Creation Theology


Abstract:
The ancients talked about the muse - a personification of the idea that creative inspirations comes from somewhere else - not from inside of us. The music, the story, the painting - they seem to create themselves.

Body:
I sit down to write a story. I have in my mind a plot - a street punk becomes a powerful criminal boss with the help of his lieutenant. I have in mind the kind of characters the boss and the lieutenant will be. But after writing about 50 pages, I realize something isn't working. The story just doesn't sound true. I have to put the manuscript aside and start over. Again it feels flat. I seek out an experienced writer. I describe to him my problem. He says, "let the characters tell you what the plot should be. Don't force them to do something that isn't true." But, I protest, I'm writing fiction. It isn't supposed to be true. "Ah," he says, "that's your problem. Even in fiction, your characters have to be true."

Isn't this strange? I'm the author. The book comes out of my head. My neurons have to fire to make this thing happen. But in order to be truly creative, I have to let the characters have their own lives. I even start thinking about them as other - real - people.

The same thing happens with music. People who compose music have to let the music happen to them. If they try to force the music into some pattern because they know that's how it is supposed to sound, it will sound uninspired and two-dimensional. They have to let the music tell them how it should sound. The same thing happens in playing music. You can play a series of notes accurately, and it will still sound like mere noise.

The same thing happens in sermon-writing. In painting. In just about every creative enterprise in which human beings participate. The ancients talked about the muse - a personification of the idea that creative inspirations comes from somewhere else - not from inside of us. The music, the story, the painting - they seem to create themselves. When an artist is really rockin', they don't so much create as they let the creation happen. "Let there be art!"

There are times when I lose patience with God questions. For example, one of the classic theological quandaries is how to reconcile God's sovereignty and our own free will. If everything is part of God's plan, are we all following a script? Are people predestined or is the future somehow open? I really enjoy these kinds of theological problems. I even think they are valuable. But there are times that I wonder how we manage to ignore things like actual human experience in our theologizing.

Now, I'm not saying that these aren't valuable questions. How we discuss them says a lot about who we are and who we believe God is. But at some point I think it's important to ask the people arguing between Calvinism and Arminianism this question: have you ever actually written a script?

Given what I know about my own creative process, I think it's pretty wild that we describe our God as a God who creates. Do we mean that God gives God's self over to the creation? That God abandons some measure of rigid control? Do we mean that, like a great artist, God somehow leaves a piece of God's own self - blood and sweat and spirit - in the creation? That God loves the creation so much that God enters into it? Given what we know about Jesus, how could this not be true?

Yes, I know - I'm not God, and it's quite a leap from my feeble artistic attempts to speculation on the creative process of God. But I believe at least part of the message of the incarnation - of Christmas - is that God is closer than we think.

Posted: Tue - December 19, 2006 at 10:41 AM           |

©