The Art of Subcreation

Happy New Year!
I know it has been a while since my last post, but I have been brainstorming on this topic for a while.
It builds on the idea of being creative in the fact that last post I said that humans, by their very nature, are creative. I also mentioned that I believe that to use that creativity can be as holy of a work as being a pastor or a missionary.

However, I do not want to leave open the idea that simply being creative is a divine work. There are many examples of humans in history creating or imagining ideas, technologies and art forms that certainly could not be considered holy or divinely inspired. I am certain you can list a few.

That being said, I wanted to express an idea about how to be creative without having to be religious sounding.You see, I used to believe that, as a Christian, in order to be glorifying God was to always have some sort of Christian reference. This attitude could often come across as "holier-than-thou" in my choices with regards to movies, TV shows, and other kinds of media. I even debated giving up on Star Wars because of this attitude.

My writing would probably not be the way that it is now if it were not for my reading a letter my J.R.R. Tolkien regarding his creation of "Lord of the Rings." In that letter Tolkien expressed a simple attitude that he called "sub-creation," where a writer or other artist seeks to explore other avenues by which God could have created the world. To paraphrase one statement, he said that reincarnation may be bad theology in this world, but in Middle-Earth that is part of the world.

I hope you follow what I mean. Tolkien is not suggesting that writers create something outside of what God would allow; God's nature is not changing in this idea. However, since God is an infinite being, He has at his disposal, infinite ideas. Certainly the variety of plants and animals are examples of that. The idea of sub-creation then is exploring that potential and that variety. In Middle-Earth, Elves are immortal because that is how the Creator made them, not because of some magical power on their part.

With this freedom comes the ability for Christian writers to express divine ideas in a variety of ways. We can explore imagined worlds, fanciful and far away, because the Creator has given us the ability to imagine within His creation, His infinite variety.

I look forward to your comments!

God bless you!

Being creative

calvin, hobbes, creative, bored, snowman

Why is man creative? Is it an expression of how to understand the world around us? Or maybe it is a means of communication, reminiscent of drawings on stone tablets to share knowledge.

More importantly, do you consider yourself creative? If so, why do you create?

Now, I bring all these questions up for a simple reason-if we are talking about writing and imagining worlds beyond our own, should we not consider the purpose behind such imaginings?

For instance, if I take a purely survivalist and evolutionary perspective on creativity, you could run into some problems. While I will agree that being able to think creatively to escape a predator or to create new tools is an advantage, the ability to draw may be useful to communicate those ideas. However, one can also see the disadvantage of drawing on a stone tablet inside a cave as the bear comes out.

You could also take a more religious perspective too. I'm not talking purely a Christian one, but just the idea that a god created humanity and they were placed on the Earth for a purpose. What purpose would being creative serve? If you take it to a religious extreme, you would probably end up in a Middle Ages mode, where commissioned artwork is that of religious themes but more secular work is shunned or avoided.

Of course, there are other perspectives, but I wanted to address to the two more extreme ones before coming to what I believe is a biblically sound approach to creativity. In order to do so, I will be citing two passages, both from the Book of Genesis, that will give insight into why man creates, and how that creativity can best be used.

The first verse is taken from Genesis 1 and states that God made man in His own image. "26Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; (NASB)."

Now, there are several spiritual implications in that verse, and whole books have been written about man being made in God's image. Some take it as man being made a spiritual, as well as physical beings, thus differentiating man from animals. Others have pointed out that it makes man a moral creature, capable of making moral choices and decisions.

All of these points are interesting, and deserving of their own discussion. But, the focus I want to make is about man being in God's image implies that man shares some of God's attributes, such as being a spiritual being, being a moral agent and capable of choosing. There is one other attribute of God that I believe man shares; that of being creative. In Genesis 1, verse 1, we read, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth (emphasis added)."

In the very first words of the Bible we are given the image of a God who creates, a God who designs the world and all the life on the Earth in a variety of ways. God, by His very nature is creative, and I would submit that man, being created in God's image, is naturally a creative being.

Why do you think you are creative?