaze. Therefore, we would do well to heed Dante’s image of Ulysses.

Imagining Reality

More broadly, we would do well to heed all of Dante’s images. I have given just one snapshot of how Dante — a man saturated in Scripture and enchanted by myth — can guide us on the Christian pilgrimage by shaping our imaginations. He can help us love much when we realize we have been forgiven much (Luke 7:47). He can guide us up toward holiness by revealing the ugliness of sin. He can help us bask in the light of God.

In short, Dante — and others like him who wield the imagination faithfully — can pull back the veil and show us a glimpse of the way the world really is.