So sorry, everyone! Things have been a bit quiet around here. End of school+final exams+thirty page theses+summer break+camps really took over my life a bit there. So here's a quick little essay on dreams I wrote for on of my omnibus final exams. It's rather rough, as I haven't edited it, but hopefully it's ok. Something to freshen up the blob. New posts hopefully coming soon. :)
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German psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud first published The Interpretation of Dreams in 1899. The main premise of his work is that dreams are far from meaningless; rather, “The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind.” In the view of the more modern intellectual community, however, dreams simply arise from physiological causes and are consequently meaningless. But despite what progressivism says about the idea of “newer therefore better,” Freud was actually closer to the truth than these modern intellectuals. Dreams have a twofold purpose: one, to reveal things about ourselves, and two, to reveal things about God and his will for our lives.
In the first place, dreams are useful for self-examination. In The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud says, “It is only after seeing a man as his unconscious, revealed by his dreams, presented to us that we shall understand him fully.” Freud believed that when a man was sleeping, his natural defenses were lowered and his true nature could be more readily discerned. And while it is true that some dreams are nonsense, plain and simple, oftentimes dreams (especially recurring ones) give us glimpses into ourselves. For example, between the ages of eight and eleven, I had a recurring dream in which I was at a playground fighting some other children around my age. The twist here was that, instead of pretend weapons, we had lightsabers and knives. The dream ended when I dueled one of the kids and got decapitated. Every time, without fail, I lost my head. At first glance, this seems like one of those nonsensical dreams. But, after examining it, I discovered what caused it. The day before I had the dream for the first time, I was at a playground with a group of other homeschooled children and we got into a water fight. My mom was not very happy with this, and pulled me aside and scolded me about it. Comparing these two situations made me realize how much I abhor being rebuked. I hate it so much, in fact, that it was comparable in my eight-year-old mind to being decapitated. My dream showed that I desire the approval of others, especially those in authority. Freud was quite right when he said that dreams are “simply and undisguisedly realizations of wishes.”
Secondly, dreams are a vehicle through which God speaks to humans. The Bible is full of stories in which a man receives a dream predicting the future. As the book of Job says:
For God speaks in one way,
and in two, though man does not perceive it.
In a dream, in a vision of the night,
when deep sleep falls on men,
while they slumber in their beds,
then he opens the ears of men
and terrifies them with warnings,
that he may turn man aside from his deed
and conceal pride from a man;
he keeps back his soul from the pit,
his life from perishing by the sword. (Job 33:14-18)
These dreams are not limited to believers, either. King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon received two prophetic dreams in Daniel 2 and 4, respectively. The second dream, in particular, was a warning to Nebuchadnezzar that he was going to lose his kingdom and be driven out from mankind, and it was the fulfillment of this dream that ultimately brought Nebuchadnezzar to God. Also, in the New Testament, Paul dreams of a Macedonian man begging him to come to his people and share the Gospel. Paul’s obedience to this dream brought the Gospel to Europe, and from there (arguably) to the ends of the earth.
One of the deuteragonists of C.S. Lewis’ conclusion to his Space Trilogy, That Hideous Strength, is a woman who receives prophetic dreams: Jane Studdock. Over the course of the novel, realizes that she has been given the “gift” of clairvoyance, and that this gift came from Maleldil, or God. Her dreams help those at Logres overcome N.I.C.E. Nowadays, while it is uncommon for people to receive prophetic dreams, God does nevertheless still speak to people through them. In fact, God uses dreams to call Christians to ministry, much like he did with Paul.
Far from meaningless products of physiological stimulation, dreams are mirrors into the human psyche and windows into the will of God. They should not be ignored. In the words of Hamlet,
"To die, to sleep,
To sleep, perchance to Dream; Aye, there's the rub,
For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause."
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