It is very difficult to define a culture by a particular worldview. Each individual has a worldview that is slightly different, being shaped by their own personal experience. I would call the individual’s worldview a mindset, using worldview then to refer to the cultural dynamic. A worldview is a set of assumption about realities and values that govern us and the world in which we live.
It is here that I bring up a man named Nietzsche. He was a philosopher at the turn of twentieth century, whose thoughts still affect the western culture I live in. To try to sum up any “thinker” in a sentence or two is in danger of misrepresentation or over simplification, but knowing that if I gave more than that to express my point, I will most likely bore you.
Nietzsche believed that we could not know what is real or true, because we could not escape our own minds. His view was that everything we see or try to think about, we taunt because we use our own minds. This led him to teach that the only thing then that mattered was what he called the “will to power.” In other words, truth is not important, you cannot really know it, and therefore our lives are really about what we desire and making sure we get it. My point in bringing him up in this context is that when our desires are the most important or are ‘governing’ our lives this leads to individualism. Each person doing whatever it is they desire. Sounds good until a small group of men desire to rule the known world, and eliminate the weak. We know them by the name of Nazi’s. Nietzsche’s philosophy then culminates in the worship of self-expression. For example, He viewed Jesus’ claim to ‘deny yourself’ as oppressive and called it a ‘slave morality’ because what really mattered was self-expression.
Here is my point: Nietzsche has affected the western culture more than we realize. This is evident in that it is common practice for a person’s desire to be their governing reality, the challenge of that assumption seems to be deeply offensive to our culture, expressing one’s self is viewed as a common path to fulfillment, individuality or being unique is one of the highest values of the day, and because of the predominance of the individual will, there is a deep hunger for community which has been one of the ‘voids’ Nietzscheism creates. This worldview affects the way we view creativity. Is self-expression the way to fulfillment or is something more transcendent and eternal happening when we create?
Self-expression is an attempt of human beings to find meaning and fulfillment. By meaning, I mean continuity. That what comes from a person continues to point to something else besides what it is. So a painting has meaning in that it is more than a mixture of colors on a canvas. People enjoy the arts precisely because it’s more than that. It moves us. It is meaningful. By fulfillment, I mean that in our existence we were intended for something. Finding that ‘something’ and fitting into it, like we were made for it, is fulfillment.
Creativity is the process of original ideas that have value. Creativity is an expression. Of what is the question. Creative science brought us the possibility of nuclear energy. Other people’s creativity took that and made a bomb. Self-expression is a public or communal reality. Expression has implications on others. It is not the ‘expressing’ that matters but what is expressed and the value and implications it has on one’s self and others.
Self-expression as a way of defining ‘who we are’ leaves us to defining ourselves only in terms of what we do. A woman paints so she is a painter. This language is common. A painter does more in his or her life than only painting. Is she more than a painter? What if she loses the ability to paint and can longer paint? Who is she then? Attempting to define who you are through how you express yourself is an insufficient means of definition. I am not saying that there is no thing as self-expression, nor am I contending that it has no value. What I am saying is that this is where Jesus and His Kingdom brings clarification.
You are a creation of God, intended by Him to bear His image, His likeness, and to bring His order to bear on creation itself (dominion). Imagination, ideas, inspirations, desires, and actions (not an exhaustive list) all are ways we were designed to carry out this intentional, meaningful, and fulfilling calling. However, this was to be done in the context of relationship with God. The self, away from God and His kingdom, can have degrees of fulfillment but cannot find the eternal, satisfying degree that Jesus meant when He said, “I come that you may have life, and that you may have it more abundantly.” With all the self-expression one may have, there is no context for ultimate fulfillment away from intimate, personal relationship with God.
Every person expresses themselves. Every person needs God and His kingdom to form them and every person needs to find creative ways to express themselves. The person in relationship with God and engaging with God in the formation of their souls, while creatively expressing this Christ-forming soul, will find joy, good, meaning, fulfillment, passion, like never before. God is the most creative soul. It is precisely His nature, His love, His goodness, His faithfulness, that is beautifully displayed in His creativity. That is why He could say of His creation, “It is good”; because He is good. You and I were created to live in God’s world, in His character, in relationship with Him, and displaying His wonderful, good, kind, truthful, loving person to the world in creative ways. It is not self-expression alone that brings meaning and fulfillment. It is expressing the glory, brilliance, and goodness of the One in whose image we were made.