The Christian Imagination

The creation story in Genesis is not the only creation story, nor is it the earliest. Moreover, stories like the Enuma Elish also have some parallels to the Genesis creation story. What’s signficant is the portrait of God in Genesis. It differs greatly from the stories where the gods fight amongst each other and creation happens by chance. The God of Genesis is like a master craftsman, who completes each stage of the process with a sense of immense satisfaction, and says, “It is good.”

In reading, It Was Good: Making Art to the Glory of God, edited by Ned Bustard, there is a quote that says: “Creation is useful because it is good. It is not good just because it’s useful.” Bustard also goes on to point out that there is an aesthetic quality to the Hebrew word used for good. While useful and morally perfect come into play, it also means beautiful. The fall certainly changed the morally perfect aspect of good, but the master craftsman’s work does not cease to be beautiful, nor does the work cease to have value. People, all people, are beautiful because they are God’s creation.

Though fallen, we don’t cease to be created in the image of God. The word used for image is the same word used to describe the idols that rulers would have created to represent themselves. They wanted to create a reflection of themselves for the people to see. It’s like someone taking the perfect photo of me. The image within the photo isn’t me, but shows an aspect of who I am.

It is because we are all created in the image of God that all people, even those disconnected from God, are capable of creating, and of producing beautiful and thoughtful works. And it is because we are fallen, that all people, even those who know God, are capable of destruction.

Bustard, New. It Was Good: Making Art to the Glory of God. Baltimore: Square Halo Book, 2006.

1. Does a song need to mention God or Jesus, or imply that God exists in some way?
There are numerous Proverbs in the Bible that don’t mention God. There is even an entire book in the Bible that doesn’t mention God in any way: Esther. Based on the example of the Bible, the answer would be no.

2. Should we avoid music depicting sex and violence?
One of the big critiques of so-called secular music (and books, movies, art, etc) is how often they depict immorality, violence, and other un-Godly things. If you read the Bible cover-to-cover, there are some rather disturbing depictions of immorality and violence. Rape and incest (1 Sam 13), babies smashed against rocks (Psalms 1:9), and the rather horrible story in Judges 19-20 are among them. Then we have the rather sensual poem otherwise known as the Song of Solomon. Based on the Bible itself, it appears the mere presence of sex and violence isn’t enough to avoid it. Context is important, as is learning to discern truth.

3. Doesn’t the Bible tell us to think about things that noble, pure, and lovely?
“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable–if anything is excellent or praiseworthy–think about such things.” -Phillipians 4:8
Very true, but the Scripture doesn’t say we should only think about such things. I do believe that what we read, see, and think about affects us, but we can’t live in denial of what is going on in the world around us. There is pain, suffering, abuse, murder, and violence all around. Sometimes these things are even in our own hearts. Pretending that the world is all sunshine doesn’t make the darkness go away. Surrounding ourselves with only ideas that are comfortable doesn’t create a culture where we are free to enter other people’s pain or share with one another. We ’should’ dwell on truth, and there are many voices competing with that truth. What we ’should’ also be doing is spending time in prayer and resting from work so we can DISCERN truth when we hear it.

Particularly in his masterpiece Orthodoxy, Chesterton insisted that we are created to live our lives as an adventure and that such things as art and wonder and play lie at the very core of the Christian faith rightly understood. Indeed, in his Autobiography he wrote:

[B]ut I for one have never left off playing, and I wish there were more time to play. I wish we did not have to fritter away on frivolous things, like lectures and literature, the time we might have given to serious, solid and constructive work like cutting out cardboard figures and pasting tinsel upon them. (Chesterton, 50)

Chesterton asserted that there is much more to Christian faith than intellectual assent and moral conformity to the creeds and doctrines. Faith, in fact, embraces imagination. (Peters, 9-10)

The more I read Chesterton, the more I love his words. Any comments?

Chesterton, G.K. Autobiography, in The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton, vol. 16. San Francsco: Ignatius Press. 1988.
Peters, Thomas C. The Christian Imagination. San Francsco: Ignatius Press. 2000.

I came across this 20 minute talk by Sir Ken Robinson a few months ago, and it’s both challenging and inspirational:

“We are educating people out of their creativity,” Robinson says. I was just reading a post at Presentation Zen that reminded me of the talk, in which Garr says:

So we let creativity slip and we become less and less creative (or at least we marginalize it) as we become adults, that is, as we become “serious people.” But creativity is not just for the art and literature majors of the world. All professions increasingly require more and more infusions of creative talent. And the real irony is that our true nature is to be creative — it is who we are — yet we are often quite successful at educating ourselves and others out of it

This is a lot to this discussion, actually. Some would argue that it is in the best interest of the dominant power structure to discourage creativity, as ‘thinking outside the box’ is a potential threat to the social order. That’s oversimplistic, of course, but never underestimate what people will do to acquire and retain money and power.

On a basic level, it’s a reminder to me that we do take life too seriously at times and that we greatly undervalue creativity and imagination. The more challenging question is this: Do churches kill creativity?