The Balance of Imagination and Reason

Technically, extremism manifests the sin of sloth, and it results in despair-not as a divine punishment, but as the inevitable consequence of taking a road that is literally a dead end. The tyranny of unconscious images is no improvement over the tyranny of abstract ideas. Neither the rampaging flood nor the elegantly engineered water channels are sufficient for enabling the desert to blossom like the rose, or to produce food. If only the deluge can be directed, controlled, disciplined, and if only the dry water courses can be filled . . . .

Mary McDermott Shideler

Jen Ould brought up Shideler's Philosophy and Fairy Tales in the faithmaps discussion group.

When I first read this article some time ago, it took my thinking into a few different directions including:

• how story/myth/experience balances reason and enables right reason
• the limitations of information transfer for spiritual formation
• the need for balance in considering postmodern critiques of a modernized evangelicalism (and I don't mean to absolutize the movement)
  

I expanded on those thoughts here.