Today I was finishing some Kung Pao Shrimp from the new Chinese restaurant around the corner. I opened the last fortune cookie that came with our order and found this snippet of wisdom on the inside. Every once in a while you get a fortune cookie that sounds like it could have come out of the book of Proverbs. Of course Fortune Cookies are not always on solid Biblical ground.
So, what about the sentiment, what makes an activity creative? Is it purely that the doer is engaged enough in the process to want to do well or make it better?
I have a long history of creative. I’ve taken art classes, I play an instrument, I write software, I am a balloon wrangler. In college I was a even the VP of Creative Arts for the Baptist Student Union at Virginia Tech. Each of these activities has at least one thing in common. They require practice. They require that the doer gain proficiency. Skills and talents are developed over time. The fortune cookie wisdom declares my work creative because I am trying to improve. But is this concept Biblical?
The Bible is a book about creation and re-creation. In Genesis we hear about the creation of the entire universe, the first image we have of God is that of a creator, working on His creation, refining it, adding to it, evaluating it and declaring it good. In the final act of creation, God creates us in his image. We are imbued with the same stuff that God is made of, we are creators.We are given responsibility to complete and care for the creation. You know the rest of the story. Within a few chapters, sin enters creation, we are banished from the garden, and the first murder occurs…
The rest of scripture could be described as an act of re-creation. A grand saga about putting-it-all-back-together, about restoring the creation back to the state where it was when it all began. We are helping God to put-it-all-back-together.
So, perhaps I can agree with the fortune cookie in the sense that if we are working with God to restore His creation back to it’s originally intended state, and if we’re honing our skills, then we are being creative. Creativity in the context of kingdom-building is a good thing, it is what we were designed for. In my opinion when we apply our skills and talents to the work of putting-it-all-back-together we will have the greatest sense that we are doing what we were designed to do. We will be fulfilling our purpose.
What do you think?
