GETTING CREATIVE WITH GOD
If one were to ask an unbiased observer to name that institution in our society which clearly espouses creativity, we can be sure that he would not name our twentieth-century church. This is an indictment of how we Christians feel about the mandate God has given us for being creative...We do not embrace creativity as a way of life...We do not see it as having much to do with Biblical living.... Calvin M. Johansson.
The church should not only seek to be relevant to local culture, but also an agent of transformation. This often requires creativite risk-taking.
Bara Creativity
Creativity has become a buzzword in our society. Everything from a child’s scribble to Einstein’s theory of relativity is considered creative. Not so in the Scriptures! In the Bible “create” is reserved for extraordinarily exalted activity. The Hebrew and Greek words for it, respectively, bara and kitzo, are very similar in meaning and are employed sparingly to denote only the pinnacles of God’s achievements - creating the heavens and the earth, man, righteousness/justice, the nation Israel, the Church, reconciling Israel and the Church, creating the New Jerusalem, and to regeneration and worship.
In the Bible, creative activity must contain something of the miraculous and the mysterious (Exod 34:10). If the phenomenon can be explained away by natural means, it is no longer bara activity.
Inquire from one end of the heavens to the other. Has anything been done like this great thing [God’s creative act], or has anything been heard like it? (Deut. 4:32 NASB)
Moreover, in both the Old and New Testaments bara creativity is power theology. It urges a rethinking of everything, a transformation of one’s worldview to acknowledge God:
That they may see and recognize, And consider and gain insight as well, That the hand of the Lord has done this, And the Holy One of Israel has created it. (Isa. 41:20 NASB)
Meanings Change
The meaning of words, however, can change over time, and the word create has undergone extraordinary change over the centuries. In the Bible, man is refered to as a maker or fashioner, but never as a creator. A comprehensive examination of the word “create” in the Scriptures reveals that in all 86 cases it refers to activity performed exclusively by God, never humans.
Against this backdrop, Christians insist man’s calling is not to create, but to work with the materials of creation responsibly and obediently for the delight of mankind and benefit of all creation. They see in Genesis chapter one a “cultural mandate,” a broad directive for focusing human energy:
God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground. (Gen. 1:28, emphasis added)
Christians take this passage as a command, a charge, to subdue not only all living creatures, but to discover and use all the potentials in all materials. This enlarged scope appears justified from these words addressed to man elsewhere: “you put everything under his feet “ (Ps. 8:6); “God left nothing that is not subject to him” (Heb. 2:8). In uttering this mandate, God dignified mankind’s work, and “crowned him with glory and honor” (Ps. 8: 5).
To subdue means to tame, master, humanize, impose order, develop technique—to place our imprint on creation in a positive way. This takes effort, wisdom, and experience and infers mankind is invited to work and to extend God’s creation.
Moreover, God in His creativity has demonstrated a love for immense variety without sacrificing quality! This variety and plentitude of materials on our planet offers an extraordinary range for mankind’s field of action. Notice that verses 28 to 30 read “every living creature,” “every seed bearing plant, “ “every tree,” and every green plant.” Moreover, scripture teaches us to respect the materials of creation:
God saw all that He had made and it was very good. (Gen. 1:31)
Additionally, the following helpful Scriptural metaphor teaches us to lovingly care for the created order.
Adam and Bezalel: Master Gardeners
The kind of “subduing” and “ruling” that Scripture envisions is not that of raping the environment or squandering or suppressing human potential. The image appropriate to subduing is “that of gardening. Man’s vocation is to be the world’s gardener.”
Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. And the Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food...The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work [”cultivate”] it and take care of it.
The devoted gardener learns the secrets of good management - when to water, when and how to prune the trees for the benefit of all.
It is not difficult to see how the image of a gardner could further apply to ministry and those who work the arts. “The artist takes an amorphous pile of bits of colored glass and orders them upon the wall of the basilica so that the liturgy can take place in the splendor of flickering colored light and in the presence of the invoked saints.” Similarily, pastors take ideas, order them, and express them eloquently in words. Like the trees in the garden, these ideas need to be pruned and shaped. The gardening image also ellicits the thought of preservation and conservation, of appreciating and building upon forms of the past while at the same time aggressively reaching toward the future.
The kind of artistic balance we need is projected in the charge Moses gave to Bezalel, chosen to head the team making the furnishings for the tabernacle.
Then Moses said to the sons of Israel, “See, the Lord has called by name Bezalel...He has filled him with the spirit of God, in wisdom, in understanding, and in knowledge and in all craftsmanship; to make designs for working in gold and in silver and in bronze, and in the cutting of stones for settings, and in the carving of wood, so as to perform in every inventive work. He also has put in his heart to teach... to perform every work of an engraver and of a designer and of an embroider, in blue and in purple and in scarlet material, and in fine linen, and of a weaver...Then Moses called Bezalel and Oholiab and every skillful person in whom the Lord had put skill, everyone whose heart stirred him, to come to the work to perform it.” (Exod. 35:30-36:2, emphasis added)
Let’s examine the qualities that Bezalel possessed - wisdom, understanding, knowledge, and craftsmanship - in more detail. Notice the progression from the general to the specific. The Hebrew word for “wisdom” means to have insight or perspective into the overall plan, to see how everything fits together. It means to have the big picture, to understand the rationale of the whole. It also relates well to the idea of conceiving the designs and innovating the settings of particular abstract, decorative art pieces. The word “understanding” suggests intelligence or ability in practical problem solving. “Knowledge” has to do with “know-how” knowledge, the knowledge of particular crafts. Bezalel had to know his materials. He needed to know how to prepare acacia wood, cast bronze, beat gold, and make dyes. “Craftsmanship” relates to workmanship. Craftsmanship involves working in a specific medium, and requires the mastery of technique in the act of embodying an idea. The emphasis is on the quality of the product. I may have had ancestors who worked for Bezalel in building the Temple. My ancestry is Hebrew and the name Findeisen is Germanic for “Journeyman Craftsman”. “Skill” here is more associated with wisdom. Note finally, Bezalel is designated as a maker, not a creator.
A study of the eighty-six occurences of the word “create” in Scripture supports the contention that newness centrally characterizes creativity. In eight instances the word “new” occurs in immediate conjunction with the word “bara”. Furthermore “new” (chadash), like the word bara, is used sparingly in reference to significant events.
What kind of newness is involved? How can it be described? What are its features, its criteria? A study of the context in which “create” occurs indicates at least five features that characterize bara newness.
1. Bara newness is unprecedented (Isa. 43:15-21) - the first of its kind, that which did not exist before, that which is irreducible to something known, the unheard of.
2. Bara newness is humanly unforseeable (Num. 16:30). It has the quality of surprise, of hiddenness brought to light - the quality of the unexpected and unpredictable.
3. Bara newness is valuable (Gen 29: Isa 41:17-20). It cannot be novelty for novelty’s sake. It must solve a problem, serve a function, be workable, yet beautiful, fitting, elegant.
4. Bara newness is transformational in that it can become part of tradition and undergo transformation, re-creation (Gal. 6:15; Eph. 2:15).
5. Bara newness is lasting. It does not lose its luster after repeated examination and contemplation. This is a newness that never perishes.
Practically, these criteria can guide human endeavor, help us recognize when we are onto something significant in our creative endeavors.
Grounds for the Human-Divine Interface
Is it possible, then, that the Bible envisions a creative capacity in man that is a reflection of God’s activity, even though bara is used exclusively for God?
Grounds for considering a human-divine interface include (1) man’s naming of the creatures, (2) the Psalm eight passage, and the concepts of (3) “newness” and (4) “wisdom.” God allows Adam to share in the activity of Genesis creation: He brings the animals before Adam and waits “to see what he would name them” (Gen. 1:19).
In Psalm eight, written after the Fall, a close linkage is forged between man and God:
Yet Thou hast made him [man] a little lower than God [Elohim], and dost crown him with glory and majesty! Thou does make him to rule over the works of thy hands; Thou hast put all things under his feet. (Ps. 8: NASB)
And Romans suggests that man has a cooperative role to play in “reconciling” creation:
...the anxious longing of creation awaits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God...that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery... (Rom. 8: 19-21 NASB)
Moreover, God creates by exercising wisdom, and man is enjoined to get wisdom:
But God made the earth by his power; he founded the world by his wisdom and stretched out the heavens by his understanding [Jer 10:12]
How many are your works, O Lord! In wisdom you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures. [Ps 104:24]
Blessed is the man who finds wisdom, the man who gains understanding... By wisdom the Lord laid the earth’s foundations, by understanding he set the heavens in place; [Prov 3:13,19]
Our Lord is Creator as well as Savior, and the Maker of rainbows and nightingales didn’t suddenly lose his creative urge at the close of Day Six. God’s creativity is inexhaustible. And you were made for him. He longs to express his creativity through you. As an instrument and musician together make beautiful music, you and your Lord can unite to create exquisite beauty. What you can do together defies imagination.
When God does something, it’s not just functional, but beautiful; not arid necessity but brimming with unexpected joys.
Consider the sun. A lesser god would have stopped at making it an essential power-house. Our Lord even went far beyond making it an exquisite time-piece. His love and ingenuity soared as he fashioned a warm bath of pleasure, delighting and inspiring all humanity. It forms weather patterns, sculpts clouds, sends leaves twisting and twirling like a ballarina. Its rays don’t just illuminate, they sparkle and dance, they paint rainbows and the ever-changing splendor of endless sunsets, splashing color through all the earth with unrestrained exuberance.
Everything God does displays the inexhaustible creativity and extravagant generosity of the One who invites and empowers us to imitate him.
The Creative Process
Discovering how our creativity and God’s creativity mesh is both exciting and critical. If we get this wrong whatever we produce, no matter how good, will be less than what God wants and, no matter how much we enjoy our involvement in it, we will still miss a large part of the greatest joys a human can experience. The Almighty wants to give us the thrill and honor of genuine involvement in his magnificent purposes. Being creative is God-like and he longs for his children to know this joy. If, through his inexplicable love, Christ wants me as co-heir, he wants me as co-author not a dictating machine (see 1 Corinthians 3:9; 2 Corinthians 6.1).
And you have a special place in God’s heart. Physically, the Lord is totally self-sufficient. He needs us no more than a handyman needs the services of a four-year-old. But the Father’s joy could never be complete without your contribution.
Many of us are like the knife in the following: "A small boy thought his pocket-knife was to be used for sticking into the ground or flicking it into trees. Grandpa watched as the boy used the knife in this common way for many days. Then Grandpa said, ’Let me show you what you can do with that! Grandpa found a piece of kindling and carved an intricate design of stars and circles. Grandpa said, ’Let me show you something else. He took some soft wood, whittled,gouged and cut, and shaved for about a half-hour. When he was finished, the boy was staring at the smiling bearded face which had emerged from the block of wood. Smiling from ear to ear, Grandpa said again, ’Let me show you something.’ He went to the refrigerator and using the knife’s bottle opener, opened two bottle of pop. There ’’Grandpa said, ’you can see there are a lot of good signs you can do with this knife.’ The boy smiled and looked in amazement at this very special knife." Many times our gifts, our talents are like that knife. God gave us something beautiful, something which can do a lot of good things, but placed in our hands we don’t know quite what to do with it. Placing these gifts in God’s hands, placing our lives in His hands, then, then we can see how wonderful the gifts are, we can see what truly wonderful things we can accomplish with God’s gifts.
Has ever a father’s heart swelled with loving pride at a child’s pathetic attempt to help him? Then how much more will the boundless love of your Father in heaven be stirred by your attempts – even your weakest attempts – to honor him with your service.
To strangers, your ministry may just be one of thousands. But not to someone who loves you. And you mean most to the One who willed you into existence, fashioned you, redeemed you, and longs to fulfill your every need. Expect a personal invitation to a royal command performance in the presence of his Majesty, the King of kings.
Divine love is a compelling reason for God valuing our efforts. Here is another: our raw natural abilities are as much a product of God’s creativity as anything he could ever do. Is it hard to believe the exalted Lord would like the sound of your voice or the work of your hands? Remember who created that voice and those hands. Beware: denigrating our gift comes close to denigrating the Giver. There’s a point where humility degenerates into an insult to One who made you and empowers you.
And here is something even more significant: creativity is among our God-given gifts. For our Lord to deny our (consecrated) creative efforts he would have to deny his own skill in making us.
All of God, none of me?
‘That’s good!’ she gushed when he finished his song.
‘Oh, it wasn’t me,’ he humbly said, ‘it was the Lord.’
‘No, it wasn’t that good!’
Some people’s claim to divine inspiration produces such mediocrity that it seems an excuse for laziness or, more likely, a failure to see the hole in the ‘all of God, none of me’ half-truth.
Self must die – sinful independence, pride, selfishness, and trying to earn heaven’s approval. And we must yield everything to Christ, acknowledging that his ways are higher than ours. But to go so far beyond this that we renounce and denigrate our divinely-created mental and physical powers is as unchristian as gnostic heretics who taught that everything physical is of the devil.
Paul’s ministry was an astounding mixture of hardship (torture, deprivation, shipwreck) and miracles (healings, earthquake, snakebite survival). Likewise, your ministry, whether it be music, literature, art, dance, preaching, or whatever, should be a peculiar mixture of the natural (plain hard work) and the supernatural (divine intervention). The same passage of Scripture that emphasizes the prophetic (ie supernatural) side of music, also points to the existence of a training system (1 Chronicles 25:1-8, especially 7,8).
That our Lord wants us to be submissive but active partners in his work, not mindless robots, is demonstrated in the penning of Scripture. In the original language, the individual style of each human writer is very obvious. It is truly the Word of God, yet the Lord ordained it that each sentence bears the imprint of the human writer. He chose to use, rather than over-ride, the individual personalities of the writers. If this is so for Scripture, which is more God-inspired than anything we could produce, it will be true of even our most Spirit-filled efforts.
A man and a woman in love long for a union, the natural result of which is offspring that are neither entirely the man’s, nor the woman’s, but bear the unmistakable marks of both. That union, Scripture boldly declares, has a spiritual parallel (Ephesians 5:31-32). Though this initially shocks our impure minds, it rings true. The human desire to express love in this manner was placed within us by the One who fashioned us in his image. The inexhaustible creativity of God longs, through our union with him, to birth within us unique and wondrous things, bearing the image, not just of one partner, but of both him and us.
A musician and an instrument unite to produce sounds which neither would produce without the other. We are living instruments fashioned by the divine Instrument Maker with greater sophistication than any man-made instrument, having our own creativity. Like an instrument maker with his cherished instrument, our Maker longs to blend his ability with ours to produce unique sounds to bless the world.
So, both to express his unfathomable love for us and to display his own genius in creating us, the omnipotent Lord treasures our contribution. But because that same love yearns for intimacy with us and that same creativity forever craves new expression, the Almighty longs to couple his supernatural ability with our natural effort to birth something as unique and as precious as is a child to its loving parents. The product of this supernatural union will be in one sense human, in another sense divine; an earthly art glowing with heavenly glory.
Let’s clarify the often misunderstood role of human effort. As a proud attempt to earn salvation, good works are abhorrent. Wrong attitudes turn good works sour. As an expression of loving submission to God, however, sweat is beautiful. For the Spirit-filled Christian in divine submission, human exertion and divine enabling are not opponents but allies. View inspiration and effort not as an incompatible mix of oil and water but as bricks and mortar. They merge to build a monument of love for the glory of God – glory that his father-heart longs to share with us.
Human Instruction Versus Heavenly Inspiration
Those who are called to minister in music, art, dancing, acting, preaching, or whatever, will seek to refine their gift. If we are ever hesitant, the parable of the talents is sufficient to seal the matter for us (Matthew 25:14-30). Yet as we grow in Christ, our motivation intensifies. Our love for God fills us with a longing to develop the abilities he had graciously bestowed upon us. We treasure the gift because we adore the Giver.
A man takes from the earth a precious diamond and spends hours studying and cutting it, desiring to reveal to the fullest the beauty God has placed within it. In like manner, we labor to display the beauty resident within our gift, that the Giver might be glorified. Longing to see our Lord’s eyes sparkle with joy, we polish his gift till it gleams. We want it to shine so brightly that he can see his face in it. Then we want the whole world to see that face.
For the secular artist, training and practice are simply a matter of common sense. Our motivation is much deeper and sweeter. Yet sometimes practice and training seem at odds with ministering in the Spirit’s power.
A lady I admire was very much used of God until she started taking singing lessons. Formerly, when she was in church worshipping her Lord, God would often suddenly give her an entirely new song. There was no time for rehearsals. The song was divinely created for that specific occasion. The moment there was a pause in the service, she would share that beautiful song with the congregation. With remarkable consistency, her songs would blend in with the rest of the service in ways beyond human control. Since commencing singing lessons, however, her training seemed to be hindering her ministry.
My guess is that her lessons had simply made her more self-conscious, causing her to focus upon correct voice production, rather than focusing upon her Savior. Such a change of focus would probably have an adverse affect upon any ministry, let alone one so dependent upon hearing from God that very moment.
The solution, it would seem, is not less practice, but more. Eventually, such things as correct breathing should become almost second nature. Then she will be able to concentrate upon the Lord and sing correctly as well. The result will surely be an even more effective ministry.
Conclusion
Souls are God’s responsibility, sounds are our responsibility. That’s the way many Christian musicians view it. God wants us to do our best, but they imagine that’s about the limit of his interest in our art. The Lord is expected to take the back seat, politely applauding the finished performance, but basically leaving us to our own devices, artistically. We now know differently. God longs to be involved in our art – guiding, inspiring, tutoring, and at times actually creating and physically expressing himself through us. ‘Open my lips,’ prayed the psalmist, ‘and my mouth will show forth your praise’(Psalm 51:15). ‘Take my lips and speak through them, take my mind and think through it,’ became one of Frances Ridley Havergal’s favorite prayers. Let’s never forget that creativity has its ultimate Source in God, not man. The further one goes from the source the more polluted the water. Forget about following the world; you will lead it, if you draw close enough to the Source. God assists and inspires us in a thousand ways. The Spirit of the Almighty resides within us. Everyday we speak with God. Everyday we’re seated in heavenly places. To us, the supernatural is commonplace. It would hardly be surprising if our efforts are more divinely inspired than we realize. Yet each of us could probably develop still further our ability to receive from heaven. My passion is to inspire you to enter into an ever-deepening partnership with the Creator, the One who ‘gives songs in the night,’ the Origin of ‘every good and perfect gift,’ the Lord of sound and time, who is constantly worthy of a new song. Seek him. Yield to him. Harmonize with him. The result will last for eternity.
