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!