144 Discipling The Diseased Imagination (with Dr. Justin Bailey)

You often hear that we live by the stories we tell about our lives and the lives of others. But how does that actually work? It works through our imaginations, that part of the mind that allows us to see what’s deeper, that ‘something more’ of experience, that reality bigger than the world. 

Dr. Justin Bailey joins the show to talk about how the imagination dwells at the heart of discipleship and spiritual formation, how it helps us go deeper than just believing and behaving, and how we can grow it. 

You can connect more with Dr. Bailey at his website and his Substack. 

Dive deeper in our new book, Landscapes of the Soul: How the Science and Spirituality of Attachment Can Move You into Confident Faith, Courage, and Connection, and learn about our trainings and other resources at embodiedfaith.life.

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Transcript

Discipling The Diseased Imagination

Geoff Holsclaw: How does the imagination affect our spiritual growth and discipleship? Is it possible for the imagination to cause harm in the world and could the imagination help to heal? All the stuff we're going through, that's what we're talking about today. Welcome back to the Attaching to God podcast. I'm Geoff Holsclaw, and here we are exploring our neuroscience Christ-centered Spiritual Formation, and it is as always produced by the Center for Embodied Faith.

Today we have Dr. Justin Bailey, who is the Dean of Chapel and professor of Theology at.university in Sioux Center, Iowa. He is an. He is an ordained minister in the Christian Reform Church and has served as a pastor in several diverse settings. He's been the author of Reimagining Apologetics, and most recently he has written a book called Discipling the Diseased Imagination, spiritual Formation, and the Healing of Our Hearts.

Dr. Bailey, thank you so much for being on with us today.

Justin Bailey: Yeah, it's such a pleasure to be with you.

Geoff Holsclaw: Yeah, I saw this, book on a baker book. Is it Academic Baker whatever, baker, academic catalog. I got an email or something. I was like, gotta talk to, this guy, to this author. How did you, first of all, just personally, how did you get into the work you do?

How did you get called into these things? And then maybe talk about how you've journeyed toward this topic called the imagination.

Justin Bailey: so this origin story I always tell is I was serving as a pastor in the Chicago suburbs and I was working with, primarily

Geoff Holsclaw: Wait, what suburbs? I served in the Chicago suburbs for 18 years. The Northwest suburbs, Buffalo Grove, Arlington

Justin Bailey: wheeling. Yeah, wheeling was where I

Geoff Holsclaw: wheeling. That was like my backyard.

Justin Bailey: so I was a Korean American church, so I served two immigrant congregations. First a Filipino church in the city of Chicago itself.

And then I was at a Korean American church for seven and a half years. Antioch Bible Church right there on Elmhurst, and Hints. Ah, I'd have to go back through my

yeah, that's right. Yeah. This is inside baseball, Chicago, Northwest suburbs inside baseball.

Geoff Holsclaw: yeah, for sure.

Justin Bailey: yeah, but that's great. So I was serving at this church, with.

A large group of young adults, and I had a student who said something to me like, something like when we're in church and I'm listening to the preaching, it's like someone is weaving a spell and I believe, and the world makes sense to me and I know who I am and I know what I'm supposed to do. And then I walk out the door of the church and it's like the spell is broken and that.

Clung to me. it was very much representative of what I was experiencing, I think myself as well as what the students that I was serving, were experiencing. And so that was what sent me back to school. I was, I had an M div from Ted's, and, so I, I went back, to Ted's to get a THM really just to sharpen my ministry instincts.

And I had felt like in general I had been. Trained in a, in one particular way, which was very heavily interested in teaching people to think the right things or thinking the right things and telling people to think the right things. And I felt like that was incomplete and something was missing and, it was the imagination.

I didn't really know what that meant, but I knew that the things that captivated my attention, especially outside the walls of the church, the place where the spell is broken, were the things that. Engaged me at a much deeper level or a much more holistic level and captured my imagination. And so I, think I went back to school, I say in search of stronger spells.

and, and thinking that those spells had something to do with, Talking about God and living the Christian life in a way that took the whole person into account, especially the imagination, which is the faculty of possibility that enables us to inhabit the world and to, feel a sense of what is beautiful, desirable, meaningful, and possible.

And one thing leads to another and I ended up. At Fuller Seminary doing a PhD and, and then yeah, ended up teaching here in, in the Midwest again. And, I always say that when I studied at Ted's, one of my professors, Kevin Van Huser, who has also written quite a bit about the imagination, he said.

You should find a research question to orient your scholarly pursuits. And the question that I found rather quickly was something like, what does it mean to disciple the imagination? And the three books that I've written, reimagining apologetics. your world. And now this book are all about the imagination applied to some domain of Christian faith.

So the first one is about Christian witness. The second one is about culture, and this one is about prayer or discipleship. So that's the origin story of how I became interested in it. And it is my driving, my driving research question, to. To understand how the imagination works and how, it works, especially in the life of faith.

Geoff Holsclaw: That's. That's great. I love that kind of driving orienting question. A lot of overlapping themes. I was at Ted's, I think probably earlier than you also, from 2000 to 2003 I studied, got my MDiv there, and

Justin Bailey: We just missed each other oh four to oh seven. So I, just missed, yeah. Just missed you.

Geoff Holsclaw: Oh, so many over with so much we could talk about, but we will plow forward about the imagination. So you said the imagination is a faculty of the possible. Could you. explain that. I think a lot of times people think of the imagination as the whimsical, maybe connected to art, to connected to, fancy science fiction, things that aren't true.

Justin Bailey: Mm-hmm. 

Geoff Holsclaw: and that's what the imagination is. Not to get off philosophical, but you sound there's cont or other things. But what, is, this faculty of the possible and why is it important for discipleship or spiritual formation?

Justin Bailey: Sure. Yeah. And the imagination is a thing that's pretty hard to define because there's so many things that it can encompass and sometimes it can become this kind of kitchen junk drawer that you throw everything into. so I'll do my best. but whenever I talk about imagination, I don't mean necessarily imaginary things.

I don't mean, Something that's child childish. I do mean something that's childlike, but not necessarily something that's childish, meaning a distraction. I don't mean something that is necessarily escapist, something that we retreat into in order to avoid the ethical or to avoid the demands of this world.

I do mean something much more foundational. it's a faculty of perception that enables us to have a world to put the world together. Because again, that's so broad. I've zeroed in on the fa imaginations of faculty, of possibility. as we live in the world, we have this.

Intuitive sense of what is possible for ourselves. we have a sense of what is possible in our relationship with others. We have a sense of what is possible for our communities. we always live with this. And so our imagination is active at all times. it's active enable, enabling us to interpret the world.

for example, you hear a. In your house late at night, your ima you don't have to start, Ima you don't have to say, ah, I will use my imagination to see what I think that might be. No, your imagination uses you, in, in that moment. it, jumps into over, and for some people it can be very hyperactive and debilitating, to, imagine.

Possible futures. there's something about, those of us who struggle with anxiety imagining possible futures and getting fixated on possible futures. And so it is a faculty that is much more foundational to our experience of the world. It is obviously very active in aesthetic creation, which is, I would say a sort of play we're playing with possibilities in that moment.

But even when we do that, when we. When we play with possibilities or we imagine, someone who can leap over buildings with a single bound, we do that. We detach from the actual in order to more fully live in, the real world. We hope that by reading that fantasy novel, it'll actually help us to be more skillfully engaged in everyday life.

And so even in the more, we might call escapist forms of imagining, I would argue that we are actually. Engaging in that in hopes that we can cope better or live more skillfully in the world as we find it.

Geoff Holsclaw: So it's not just escapists, it's not just connected to entertainment. I like that. And it's, Yeah, it's the world of the possible. So in some like cognitive neuroscience, neuroscience Research fields, they talk about how our minds are not reactive, but anticipatory or they're predictive.

so instead of I don't react to the environment, I'm always creating mental models of what the environment in its changes. So that sound, I create a prediction that sound is an intruder or the sound is my dog trying to get out 'cause he has to pee in the middle of the night, or that threat and I'm creating these predictions or anticipations.

Is that kind of the same use that you're thinking of

Justin Bailey: Yeah, that, that's definitely a.

Geoff Holsclaw: or is that different?

Justin Bailey: No, that's definitely a part of it. that's a gloss on it. It's, a way of saying, whether we, describe it using neuroscientific terms or, we could describe it theologically as well, in terms of imagining a future without God or imagining a future with God, where God is present and walking with me.

but what we call the imagination is the thing that is active, the faculty that's active, that enables us. To live in time really, and to put together, to narrate, for example, things that have happened in the past together with things that are happening in the present in order to build a model of what might happen in the future.

so we're using our imagination in that sense as well. We are these storied creatures that, inhabit all sorts of stories that we're told. By our culture that we tell ourselves, that our communities tell us. And that's that idea of, Charles Taylor's idea of a social imaginary, which was, something he talked about a lot in a secular age, which is the way that we as communities, imagine a world together and what is possible for our, interactions with the world and with each other.

Geoff Holsclaw: You used the word faculty a couple times and not to go down that rabbit hole, but what are like some other faculties? if you say like a faculty of our mind, if we have an imagination, what would be some other examples? Just so people can be like, oh yeah, this is what he's talking

Justin Bailey: Yeah, so you might in place, the imagination u usually with intellect. That's the other one that it gets placed by. And, George McDonald has this place where he talks about the imagination as the architect and the intellect as the workman. Or if you, if, you're. Listeners have, encountered Ian Mcg gilchrist, all, you have the right hemisphere oriented, holistic way of apprehending the world.

And then you have the left hemisphere oriented, a more analytical, way of apprehending the world. And Again, none of these things are perfect, these sort of labels and categories that we place on things, but I am talking about a, more holistic way of interacting with the world that is not necessarily as analytical, as you might think of when you say the intellect.

And so when we talk, for example, in my first book, this idea of re-imagining apologetics. Is in a kind of apologetics that takes the imagination seriously. And that starts with our aesthetic experience of the world rather than the way that we often think of apologetics really for the last 150 to 200 years, which starts with ideas and is very interested in the analytical.

reasons for belief, rather than maybe more existential, more, affective or aesthetic reasons for, belief.

Geoff Holsclaw: Great. All right. So that's been laying the groundwork, but why you make a strong claim that the imagination might be the heart of discipleship. Could you ex explain why is that? Why do you think that this is the heart? It leads to the heart and is the heart of, discipleship.

Justin Bailey: Yeah, so part of it is rooted in the sense of the sort of creatures that we are as human beings. I've already mentioned that we are storied creatures and when. God gives us scripture, he gives it to us in this, all sorts of genres which require a certain amount of imaginative dexterity in order to rightly interpret the world.

So God doesn't give us, a PowerPoint with bullet points. Here are 501 facts about God. God narrates, his self revelation and the story, the story of creation and fall and redemption and restoration. The story of Israel, the story of Jesus. So that in those stories we would find ourselves, that we would find God and we would, know who we are and know how we're meant to be living.

that famous quote by Alistair McIntyre that you can't know what you're supposed to do until, what sort of story am I living in? if that's the case, That we are these storied creatures that can't make sense of our lives and can't make sense of the world without stories. And if God has given us the true story, we might say, of the world in scripture, then that requires imagination to be able to inhabit that rightly.

and so that's, when I say the imagination is, at the heart of discipleship, it has a lot to do with saying. Okay, what are the ways that we already are shaped to interpret the world, perhaps with cynicism or with fear or with despair? And what would it look like for us to go on a journey with Jesus so that we now begin to interpret the world with faith and with love and with hope rather than our?

Native, inclination to interpret the world or to see the world through a filter of, cynicism and, fear and despair. And a lot of that has to do with the stories that we are already inhabiting, the stories we've been told, the stories we're telling ourselves, in our sense of what's possible because of those stories, for ourselves and for the communities we live in.

Geoff Holsclaw: All right. I'm gonna take a hard right. Turn a little bit. I like this interpreting. I like the stories, but as I'm also thinking of these really ancient spiritual information distinctions about contemplating God. So you can contemplate the God in the world of creation, the things and perceive or experience directly.

But then there's like the next level of contemplating God, which is, and it's called different things, the invisible,

 or the ideas, or just contemplating through the intellect that, and that's really the idea, is to see God as the deeper reality behind all the things, as the deeper causes behind and before, all the things.

And so would that kind of contemplation, is that also using this faculty, the imagination to be see the story beyond just the immediate events, to see the meaning that's deeper than just the cause and effect that I see and experience? Or is, or am I going off track there?

Justin Bailey: Now the imagination help us see like the deeper realities? You talked about enchantments and casting spells, right? So that's like an there's this kind of going deeper through all the things that we immediately experience. I

Yeah. So I'm, I'm hesitating because. I'm getting hung up on the philosophical terms, but, and, how best to, frame it and react to that. But if the question is, does the imagination enable us to apprehend the deeper realities, then I think the answer is yes. and part of that is, that sense of the, again, the way in which God reveals himself to us and the way in which reality reveals itself to us.

I'm, thinking of, communion. I'm thinking of the Eucharist, and, how, I, just preached on Sunday and I always say after I preach, I love the fact that at my church we have communion. And I love it because as a preacher, I always just feel like whatever I say is inadequate, as I do my best to write eloquently and to speak clearly and in a well organized manner.

And then there's just so much solace to me as a preacher to get to say. body and the blood of Christ, and that this is a mystery that we will participate in bodily and imaginatively, that will ha, that has an excessive meaning that I can't describe in the sermon that I just gave. Now the sermon is important, right?

If there was no sermon, then, there wouldn't necessarily be content to attach to this thing that we're doing, but. The central, for, many Christians, the central act of Christian worship is this very embodied and imaginative, participatory thing. which again, we think gets at the very heart of reality itself.

or, one of the reasons why art and music, moves us so much. is because there's something that's happening there that is holistic and embodied and participatory. it's not non-intellectual. It's not, there is things that you can say about it. And yet it transcends our ability to, name it and, to describe it.

And, I think part of my fascination with the imagination and why I say that the danger with me is it always becomes like this, mysterious, amorphous thing. this panacea for all of the problems that it is because it offers this much more. both grounded and holistic way of talking about the way that we actually apprehend the world, the, way we actually live in the world and glean meaning and, from the world.

And so that's why I say that, the idea of contemplation when you, bring up contemplation, the idea of, gazing at the world or the idea of having posture of intentionality towards the world, which is contemplative, which is seeking to receive. From that sort of abundance, that plenitude of meaning that is there.

I think that's something that happens. primarily imaginatively. It's an imaginative and aesthetic kind of engagement. and I'm just resisting, the tendency that I've had, at least in the traditions I've been raised in, to enclose that in. Propositional descriptions, for example. and so maybe that's

Geoff Holsclaw: Sure.

Justin Bailey: a fair view of the intellect, but that's the sparring partner that I'm working with.

Geoff Holsclaw: Sure. Good. Alright, sorry about that.

Justin Bailey: No, that's okay. No, it's good. You made me think, you made me think for a little bit. Yeah.

Geoff Holsclaw: more, let's get more practical brass tacks and things. You talk about training the imagination or transfiguring the imagination, but also that our imagination is diseased. Could you talk about this? How is it that our imagination might be diseased?

And then how, might we be able to train it with the spirit?

Justin Bailey: Yeah, I think in probably my first two books, I operated with a pretty positive view of the imagination, in part because I'm responding or reacting to traditions I've been raised in that had a bit more negative view of the imagination. And so I'm trying to really write about a redeemed imagination in a lot of ways in both of my first two books about the imagination.

I'm a little bit older now, than I was when I wrote my first, my first two books. And, as time goes on, maybe I become more pessimistic or I, reckon a bit more with, the failure, of discipleship. In my own life, also in communities I've been a part of and, Christianity in, north America more broadly.

And so this book is in some ways written out of a sense of lament, out of a reckoning with. The ways in which our imaginations have become diseased. That term, the diseased imagination is a term from Willie Jennings, who wrote a book called The Christian Imagination is just stunning, honestly stunning and devastating in which he writes about how Christian communities imagined things like race-based chattel slavery, in order to justify, They're conquest and, a book called The Christian Imagination that sort of goes into this, some of, the worst things that, that Christian communities have imagined. Is something I had to really reckon with, in my celebration of the imagination. But I appreciated the fact that, and he points this out in his book as well, that to say that the imagination, is diseased, suggests that its structure is good.

That something foreign has taken a captive, and it also suggests that there is a possibility of healing, right? What has been imagined can be reimagined and, the possibilities that have been foreclosed can be opened up again. And so this book is in some ways, Me trying to reckon with, sin, and with evil and the way that it infects the imagination.

And it's also a way of trying to reckon with the way that our practices, whereby we train the imagination themselves might be dangerous and might be deforming us. it's been very. A popular, in recent times, especially for in, in the spiritual formation movement, to point to all of these great practices that we have.

and, this is what I was taught as well, that the solution is to proclaim the gospel and to prescribe practices, habits and spiritual disciplines and, And that's, I think that's right. And somebody interviewed me a little while ago and they said, in every chapter you basically come along to the end and you give us the gospel and you give us some practices.

And I said, oh, you're right. I do that, don't I? but hopefully by taking the long way around to get back to them, rather than starting with them and having a bit more of a realistic picture of our situation, which is not that we are these ultra marathon athletes, training for. To be the most self optimized, fantastic people, but that we are more like accident. We've been in an accident and we are relearning how to walk again. And both of those require training, but it really makes a big difference. Which one? You, how you imagine a spiritual formation, whether you imagine spiritual formation more as this process of self-op optimization to be the best you, best possible self, or whether you imagine it as well actually.

it's healing. It's not just training, it's healing. And, those two things have to be held together.

Geoff Holsclaw: So about that, the disease, 'cause some people would say, the, that we shouldn't use the imagination in our spiritual life that, and we can get to imaginative prayer just in a second, but, like idolatry is trying to come up with an image of God and. And then making it and then worshiping it.

And God has always been against that. And so if God is invisible, then we shouldn't use our imaginations. We shouldn't have pictures. and We've come across some people who are very against imagination, especially for like prayer and things like that. So what would you say to someone who's coming out of that or they know somebody, who really feels strongly that we, scripture speaks the truth and then we need to, obey it.

We need to believe and behave, what might you say?

Justin Bailey: I have a lot of, sensitivity to that because that's how I grew up. I grew up reading the King James version of the Bible, which talks about every time it mentions the imagination, it mentions it in a negative sense. And for the translators of the KJV, they used imagination for basically reasoning gone awry.

and it was pointed out to me at some point that. If there are vain imaginations, then there are virtuous imaginations. And by taking, by being really worried about idolatry, being really worried about, vain imaginings, you're taking the imagination really seriously, actually. And if you're gonna take the imagination really seriously and consider it to be a created thing that God has given to us that is misdirected, that has been directed towards idolatry and towards injustice, then you have to think about what would it, what does it mean that Jesus, That Jesus came and lived and died and rose again, ascended to heaven, sent the Holy Spirit. And what does that do for our vain imaginings, if anything? take the cross, for example. the cross itself is one of the worst things that humans have ever imagined. it is this dehumanizing, degrading form of, torture and death.

And yet what has happened because of Christ is that this dehumanizing, Symbol has been reimagined as life and hope and peace, and we put it on our gravestones and hope that will make some difference for those, who lie buried there. So that's an example of something that is, that has a vain imagining, a horrible thing that in the hands of God has been reimagined, for, life and for salvation.

another thing I'd say is. I'm also in a reformed tradition that has been quite suspicious about, images, especially images of the divine. And so I'm also, quite sensitive, sensitive to that. but the two things that I'd say is first of all is that even if you're. Only going to work with scripture, with what God has given you.

You have to consider the fact that scripture is given to us in, lots of different imaginative genres which require you to develop some sophistication. The Book of Revelation, for example, or the Book of Song of Solomon, it requires you to develop some sort of imaginative dexterity because we are not just given, again, bullet points of things to believe about God. and then, there is one more point that I was gonna bring up, but it's, alluding me at the moment. Yes. I'll just leave it at

Geoff Holsclaw: scripture, I was just thinking like every. Every use of the parables that Jesus

Justin Bailey: That's right. Yeah.

Geoff Holsclaw: to spark our imagination. The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed. Not only do you have to imagine a mustard seed, but then you have to figure out, what is the connection between that and the kingdom?

Or there were two brothers, and one asked for is an inheritance. It's a story and you have to imagine the far away country and coming back and, Putting yourself in their position, putting yourself imaginatively, placing yourself well. So that could lead us to this other topic then.

what about, imaginative prayer? You talk about, some of the research around vineyard churches and maybe Ignatian imaginative prayer. Could you go through that, especially some of the scientific findings about imaginative prayer?

Justin Bailey: Yeah, so it's based on this wonderful work by Tanya Luhrman, who is a Stanford anthropologist, and she embedded herself in. A vineyard community. She was very interested in this question of people who claim that God speaks to them, whether that is an audible voice or whether that is just some kind of sensibility.

and so what, she was interested in doing is studying whether the 'cause she said, it seems to me that these people are engaged in some sort of imaginative training so that they begin to experience. Their own thought. This is from her anthropologist's perspective. They experience their own thoughts as God's words to them.

And, she's very open to the fact that this is actually, she's not a believer, at least not the beginning of the book. and she is very open to the fact that this is, It's possible that God is actually communicating with people in this sense, and she's very interested in seeing, okay, is it possible to train a person's ability to hear from God?

And, so one of the experiments that they ran is they. they had three different groups and the first group was given, good lectures by Luke, Timothy Johnson, on the gospel of, the Gospel of Luke, I think, or the Gospel of Mark. And they enjoyed it, but it didn't. It didn't move the needle at all.

Like hearing good lectures on scripture didn't move the needle at all. When it came to people's self-reported sense of God's presence, God's activity in the world. another group was given, centering prayer exercises. So pink noise, and encouraged to meditate in that sense.

And that also didn't, didn't seem to move the needle that much. It was also very difficult, that kind of prayer, contemplative prayer. prayer, mindless, that kind of prayer is, quite difficult for ordinary people at least. And then the third kind of prayer was Ignatian prayer, where you're imagining yourself in a gospel scene.

So you're reading the gospel and you're thinking of yourself as part of the crowd. You're thinking, what, do the, What sounds do you hear? What are the smells in the air? And you're imaginatively engaging all your senses in order to inhabit, the scene. This is called composition of place in the Ignatian method.

And what they found is that people who engaged in that practice for a certain amount of time regularly, they started to report much more vivid experiences with God, of God's presence. God's activity. In their heart around them, they were much more likely to report seeing God's activity in the world.

And it was this very fascinating, finding that if we actually engage our imaginations in prayer, that actually can lead to this richer and fuller, appro, appreciation of the world and, perhaps even, a greater propensity to, to hear or at least believe that we are hearing, from God.

Geoff Holsclaw: That, yeah, that's such a great kind of. Apologetic for Ignatian spirituality, or not just that, but the imaginative prayer that, 'cause you talk about, healing the diseased imagination. And you, we always talk about on this podcast in our trainings, you only got where you are in community and you can only get out of where you are in community, whatever it might be.

And I think the same thing is maybe true of the imagination, is it's projecting you have a world that you believe to be true. and you can only see the world differently if you actively train your. Your imagination differently. And that's where the living with Jesus in your imagination and then getting into those stories is so important.

for all sorts of reasons we could peel that, the science around that, but yeah. But this is enough for now. is there one last thing that you'd like to share Just about, the imagination or final encouragement or maybe a practice, a simple thing that people could do to incorporate some of these things

Justin Bailey: Yeah, I've remembered the thought that I lost a little while ago related to, yeah, the, sense of the, Protestant, I think avoidance of imagination. Katie Cressler makes this argument that in their attempt to shield Protestants in our attempt to shield ourselves from these imaginative inputs have lost imaginative sophistication or aesthetic sophistication at least, which has made us some, in some ways more susceptible to other kinds of idolatry.

whether you have that in celebrity Christianity, celebrity preachers, and that. the, auditory has taken on this increased, this increased power because of the refusal of the visual. So that was, the thought that I had. final thought would be just that, this book really is about the imagin.

It started out at least as a book about imagination and prayer about the eyes of the. Which is what I call the imagination and the cries of the heart, which, is prayer. And, I'm really, although, we just talked about that study, about imaginative prayer, that's not the fundamental thing that I'm really writing about.

If people practice imaginative prayer, I, hope that people will, be willing to open themselves up to trying that. Some people might not be comfortable with it, but I'm trying to point out the fact that all prayer is imaginative, especially Christian prayer, which is oriented to the God who. You ca you do not see, who is not physically present with us.

And so this requires us, to use our imagination. And so as we pray and we always pray imaginatively and and as we pray, we find in prayer the possibility the. Meeting someone who is not ourselves and someone who can tell us things that we could never tell ourselves. And that ultimately is where I think is the hope for the healing of the imagination is encounters with holiness.

that we have to have, encounters with holiness in order to, to heal the diseased imagination.

Geoff Holsclaw: thank you for taking the time to, write this book, to think deep thoughts about the imagination and to jump on and be with us today. we really appreciate it. We've been talking to Dr. Justin Bailey of Dort University. can people find you online or how can people follow what you're doing?

Justin Bailey: Yeah, I have a website, p justin.com. P as in professor or pastor, I think it was the pastor when I had the website way back in the day. and then, I also have a substack called Stronger Spells, which I've recently moved over to Substack from somewhere else, so there's only a few posts there, but there, there should be more as time goes on.

So that's probably the best place, one of those two places.

Geoff Holsclaw: Excellent, and we'll get those into the show notes. thank you so much. It's been just a delight connecting with you and learning more about this.

Justin Bailey: Yeah. Thanks so much, Geoff. It's been a pleasure. I.