For: The Institute of Contemporary And Emerging Worship Studies, St. Stephen’s University, Essentials Blue Online Worship Theology Course with Dan Wilt

I’m quite a bit late on my assignment for the third week of this course, but as my brain wasn’t functioning at all last week as it was fuzzy with a cold that lasted 7 days, I couldn’t get much done. Excuses out of the way, here are my thoughts about what it means to be FULLY human.

Those of us who are Christian or have had any exposure to the Christian faith knows that one of the essentials (hah!) is that we are created in God’s image. In Genesis 2:17 God creates man out of dust, in in his image. What this really means is that just like a daughter has inherited some of the characteristics of her parents, so we who are children of God have inherited bit of God’s personality. He is the Creator, so we are endowed with the characteristics of creativity – we take what is here, what God has already created and make something new, or explain it using words, or even dissect it and describe how it works.

As Dan Wilt said in a video I saw, the worst thing society has done recently is convince us that only some people are creative. The ones who paint or write or play music. Everyone else is just not creative. I would like to find out when this untruth began, but the fact is we are all creative. Every last one of us. The mere fact that we can synthesize information, find new ways to calculate the distances between stars (again, from Dan’s video), to figure out solutions to business problems, to do someone’s taxes – all of this requires a creative brain – not just the right-brain activities like drawing and writing poetry – but left-brain stuff like math and logic are creative. Problem solving is the synthesis of seemingly unrelated ideas. Child-rearing is a creative endeavor. To help a child become a fully-functioning adult takes a great dose of creativity.

One of the things I truly enjoy is helping people realize they are creative. I teach art and craft classes and to see the look in someone’s eyes after they make something they never thought they could… gives me chills. I know this is God – I know this is my calling…