You are creative!

The human species is a creative lot. Our abilities to construct, invent, analyze and synthesize, extrapolate and envision, are all creative endeavors. While animals eat the potato, we can cut it, dip it in paint and make prints with it. A series of black dots can be assigned a sequence, joined and become a meaningful picture. Creativity is inherent to us. From the daily grind of trying to survive the mundane, to the boardroom challenge of overcoming strategic odds, we are using our creative abilities. It is just that we have such a narrow definition of it that most of us dismiss ourselves as being creative.

To be creative is not the same as being artistic or being handy with crafts. The creative ability is more basic and available to all of us.

Sometimes I wonder what our world will be like when we truly appreciate and celebrate the creative glory in each one of us. I remember how I lost any love for creating beauty and celebrating colors when my primary school teacher criticized my clumsy efforts. Thankfully, the watercolor palette lured me to put brush to paper; and so for a short window of two years I created little homemade cards for all my well-wishing needs.

Perhaps there would be much more diversity, variety, and possibilities – but we are afraid; for we prefer the safety of conformity and the comfort of the predictable most of the time. After all, the safety of the familiar probably ensures a better rate of survival. But when we look within our hearts, we want much more than mere survival. We want to thrive and soar. Somewhere in the depths of our being is a longing as old as time – to pull out the energies and forces within us and place them outside so we can all look at it and take pause; so we can hope again, imagine, dream, and build.

The force for creativity

If being creative is to reach in and surface what is within us so as to enliven, enrich, and embolden living; then necessarily, it begins with what lies within our inner worlds. For the Christian, the little trickle is traced to an artesian well found in God Himself.

As we grasp and grapple with the vicissitudes of life, both the creative outlet and the creative immersion into the deep and the dark represent soul efforts to find meaning and power to transcend. The beautiful picture taken, the sincere poem, and the languid love song are all exclamations seeking to reach light, freedom, and vindication. We are a people in need of a meta-narrative.

For the Christian, life as a gift is a journey of discovery and refinement. There is more than meets the eye. Truth is greater than the sum total of our limited experience. The framework we use is eternity and personality. In anchoring to The Person of God who designed the human complex, we begin to perceive and interpret life out of a deeper ground of being. In relating to life and time with an eternal perspective, we are led to ask deep questions that challenge our motives and desires.

This interplay of our being and becoming throws up as many creative variations of life as there are of us. At the same time, our diversity does not end up in total isolation for our hearts long for the same universal themes of truth, beauty, love, and justice.

Indeed every culture and age throws up art and artisans, artists and dreamers. Those of us who do not consider ourselves among their ranks nonetheless love to follow them. They are the pied pipers whose sound and music we love. They are often prophetic, visionary, and powerful.

But that does not mean everything can pass off as creative forms that help us rise above ourselves. Many years ago an eager artist was slammed for snipping his pubic hair in what he considered performance art. Most of us failed to see how that enriched our lives.

Good art points to God’s splendor, beauty, and magnificence. Good art often carries the force of a moral vision. Good art lifts us beyond our narrow horizons and makes us see further, look deeper, and hunger longer. We are the poorer as a church and as a people when we fail to encourage and nurture creativity in each of us, and the creative arts as a vocation.

The fact is we need our creative energies to understand and overcome. From the little daily things, to exploring new ways of meaningful and God-honoring worship, to deep community, empathy and outreach, God has made us each creative, and has endowed us each with gifts we can use to shape the world and redeem what may otherwise be lost or given over to destruction. It takes vision and creative commitment to break cycles of lousy downward patterns of pain and mistrust. It takes the same to see beyond a sick body, a hope deferred, and a love lost. In anchoring ourselves to a larger narrative and drawing our vision for life from it we can rise again, find redemption, and turn around to strengthen our brothers.

Indeed shapers of our world were often misunderstood as underachievers, non-conformists, and even destined for the failure slush pile. But yet, Winston Churchill, prophet-preacher A.W. Tozer, and Mother Teresa opened our hearts, minds, and eyes to possibilities we would never entertain or consider but for their creative, unabashed, reckless hope in what is greater, further, and better.

Creative engagement with a God-loved world

As long as we think that creativity is limited to drama scripts, video story boards and dance, etc., our ability to live and engage our world will be limited.

French sociologist-theologian Jacques Ellul cautions us that the usual two approaches Christians tend to take towards the world: spiritualization (which neglects material realities) or capitulation (which adopts one of the world’s options that seem to harmonize with Christianity) will fail us. In order to witness to the world, we need creative engagement. This means we are to offer meaning and direction to the world. It is a call to creative, bold leadership. Where the world is spinning on its own axis, we call it to pause and consider the weightier issues of life. We offer the message of hope and the arms of welcome. This may have been done via pounding the pulpit; but much more than oratory is required in today’s world.

But lest we think of all this as action, it really begins with our posture and presence in the world. Ellul calls it a style of life, an attitude, a special mode of existence. It is to be able to be in the world and yet not be held by it. One of the ways this shows up is in our community. Did not Jesus say the world would recognize us as being distinctive by how we love one another? Presence and community as witness relies less on programs then on being; which means we need to rely on the Spirit. It was the creative genius of the Holy Spirit that hovered over the face of the deep and brought forth life, order, beauty, and pleasure to God. It is when the Spirit is fully alive in us that the life of Christ given to us can arise and shine forth. Scripture’s promises about our new state of being in Christ is so astounding we can barely take it in:
“…It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me…” (Gal 2:20, ESV);
“…you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is…” (Rom 12:2);
“The spiritual man makes judgments about all things… we have the mind of Christ” (1 Cor 2:15-16).

But O, how we love the familiar, and prefer to stick with what works. We are such a Do-ing people that we cannot imagine that the power of our witness begins by laying hold of God’s Word to us and about us. We keep trying to change our world while refusing to let God change us to be His agents of creative witness.

The other impediment to creative engagement is our amorous affair with success. We adore success – which leads us by the nose to keep doing what has worked.

A specific call

Creative engagement is particularly difficult for those who feel a calling to the creative life. In the last two years, I have not taken on a formal pastoral office as I felt led to learn to write; to apply my creative energies on words. In a very limited way, as I took on a new lifestyle, I begin to feel for those who are called to a vocation of artistic expression. People think we are not making the most of our lives; we have no proper titles, no office, and no regular paychecks. It is also a lonely and often painful place to be. Art creation requires much soul searching, listening, and endless rounds of improving. Very few share the artists’ perspectives or else consider them a luxurious, superfluous, non-essential add-on to more bread and butter issues.

But when I consider how my writing is seeking to connect with Truth and with a very real peopled world, I take courage again; for my meta-narrative tells me the people, the world, and I matter – for eternity.

Rev Jenni Ho-Huan came to faith in Christ, grew and was ordained in the Presbyterian Church. God has taken her on several creative turns in the journey including marrying a Methodist minister, becoming a stay-home mom, and embarking on a writing ministry. She currently partners her husband Dr Philip Huan in their ministry to the wider body of Christ (www.churchlife-resources.org). Together with their wonderful children, they worship at RiverLife Church where Philip is a pastor.

The New International Version of the Bible has been referenced unless otherwise stated.

References:
Ellul, Jacques. The Presence of the Kingdom. Colorado Springs: Helmers and Howard, 1989.