Creativity is a subject on the rise in our culture. Many reasons could be noted. One is we cannot predict where the world will be in a year, which has made adaptability mandatory. Adaptability is essentially creative living. I am excited about this and find it refreshing. In Christianity, creativity has been largely disregarded or seen as unimportant. Some may have argued that this isn’t the case but for my context it was never celebrated or spoken of in a way that would lead people to see creativity as a way of serving God in His mission.
We are all – whether saved or not – made in the image and likeness of God. This God, in whose image we are made, is a creator. He takes the non-physical and non-existent and makes something amazing like the sunrise or as crazy as a peacock. Let’s be honest, I’m not sure any of us would have imagined a peacock. One of the many ways we bear the image of God is when we take a non-physical reality like an idea, and bring it into the material world. This is to create. This is one way we as humans contribute to reality. This happens when someone starts a business, designs landscaping, paints a picture, dances, designs blueprints, develops the technology needed to design said blueprints, acts, sings, writes music, discovers that this atom together with that atom makes something new, improves upon socio-economic policies, arranges flowers… It happens in all areas of life.
Joining God in His mission to redeem people and the cosmos itself can happen through the use of creativity. We do not grow spiritually by increasing the spiritual activities we are already doing, but by allowing Jesus and His kingdom to affect each area of our lives – even those areas we might think of as secular. This includes creativity. Now what I do not mean is that every creative thing christians do must have cheesy, christian overtones or direct christian implications. God help us! I’m talking about learning how to do all things for the glory of God.
When we take non-physical ideas and bring them into a material reality we are expressing both the image of God and our limitations as humans. The collective human capacity to create seems endless and reflects the nature of God while simultaneously revealing we are not God: what we create has limits and inevitably comes to an end. The greatest painting still has borders. The greatest architecture, overtime, still comes to ruins.
In one aspect, this is the beginning of the gospel: you were created with the specific and wonderful calling to be the image bearers of Almighty God while at the same moment showing our frailty and limits. This can be celebrated and proclaimed in the arts, revealing the gloriously good intent of God in creating human beings to be His image bearers, while also being a testimony to the fact something in the world disintegrates and destroys and results in death. This is the Garden of Eden played out each time we create.
Another aspect of creativity that joins the mission of God in the earth is to help people see and hear what they otherwise could not. A beautiful painting of a landscape with mountains, fields, animals, and a river on a little 3 foot by 5 foot canvas can bring someone to a standstill in awe. They are in awe at a painting someone created, of a landscape God has created, but could not see the awesomeness in the mountains, the deer, the field, or the river. The painting helped them to see the glory of God that they could not see.
Many of you may know of Christopher Hitchens. He was an atheist who was very vocal and debated many christians throughout the last two decades. What you may not know is that his brother Peter was as militantly atheist as his brother. Burning his bible in college, becoming a Marxist, and publicly bashing Jesus and Christians any chance he could get. Peter, however, became a Christian, even debating his own brother on the existence of God. When asked what convinced the intelligent journalist of Christianity, he had the most surprising answer: a painting. He found himself staring at a five-hundred year old painting of a group of people standing before Christ. The artist had drawn all the people naked. Peter remarked that it stood out to him because they had no clothes or style to date them. It could have been anyone. That began him thinking about God again. Later at his wedding, which his wife wanted in a church, he heard the poetry of the marriage prayer and blessing and he felt again what he had felt looking at the painting, which eventually led to his own conversion. God used the creativity of a painting and a poem to help an atheist see what he could not otherwise see.