Are you creative?




It's the question I begin the class I teach college students every semester: Are you creative? You would think in a class called "The Creative Christian" the students would all universally say yes, right? The class was created to lay the foundation for all creative arts students at our school, the course number — Art 101. Yet, somewhere along the way, the class became a General Ed course. 

This means that the room is now filled with mostly non-majors looking to check the easy button on a required "Arts" course. Psychology, Business, Computer Science, Kinesiology, Nursing. When I ask the question and have students raise their hands if they are creative, only a small sample of hands reach toward the sky. The overwhelming answer is "no, I'm not creative."

This has frustrated some of the professors who teach this course. "How can we possibly help art and design students dig into their core creative soul if the room is filled with doubters?" 

I see it as a challenge because I know three things to be true:

  1. At some point, even those of us who call ourselves "professional creatives" will feel like we aren't. We will feel like phonies trying to fake it.
  2. We desperately need "creative" psychologists, entrepreneurs, programmers, scientists, personal trainers and medical professionals in this world. (Feel free to add your profession.)
  3. We are all creative. We just limit the definition to only include artists, filmmakers, musicians, actors and creative writers.

See I believe, creativity is what makes us human. 

I believe that we were "created" by an Artist God.

I believe that when we were "created" in His image, that meant we were created to be creative, like our creator.

It is something that every child feels instinctively — the drive to create. Whether with crayons, rocks or mud, our children make things. Everyday. 

So how does a class full of students on the edge of adulthood find themselves "uncreative?" Madeleine L’Engle in her book, Walking on Water, says this:

"It is an indictment of our culture that so many of them lose their creativity, their unfettered imaginations, as they grow older. But they start off without self-consciousness … they know intuitively that it is folly to make comparisons, and they go ahead and say what they want to say."

This blog is for you, no matter how you answer the question. And my prayer is for you to be able to admit something to yourself that maybe has been long-forgotten, you ARE creative.

In accepting our creativity, we both embrace both our humanity and our divinity. Like a child learning by mimicking his parent, we start to become like our Creator.

"To be fully human means to live a life that glorifies God by pursuing creative endeavors as acts of worship … let us build families, write stories, 
and create business for the purpose of advancing God’s kingdom, not our own." - Don Perini, Emerge


Join me as I dig into what it means to be Creative.