“In the beginning God created the heavens and
the earth” (Genesis 1:1, NIV)
Dorothy Sayers once said
that if all we knew about God
was the first five words in the Bible, all we would know is that God is
creative. When in the first words of the Bible, we discover God’s
identity as a creator, we get a glimpse of our own identity as humans who
possess creative capacities.
Genesis (chapter 1)
reveals the dimension of God’s creative process, which, not surprisingly, given
our creation in God’s image, is replicated in human creativity. “In the beginning, God created.” God
brings something out of nothing and order out of chaos. “The earth was a formless void.” God is a seer who can envision
something others cannot and then imaginatively reveal the new reality as a
unique, distinct entity. “God saw what He
had made and it was good.” Like God, the good artist strives for
excellence, not just expression, and the spiritual, intellectual, and
imaginative quality of the work is the measurement by which we determine the
worth of our art. “The heavens declare
the glory of God,” and the human artist seeks to relate and communicate
through his or her art.
Our human creativity
originates in God’s creative image, which is imprinted in our genetic code. Whereas God created out of nothing; humans
create out of what exists. So Igor Stravinsky observes, “Only God can create. I make music from music.” Great
artists will tell you that their imaginative inspiration comes from some
unknown place. Filmmaker Ang Lee confesses that when things work, they come to him; they are not what he was willed.
Mark Doty says that a good poem is
something he finds, not something he makes. Imagination cannot be
manufactured or willed into being, yet it is at the heart of the creative
enterprise. God creates from a known place, Himself, and at God’s core, you
find an imaginative being.
Imagination reflects
originality, intuition, and the hitherto unseen, and so we evaluate our
individual and cultural health by looking for evidence of our imaginative
capacity to deliver the new and fresh, which elicits and illuminates deeper, transcendent
meanings.
As image
bearers, we are designed with a creative capacity.
Lord, Give
Us Today Our Daily Idea(s)
[Quote from The Culturally Savvy Christian: A Manifesto
for Deepening Faith and Enriching Popular Culture in an Age of
Christianity-Lite by Dick Staub (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2007) page 52-53]
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