The Cross and Creativity
I just finished listening to a neuroscientist’s research on the creative brain and what it takes to be creative. It is fascinating to me that the human brain learns best (practical application of art, behavior, technology, etc. and retention of lessons learned) from failure.
He, God, designed our human brain to learn best from our mistakes. In fact, when man fell, He didn’t zap man out of existence or force us to obey him like a robot. He has made this long drawn out story wherein we fail miserably and, when the story is done, we will go to heaven and know from our mistakes that rebellion is the worst possible thing. We will all personally know this from our own mistakes. This is why Christ compares sin and rebellion to yeast. Yeast must be given time to grow and develop to see how high it will make the bread rise. God waits for us to learn that, as sin and rebellion grow, it will only take our lives to new lows of pain and evil. Sin never stands still but always grows.
So does that mean that God condones my sins and mistakes? Definitely not. God’s wrath is against sin but He loves the sinner and knows how we learn. We have a sin nature and the righteous covering of Jesus to cover us. We will fall. We will make mistakes. The journey of the Christian life is set within a narrow path and, at times, we trip and fall but we are to get up and learn from that failure and keep moving on the path. We learn from our mistakes within this safe bubble called Righteousness by Faith. Without the safe bubble, when we forsake God, we are no longer making mistakes but are choosing death. We are then experiencing death instead of life on a daily basis.
Should we despair because we make mistakes? No, we need to learn from them and keep moving. We need to look at our mistakes as the most expensive academy wherein we learn the cost of sin and rebellion. In addition, despairing because of our failures and mistakes is a self-focus. When all we do is look at the foreboding circumstances around us, we are focused on ourselves instead of Christ. We must open the Bible and ask God to point us to Christ.
We are God’s children, and God is extremely patient with us. He lets us have our own way. He says, “You think you can live without me? Go ahead.” He allows us to make a mess of our lives. He allows us to make a mess of our country and our community, of our marriages and everything else, until we come to the end of our resources and say, “God, please, you take over.”
God gives us freedom to choose to make failure after failure in our freedom hoping that this time our creative brains, designed with the stamp of the image of God, will learn from our failure and turn to Him and ask Him to take over. God was standing over us the entire time we were making a failure. With every failure that made us hurt, He hurt even more than we could ever feel or imagine. He waits as long as it takes for us to turn to Him. He doesn’t say, “I told you so. Now you can wallow in your mess.” He doesn’t do that. He says, “I will accept you with open arms.”
The more failures and mistakes we stubbornly choose to make on our own, the more scars we have in life. The wonderful good news of the gospel is that God takes those scars and gives them each a story to bless and comfort others with. We know from the story of Mary Magdalene that those that are aware that they have been forgiven of many mistakes and failures have a greater capacity to love.
The creative brain outside of God will learn from mistakes and failures but will also have tremendous scars. You might have learned painful lessons along the way but you will fail to experience true joy as you struggle to forgive yourself and others. BUT the creative brain in Christ will be all the more creative because the TRUE POWER behind the creative brain’s capability to learn best from mistakes is love and humility. In Christ our worst moments become our greatest testimony. In Christ our greatest failures become the greatest learned lessons to share with others. Our level of creativity is expanded as we experience love and forgiveness. We see creative potential in others as we experience this love and forgiveness that has been given to us.
The Cross increases and expands creativity in the brain. The Bible is the deepest well of creative thinking and writing on our planet and yet it is often overlooked and put aside for other forms of human philosophical musings when it is because of the Bible that we, as humans, have any musings in the first place.
My failures and mistakes belong to Jesus. He is the sin bearer not I. My creative brain was never designed to bear the burden and learn from life’s most painful mistakes all by itself. I was designed to throw them completely on a Savior. I was designed to, “Consider myself dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.” Romans 6:11. True creativity is in the Creator. My brain is the most creative and alive in Christ and I take that creativity and pick up the most creative thing in all the universe: seeing the Creator in all my fellow human beings. This is what it means to have the Faith OF Jesus. Jesus was the most creative mind to ever walk the earth and I want His mind in me.
Will I still make mistakes? Yes. I will have a growth process in Christ. But that is when I allow Jesus to take the yeast of sin and reverse it. Instead of more and more sin it will creatively reverse and be less. But I will never see that or feel it because, the closer I get to the greatest Creative mind in the universe and beyond, the more I will feel how “in the box” my mind and sinful flesh really are. I will notice my character flaws and desire to be more like Jesus than ever. But the creative brain recognizes a need for balance. Though I recognize my flaws, I will not focus and dwell on them! However, they are there. “He that has started a good work will finish it.” That is a promise! It is not about my mistakes and failures. It is about Jesus and THAT is truly good news. I have lost all confidence in my own abilities and claim Jesus’ abilities. I point not to myself or to others but to Him!
The question is, “Have you lost all confidence in yourself?” Have you realized that your only hope is in Jesus Christ and His Righteousness? That is the purpose of exposing us to our problem. We don’t have to keep learning the hard way with no hope of turning failures into learning lessons, growth, and blessings. The word of God says that God’s wrath is revealed from heaven against ungodliness and unrighteousness. I don’t have to go through the process to learn it. The word of God tells me that. So why are we waiting to learn the hard way? Let us realize now that our faith looks not at ourselves but on Jesus Christ and His Righteousness.
May each one of us realize that God’s wrath is against ungodliness and unrighteousness because He loves you, not because He’s angry with you. He wants you to turn back to Him. He wants you to accept Him as the only Source of hope, salvation, and Righteousness. Whether it is in terms of your standing before God or whether it is in terms of Christian living, the formula is always the same: “Not I, but Christ.”
