Creation, an Act of Understanding

The Christian community is replete with discussion of the lessons that life experience teach it concerning the nature of God. I cannot count the number of times that I have heard people discuss how becoming married or having a child has given them a different and more complete view of God’s love and desire for them. A good friend of mine has even explained to me that owning his dog has given him an understanding of how and why God forgives our most blatant shortcomings!

I do not discount these lessons, for to do so would be to discount a valuable and Godly teaching found repeatedly in Scripture. Paul, in his letter to the Ephesians, beautifully teaches that the marriage relationship is an image of Christ’s relationship to the church. In the Old Testament, Hosea’s relationship with Gomer is a representation of God’s relationship to Israel. It seems clear that one of the key reasons God created these tangible unions is to provide us with a better understanding of our spiritual union with Him, as well as how we might feel were we in His position.

Marriage, childbearing, and pet ownership are not the only means of understanding God’s perspective, though. Another way to gain a better appreciation of God’s viewpoint, a way that is sadly ignored in modern Christian culture, is through the participation in and enjoyment of fine art. The mystery and wonder of God are enveloped in the aesthetics and beauty of His Word and Creation, and a follower of Christ should not minimize or ignore the significance of the “creativeness� of the Creator.

I have not done a significant amount of fictional writing, but each time I have tried it, I have observed a very interesting phenomenon. As I have placed pen to paper and created characters, places, and events, I found that my creation took on a life of its own. Although I set out to create a specific moment in my reader’s imagination, as I reread my creation, I found that somehow that moment had grown beyond my expectations. I had been in control of the story the whole time, guiding events and the dialogue, yet somehow the story I produced became slightly “larger� than what I thought it would be.

Perhaps this experience only occurs when the writer is a novice, but I have come to think that this expansive aspect of art is not limited to my own frame of reference. If a musician listens to a recording of his performance, he often finds himself thinking, “Is that really me?� Although he has been in control of the notes, tempos, and dynamics of the music, when he listens to what he has produced, he discovers a new quality, a life, within what he thought he was producing.

I suspect this the reason that God took a day of rest at the end of His week of creativity. I sincerely doubt that He was tired; perhaps He only wanted some time to step back from His creation and admire the life He had produced upon the canvas of chaos. His creation had taken a life of its own, and though it was not out of His hands, He must have been captivated by the expanse of majesty that had been a figment of His imagination.

Thus, the creation of art has evoked a deeper understanding of my Creator. God has endowed each of us with imagination with the hope that we will be able to grasp some of His intangible glory. If we ignore the unexplainable part of ourselves by ignoring art, how will we ever grasp His unexplainable beauty within every fiber of creation?