Think About These Things

By Eric Stiller

“Finally, sisters and brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” Philippians 4:8

In the movie Stranger Than Fiction, Will Farrell portrays an IRS agent named Harold Crick, who one morning hears inside his head the voice of an English woman narrating the story of his life. After the initial shock, he becomes accustomed to it – until the day she announces his imminent death. “What to do?” Harold wonders. A psychiatrist suggests medication. But Harold is certain he isn’t crazy. So he visits a literary expert who matter-of-factly explains, “The first thing we have to do is figure out what kind of story you’re in.”

The message is simple yet profound: We can’t know how to live unless we know what kind of story we’re in. We might nobly profess agnosticism about ultimate reality, but our lives will ultimately be shaped by some vision of reality, some story about “how things are.”

In Philippians 4:8, the apostle Paul encourages us to ponder the story in which we find ourselves, that we might better live within that story. For the qualities he commends are doing exactly that: telling a story.

We can see the underlying story, first, by noticing that Paul is not inviting us to consider abstract principles such as truth, honor, justice, or loveliness. He says, “Whatever is true, honorable, just, or lovely.” The “whatever” points beyond a concept to a concrete reality. It could be the honor of this unhoused person, the loveliness of that Japanese maple, or the truth of my imminent death. When Paul says, “think about these things,” it’s the things themselves we are called to consider.

Second, the word “think” was often used for economic calculation (“reckoning” your bill at the market) or philosophical reasoning. But here Paul employs it to speak of a kind of contemplation, even imagination (as when he says “imagine no evil” in 1 Corinthians 13:5). Imagination is related to reason, but there is a crucial difference. Reason takes things apart in order to analyze them. But the imagination sees things as a whole and assigns meaning to them. For instance, we cannot reason about the truth of a statement like “the kingdom of God is at hand” unless we can imagine what “the kingdom” means.

“Think about these things” therefore indicates something closer to “contemplate what kind of story you’re in by pondering the things that give this story meaning.” Such contemplation is vital in our modern Western world, because the things that mean so much to us – especially justice and the honor and dignity of every human being – are difficult, if not impossible, to square with the stories that shape our social imagination. What do honor and dignity mean if humans are simply a bag of chemicals? What does justice mean if this world is merely the result of a mindless, unguided, natural process?

An entirely secular story – in which human flourishing originates and finds its fulfillment solely within this natural world – often fails to acknowledge the longings that have no answer in this world alone. The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein famously said, “A picture held us captive.” We are all caught in a picture of reality that eclipses any world beyond this world. But the other world keeps creeping in no matter how much we try to keep it out. No spell has ever enchanted us more powerfully, or more cruelly, than the idea that a purely natural world can satisfy our supernatural longings.

The tragic irony is that it is precisely this world which suffers for it, because we reduce God’s creation to a tool to be manipulated in the service of a project that equates endless optimization with rest, therapeutic wellness with peace, consumeristic free-choice with contentment, and self-defined authenticity with holiness.

Contemplating “these things” is one of the strongest possible ways of breaking the spell. We are in desperate need of what J.R.R. Tolkien called Recovery. “We need… to clean our windows; so that the things seen clearly may be freed from the drab blur of triteness or familiarity – from possessiveness.” It’s a matter of learning, or rather re-learning, to see the things of this world “as we were meant to see them.”

One way of “cleaning our windows” is through art, poetry, and literature. That may sound counterintuitive. If Paul is encouraging us to ponder the things of this world, to see them as they are and order our lives accordingly, why would we give our attention to a fictional world?

Because entering other worlds – through art, poetry, or stories – has the potential to wake us up to the reality of this world. G.K. Chesterton wrote that fairy tales “make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run with water.”

In other words, well-crafted stories about other worlds wake us up to the forgotten story of this world in which things like truth, honor, justice, and beauty are real. They remind us that this unhoused person is not a nuisance but a bearer of God’s image, that the beauty of that Japanese maple is not merely a chemical reaction in our brain but a transcendent unveiling, that my imminent death is not just the cessation of energy but a harbinger of eternity.

And the best-crafted tales, whether intentionally or not, point us to the forgotten story of a world that was created good, fell under a curse, but is being redeemed by a great king who came from a far country disguised as a lowly peasant, in order that the loyalty of those who follow him might be due not to the demands of a tyrant, nor the blandishments of a trickster, but because he is the embodiment of truth, honor, justice, purity, and beauty.

In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, C.S. Lewis tells the story of a little girl named Lucy, who volunteers to help some friends in need of rescue by recovering a spell from a magician’s book. While searching through the book, she comes across a spell “for the refreshment of the spirit.” It’s simply a series of pictures which are more like a story than anything else. Not more than a few pages in, “she was living in the story as if it were real, and all the pictures were real too.” The pictures told Lucy “the loveliest story I’ve ever read or ever shall read in my whole life.” But because this was a magic book, she forgot the story as soon as it was over. “And ever since that day what Lucy means by a good story is a story which reminds her of the forgotten story in the Magician’s Book.”

We all tend to forget the true story of our world and be taken captive by other pictures that tell us false stories. Contemplating not just “these things” but the story pictured by those things awakens us to the forgotten, but real, story behind it all. Pictures don’t only take us captive. The right picture can set us free.

Eric Stiller is Pastor of Central West End Church.

Think About These Things

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