What comes to mind when you hear the words ‘creative faith’? Does it sound like a worrying progressive trend? Perhaps it just conjures up images of naff banners, flags, ribbons and awkward dancing in church which is best left in the 1980s.
But come with me and look at the words of the Bible, along with helpful words of other saints, and you’ll see that creativity is an essential part of what it means to be human – and using it can enrich and expand our spiritual life.
Spirit-filled artistry
Creativity is intrinsic to the divine. The first thing we learn about God (Gen.1:1) is that He is the ultimate Creator. The universe is spoken into being by God – and this creation is not just functional, utilitarian and workable, but glorious, colourful and varied. It both nurtures and delights us. Adam and Eve’s first directive (Gen. 1:28) is a creative task: to increase and multiply. Plus they’ve got to imagine and invent how this new world will be ordered.
This is not the only time God gives value and honour to creativity. Incredibly, the first person in the Bible to receive the Spirit of God is an artist (Ex. 31:1-5). Bezalel is filled ‘with the Spirit of God, with ability and intelligence, with knowledge and all craftsmanship, to devise artistic designs’ so that he can create the tabernacle and its furnishings. God desired that His place of worship would not just be functional but also beautiful, involving artistry and creative thought.
In the psalms of David, we see him as a creative, pouring out poetry and song to God. David expresses himself to his God, writing his joy, his anguish, his guilt, his longing. It’s not all smash-hit Psalm 23 stuff – other psalms are less familiar, and maybe seem a bit strange, maybe even unnecessary. But they are still included, showing as they do the entire gamut of human emotion, from crying out in pain to our God and Saviour to praising Him with joy.
So why is it that we today so often recoil from the idea of responding to God like the psalmists did? Why do we continue to drag our feet through dry and functional daily quiet-times?
A great task
Do we secretly think that creativity is a downgrade from pure theological thought? A feminised approach to Scripture perhaps? King David didn’t think so, and many prominent artists and writers in history have seen that, rather than being devoid of logic, imagination is what enables us to view the world as it truly is – lifting our gaze above the difficulties and ordinariness of everyday life. The great English painter and poet William Blake wrote that this was his ‘great task’:
To open the Eternal Worlds, to open the Immortal Eyes
Of Man inwards into Worlds of Thought: into Eternity
Ever expanding in the Bosom of God.
All well and good for William Blake, I hear you say! But this ‘great task’ of lifting our eyes to eternity can be true of our own creativity too – though maybe without quite so many capital letters.
Perhaps the roadblock is the fear of failure, of trying something new. Some of us don’t acknowledge fully that we are creative beings so as to avoid opening ourselves up to potential embarrassment. We stay muted and quiet, even in private, and even with God. Others are wildly creative in other contexts but somehow end up leaving their personalities and gifting at the door when they open their Bibles and pray to God in a strange compartmentalising of the self. (I’ve been there.)
But God doesn’t just want the version of yourself that you feel is the ‘churchiest’ one. He wants the whole of you. The doubtful, fearful, exuberant, happy, thoughtful you that was made to enjoy God. Using whatever means we can, we should be encouraged to honestly pour out the strangeness of what it is to be human. We can tell God how we feel, we can express our own responses to His word and the world around us, and we can ask Him to shape us as we attempt to understand ourselves and Him.
Not everything you create or note down has to be a masterpiece or chart hit. It’s more about the practice of learning to express yourself to your God.
It was during a season of poor mental health that I first found comfort in journalling. Taking verses and just lettering them allowed their truth to sink in. I saw I was able to articulate myself to God and respond to the passages more fully. Note-taking and doodling in sermons focused my busy mind on the teaching I was receiving. It stopped me glazing over when reading and helped me develop a spiritual life which felt like a more truthful, embodied expression of the person God had made me to be.
You might not be a doodler – but maybe you could be. Or maybe there’s something else that would help you to open yourself up to responding to God using your creative gifts. Ask yourself: what is one small creative thing I could do in my quiet-time tomorrow, or as a response to a sermon, or before I go to bed? This stuff is not frivolous, wasteful, or separated from deep theological thought. It can enrich and add clarity for you and let you step into a fuller walk with the Creator God who made you.
