150: Faith is Not Magical Thinking

I think every parent has this experience where they watch their child play in imagination and they get a smile across their face.

I know the first time I saw my son secure a towel to his back and ran around the house and jumped off the ottoman, and I remember a smile curving up on my lips and I was trying to hide it as my daughter was wearing high heels pretending she was a mother pushing a little stroller pretending and imagining she was a mother herself.

I remember watching with delight as my oldest made cookies in the kitchen and pretended she was on the Rachael Ray Show.

Children just have this really beautiful gift during childhood and that is the magical place of imagination. What a beautiful and engaging resource! It really is a resource that children tap into that allows them to develop cognitively, socially, emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually.

Imagination helps them to mature. Imagination is a necessary component in learning about oneself. Now as children grow if they are nurtured in Truth, which means they are taught about Honesty, Responsibility, and Humility. Then they will learn where their responsibilities lie. They can use that developed imagination to assist them in fulfilling those responsibilities. They will learn to utilize imagination to foster creativity and resourcefulness, so in other words, their imaginations become an asset to them.

On the other hand, if a child grows, - and you may be one of these children - and is not nurtured in Truth, they don't learn about Honesty, they don't learn to be Responsible and they are not Humble. Then they will not learn where their responsibilities lie. So this adult - who is a child in this grown body - will use magical thinking to hide their irresponsible behavior. This magical thinking becomes an accomplice in the destruction of a human soul.

So magical thinking is a pattern of thought that does not include personal responsibility. Let me give you an example, it would be like deciding you would like to get a promotion simply because you want a promotion and then demonstrating a pattern of coming to work late. Magical thinking would include setting a goal to lose twenty pounds and then never exercising and maintaining the same high caloric diet. Magical thinking denies personal responsibility.

As I lay out magical thinking in this podcast, be thinking about examples in your own life where you are magically thinking a solution will just up and land in your lap. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.