When starting the Shae organization, I explained our philosophy, that giftedness implies purpose, to a woman who told me the story of how her son loved to draw. She showed me some of his artwork from his toddler years to first grade. It was obvious he was gifted, not just technically, but expressively. There was an inspiring insight from his perspective on life. When I asked to see more, her emotions percolated up. There was no more. Turns out, her son was told by his father that all boys who grow up to be artists are gay. The young boy put down the pencil and didn’t draw again.
Our first reaction is, “I would never say that.” But do any of these sound familiar?
“You can’t make a living doing that.’’
“You need to follow in your father’s footsteps.”
“But we planned on you going to this school.”
“It was good enough for your parents.”
“You’re really talented, but at some point you’ll have to get a real job.”
We’ve unknowingly caused an epidemic.
Recently, I gave a trilogy of seminars about discovering your giftedness and purpose. I’m always amazed that the line of people waiting to talk with me can usually be divided into two groups: the happy group—people who are thankful that someone finally validated that being creative is a Divine gift; and the conflicted group—people who want a how-to recipe to discover their giftedness, passion, and purpose.
In today’s digital and information age, we think we should be able to find the answer by Googling or reading it on Wikipedia, through intellectual and analytical processes. But in reality, it is arguably the shortest recipe ever written. Simply put: If you want the answer, ask your Creator. He’s the only one who actually knows. He knows precisely why you came out of the womb the way you did. Your parents do not know. The Church does not know. Certainly, society does not know. Why then do we tend to self-choose our own purpose in life, or worse, feel we know better how to choose for others, especially our children? It truly shows where our faith walk is headed—down a path of discontentment.
Creativity and the Creator Blog Series: Part 2
More Than A Theory
For you formed my inward parts; you wove me in my mother’s womb (Ps 139:13 NASB).
Fade in: Interior–Christian Hospital Delivery Room
A baby’s first cry pierces the air. A cheer rises from the family and medical staff. The doctor confirms, “Yep, he’s got all his toes and fingers. Congratulations, you’re the proud parents of a healthy boy. Don’t break him now.” Laughs all around.
The proud father decries, “I can’t wait to teach him to be the next Michael Jordan.” The mother says, “No, he’s going to be president.” The father, more realistic, “No, I’ll make him a partner in the business. He’ll love it.” And so it begins.
Year after year, studies try to explain the continuing generational exodus of young people leaving the church. All too common reasons given include that the church is judgmental (87 percent), old fashioned (78 percent), too involved with church politics (75 percent) and the list goes on. Some statistics show that as high as 92 percent of Christian teenagers will leave the church and abandon their faith by their 20th birthday, and more than half of these never return.1 But rarely does any survey actually define the undercurrent causing the systemic drift, taking us all off course. Could it be that these reasons are really red herrings that keep us from getting to the heart of the matter?
A Biblical sidebar: For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb (Ps. 139:13 NRSV), and God, who set me apart before I was born and called me through his grace…(Gal 1:15 NRSV). We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us (Rm 12:6 NRSV). Do we really believe these precepts? Or do we think they just make for great poetic prose? Are they a salient part of the Master Plan or is the Master Plan just about finality at the end of time? How important are these precepts in the big scheme of life?
How-to books hit the New York Times best seller list by the dozens every year, most recommending surefire ways of finding your path to happiness. This would certainly seem to indicate an insatiable desire to quench the thirst of a large sector of society that leads unfulfilled lives. After all, how many of us are actually living a life where our giftedness is being utilized?
Do you know your area of giftedness? Was your dream nurtured? Or did it get squashed by parents, church family, or the educational system? Questions, questions, questions. Any sporting coach worth his salt after seeing his team fall into a pattern of mistakes will say, “We’ve got to get back to the basic fundamentals of the game.” In the spiritual context that doesn’t mean the good old time religion of 150 years ago; try Genesis 1.
The Creator created us all in His image equally. Yes, equally. An imperfect world doesn’t change this divine core principal. If anything less were true, it would then make the Master Plan a fraud, and it would nullify what King David, the Apostle Paul, and Jesus Christ described as how we are to live. Our Creator intentionally and unabashedly infused in us His most core characteristic—a creative spirit driven by love.
1 Barna Group, http://www.barna.org/topics/faith-spirituality, (November 4, 2009).
Creativity and the Creator Blog Series: Part 1
The Thing Of It Is
In the Beginning…
there was Creativity
emanating from the Creator
…as constant today as in the Beginning.
He didn’t stop with our creation. He can’t.
It’s a core attribute of His very being, driven by His infinite love.
When God created us in His image, He genetically infused us with His own creativity.
The very first thing God asked Adam to do required creativity. Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name (Gn. 2:19 NIV). That one phrase, to see what he would name them, tells us much about the nature of God and the nature of human beings created in His image.
God told Moses, See, I have called by name Bezalel son of Uri son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah: and I have filled him with divine spirit, with ability, intelligence, and knowledge in every kind of craft, to devise artistic designs (Ex. 31:2-4 NRSV).
Our Creator has endowed each of us with different facets of His creative spirit for a specific purpose. Like a prism, His white light passes through us giving each of us a unique color. A dimension of His creative spirit is given to us to devise artistic designs, whether they be with paint on canvas, through the lens of a camera, sounds, words or ideas. And He presents opportunities to see how we will use our creative spirit to honor Him and serve others. Our purpose is not hidden in some dark shrouded mystery. The Creator expects us to create using His divine spirit, taking the leap from knowledge and ability to devising artistic designs that serve others and bring honor to Him.
This genetic infusion of God’s creative spirit is the foundation of the enigmatic miracle that happens every time we create using the unique skill set that the Creator provides. At that inspired moment, the Spirit of God enables our creative spirit to take the idea, a concept without form, create an original and unique path from within, and then manifest it outwardly. The Creator must take great pleasure watching creatures He made in His image creatively express themselves through the gifts He placed in each one of them. He delights to see what (we) will create through this collaborative process.