The Art of Fashioning the Soul

I grew up fearing the power of the eyes. I was supposed to avert my eyes from certain television shows, movies, books, and images. When it came to men, I was afraid of my gaze—and doubly afraid of theirs. Just looking at the sale rack was risky if I wanted to avoid envy and irresponsible spending. Even at 40, I still hide my eyes when I feel afraid.

But I’ve come to realize that for all the time I spent worrying about where not to look, I should have spent a lot more time thinking about what my eyes should be fixed upon. I feared what I saw would corrupt me. It never occurred to me that what I saw could also save me.

Scripture tells us faith begins with a vision. “Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” John the Baptist declares in John 1:29 (NKJV throughout). See your salvation, he entreats us. Look and be saved. John’s words refer to another story of salvation through sight: the bronze serpent. When the Israelites wander in the wilderness, several of them die from poisonous serpents. Yahweh intervenes and instructs Moses to create a bronze serpent, so that “everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it, shall live” (Num. 21:8). Jesus compares himself to the serpent, saying, “As Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up” (John 3:14). The serpent of sin has bitten us, and its poison courses through our blood. But if we look at Christ, we will live.

Scripture includes a few suggestions on when to avert our eyes (1 John 2:16; Matt. 18:9), but far more frequently, it invites us to behold, to look, to pay attention. Behold often introduces the unexpected and captivating. It asks us (quite literally) to hold on to what we see, to contemplate and be transformed by it. When John tells us to “behold” the Lamb of God, he’s not just telling us, “Look over here for a second.” He’s telling us to look so carefully, with such utterly captivated attention, that we are changed by what we see.

The apostle Paul likewise directs us to gaze upon Christ so that we may be changed, speaking of Christians who, “beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory” (2 Cor. 3:18). Both John the Baptist and Paul are clear: We behold Christ so that we might become like Christ.

This idea may seem simple enough. Then again, Jesus walked on earth in flesh for only a short time, so how exactly are we supposed to “behold” him now?

Thankfully, we have an extra “eye” for just this occasion. It’s invisible, but it shapes how we see the visible world. It’s connected to the physical eyes, but separate too. Sometimes called the eye of the soul, it’s better known as the imagination. And it needs our attention.

We perhaps think about imagining as something active, a deliberate line of thought or game of make-believe. But ancient and medieval thinkers primarily thought of the imagination as something received. They used wax and seals to explain how the imagination shapes our spiritual and character formation. Our souls are like wax, they thought, pliable and moldable. Wax takes on the shape of whatever seal, or stamp, is impressed upon it. Imaginative forms, such as images and stories, are like seals that imprint themselves on us. We are transformed by—and into—what captures our attention.

Even the word imagination is related to imitation. Children imitate pirates, princesses, and superheroes, but they also imitate what they see their parents doing. And when we grow up, we don’t lose this imitative instinct. Our conversations may include a tangle of quotes from movies we love. We may echo the opinions of our favorite news channel. We may try to dress like our favorite musician or influencer. If something captivates our imagination, we cannot be objective observers. If we behold something, it becomes part of who we are and how we see the world.

But not all imaginative “stamps” are equal. Some are beautiful and good, and some quite ugly. Paul warns us in Romans 12:2 (CEB) not to “be conformed to the patterns of this world.” These “patterns” may appear true, but they offer a false vision of what is important. They distort and malform us, impairing our ability to accurately see God, ourselves, and the world around us.

Take the famous example of Don Quixote. He feasts so heavily on chivalric tales of knights, adventures, and courtly love that he puts on a coat of armor, hops on his old horse, and goes off in search of knightly adventures. No matter whom he meets or where he goes, he sees everything as if it were one of his adventure books: A rundown inn becomes a castle, and an unattractive, scheming woman a beautiful maiden in need of rescue. Most famously, Don Quixote chases windmills in the mistaken belief that he is ferociously fighting giants. He has been so shaped by the knightly imagination that no logic can ever convince him he is anything but a shining, heroic knight.

Today, we may not be putting on a coat of arms and brandishing a sword, but the patterns of our age—consumerism, nationalism, individualism, or moral relativism, to name just a few—can likewise distort our vision and influence our beliefs, practices, and character in ways that are not so different from Don Quixote chasing windmills. We too may be guilty of seeing a reality completely divorced from the reality we inhabit.

Indeed, some of the most pressing problems facing the church today are rooted in a failure of the imagination. We often approach them as if they were political or intellectual problems that could be solved with reason, but logic does not work on a diseased imagination. The only way to correct a malformed imagination is re-forming the imagination.

If we become what we behold, we must ensure that what we behold is what we want to become. Becoming a people transformed into the image of Christ rather than the patterns of our age requires reorienting our gaze and reshaping the wax of our imaginations. If we want our lives to reflect Christ, we must imprint his image onto our souls. If we want to align our lives with the gospel, we must let its story become our story.

Ancient and medieval Christians understood that something as powerful as the imagination must be shaped and disciplined. The first generations of Christians expressed their beliefs in both words and images. The fish symbol, for example, is one of the earliest, most basic professions of our faith: A fish, ichthys in Greek, acts as a symbolic anagram for Jesus (i) Christ (ch), God’s (th) Son (y), Savior (s). They also used anchors, phoenixes, palm branches, and many other symbols to profess their beliefs.

These simple symbols are an early example of a practice that forms the soul by forming the imagination. To ensure that their beliefs, practices, and character aligned with the gospel, ancient and medieval Christians practiced the “art of fashioning the soul,” a devotional exercise that intentionally selected and imprinted images onto the soul. For centuries, Christians trained their spiritual eyes with sculptures, symbols, and stories, frescoes and friezes, morality plays and mosaics. They etched glass and illuminated manuscripts, designed churches shaped like boats and crosses, and decorated the places of the dead with the art of resurrection.

No matter which of the many forms it took, this art for fashioning the soul always sought to imitate Christ. Since beholding Christ captivates, surprises, and transforms, so too do these works of the Christian imagination. Filled with distorted faces and penetrating eyes, surreal shades of gold and blue, roses made from blood, and rainbow-colored panthers, the historic Christian imagination invites us to stop, blink, and behold the utter strangeness we see.

Many evangelical Christians have, unfortunately, forgotten or otherwise neglected our inheritance of the Christian imagination. But these works can still help form our souls by training us to see the beautiful, upside-down truths of the gospel. Their strangeness disorients us, inviting us to look away from the unhealthy patterns of the world and to be stamped anew with love, gratitude, and a sense of wonder rooted in the good news of the gospel.

Behold, the historic works of the Christian imagination still implore us, and become like Christ. Look—and live.

Lanta Davis teaches classes on the sacramental imagination, beauty, and great texts for the John Wesley Honors College at Indiana Wesleyan University. She is the author of Becoming by Beholding: The Power of the Imagination in Spiritual Formation.