Scripture Meditation as Soul Medication: Imagination for the Sake of Transformation

Evangelical soul care has typically relied disproportionately on the power of rote information to foster sanctification in believers’ lives. Approaches to discipleship tend to scratch the surface of the mind with information more than they plumb the depths of the heart with imagination. While true discipleship is meant to enlighten the head to think with truth, ignite the heart to feel with zeal, and activate the hands to serve with love, too many American evangelicals possess superficial knowledge of doctrine in the mind that does not sufficiently percolate to their desires and actions. Biblical meditation is often the missing link between information and formation, the head and the heart, logic and love, reason and imagination. While Scripture since the dawn of the Enlightenment in the West has often been imagined as a systematic science that informs the mind, it is actually more of a spiritual supper that transforms the soul. While biblical meditation that engages the imagination has been prominently practiced throughout Church history, modern evangelicalism has largely forgotten it—which is a key reason for its imbalanced emphasis on heady content to the neglect of hearty change. The primary method of meditation on the Word of God throughout Church history has been lectio divina, an approach developed in antiquity and practiced for centuries since. Believers must learn to appropriately taste, chew, savor, and digest divine truth, and lectio divina is a method that fosters exactly that type of formative reading. This paper will demonstrate that the Scriptural meditation prescribed by lectio divina immerses the head with biblical truth, infuses the heart with appropriate desires, and enthuses the hands for obediential action.