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Recently, in the St. Martin’s mailroom, I came across a United States Post Office stamp catalog. Out of curiosity, I picked it up, and on the catalog’s front cover I was delighted to see a beautiful stamp — Mr. Rogers affectionately holding puppet King Friday XIII. Evidently, this stamp of Mr. Rogers was selected by popular vote to commemorate the U.S. Postal Service’s 250th anniversary.
This reminded me of something I love about Mr. Rogers — his imagination. If you ever watched “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” you know he created an imaginary world to teach children valuable lessons. His neighborhood of make-believe characters — populated by the likes of King Friday XIII, Queen Sara Saturday, Daniel Striped Tiger, Lady Aberlin and others, resonated with young children in ways that formal instruction couldn’t. But while his world was imaginary, it was not escapist.
Rogers used imagination to help children name realities that were very real: fear, loneliness, jealousy, death, friendship, courage, forgiveness and love.
Mr. Rogers’ imaginary world offers Christians an important theological insight. We can use our imagination as an instrument for instruction, but also as a portal through which to perceive new redemptive realities. This is consistent with what we find in Scripture. The parables, for instance, which are often fictional stories, invite us into imaginary narratives and teach us something profound about God and His kingdom. Likewise, Scripture continually calls us to imagine a reality not yet fully visible (2 Corinthians 5:7).
Hebrews tells us that “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1) Paul similarly prays that Christians might have “the eyes of your hearts enlightened.” (Ephesians 1:18) Biblical faith requires more than intellectual assent or agreement to a formal doctrinal position. It invites us to see the world through God’s eyes.
The Christian imagination therefore does not invent an alternative to reality; it invites us to have eyes of faith and see God’s deeper reality within the world we inhabit. John imagines a new Jerusalem in which God dwells with humanity and “wipes away every tear.” (Revelation 21:1–4) Our imagination — inhabiting a new way of seeing — begins before we participate in God’s renewal of the world. Before we put the Christian virtues into action and begin to serve missionally, we imagine what God’s renewal might look like.
J.R.R. Tolkien described imagination as a means of recovering a “clear view” of reality[1] and through his myth and storytelling (see “The Lord of the Rings”), Tolkien famously helped readers understand the narrative ark of the Gospel in what he labeled a “eucatastrophe” — the sudden turn from despair toward joy.
This is where Rogers can become a surprisingly helpful Christian teacher. He did not merely tell children what to believe about being a good neighbor. He created a world where children could practice imagining themselves as good neighbors. Christians can do the same.
[1] J.R.R. Tolkien, “On Fairy Stories,” in “The Tolkien Reader,” pp. 85-86.
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