Creativity evolves.

It enjoys a process similar to the end results it is the catalyst for. People are born with /nurtured into a certain amount of creativity, but that creativity needs a level of skill for its pallet. A creative graphic designer isn’t inherently a creative passer in soccer. During the journey from beginner to innovator, skill and creativity grow simultaneously. I know a lot of people with skill in areas but not creativity. Malcolm Gladwell’s (for my money) best work, “Outliers” tries to explain success. He outlines the 10,000 hour rule far better than I could “reproduce” here, but part of the instincts you gain in all those hours is the freedom for creativity.

These are the stages that I have gone through personally and have to keep myself from getting stagnant in, or returning to during my journey towards creativity.

STEP 1: Reproduction- I am not a good graphic designer. It is probably number 11 on my list of responsibilities if that list is 13 items long. When I have to design something, step one inevitably includes the words “goggle image”. My son was given a drum set a few months ago. When it gets used as anything but a shiny clothes hanger it is used simultaneously with the radio. My son will listen to a song and try to reproduce its drum beat. This was instinctive. It is where creativity starts.Chuck Klosterman in “Sex, Drugs and Cocoa puffs” in his chapter about tribute bands concisely and accurate says “being consciously derivative is not easy”, and he is right, which is why it is the perfect starting point for creativity.

Step 2: Modification- This is why as hard as American Idol tries to break past itself, it will always get the soccer moms and the tweens, and not a ton beyond that (although that is obviously based on ratings, a whole lot) because it is at its best the modification level of creativity. Everyone is Janis, or Aretha, or somebody to Randy. He goes on about the amazing “artist” not just performer that so and so is. The rest of us though see it and are largely not moved by what we see. maybe they are incredible performers, but what are they really doing? Shortening, riffing, and ripping songs done better by the original artist. They are only modifying someone’s creativity and calling it their own. This is going to be the end of my beloved medium called preaching. If only more preachers were Asian, then they could completely rip off Francis Chan’s messages including his stories of Asian heritage. For now though, they will have to settle on modification. Don’t get me wrong, I have done it. I have heard an unbelievable sermon and been moved to use varying degrees of it, but this is NOT creativity. Efficiency? Yes. Creativity? No.

Step 3: Creation- I have a friend who is a graphic designer and when I was talking about these stages of creativity in someone’s area of expertise, he was telling me I just outlined graphic design school. It starts with education of history and theory in your field, and in this stage you reproduce other people’s work. You then shift to modification, where you are using people’s work as you launching pad, as opposed to a blank canvas as a launching pad. You end up, ideally being able to create with originality and from a place of inspiration. This stage is squeezing jello. When you have it and hold it tightly you don’t have it at all. I have found myself slipping back into modification, and honestly even when I am not outright modifying, my background still influences and my internal parameters for where I can go, and what can be done is set by my forefathers.

By way of benediction:

We’ll begin
With a spin
Traveling in
The world of my creation
What we’ll see
Will defy
Explanation

That is a direct quote from my five year old son. We weren’t talking about God. We weren’t talking at all. We were watching the world blur by through our windows in the car. We were each in our own worlds not saying anything. The thing is, he wasn’t even really talking to me. He was more just talking to himself. It was as if there was a realization that he was verbally confirming to himself. He had just arrived at a conclusion and he was saying it audibly as if he need to try it on for size. I guess he just wanted to see how it felt rattling around in his little ears.

I was pretty sure he said what I thought he said so I asked him to repeat himself. He knew there was a bit more explanation needed so he told me what he said and he explained why he felt that way.

Son: I don’t like God because he didn’t give me powers.

Me: Like super powers, like Superman, or The Hulk?

Son: Yeah, like”Aang”, from “Avatar:The Last Airbender”. He has powers, and I really want powers and I don’t have any. I want powers more than I want anything else.

My son’s theological process makes sense. I assume it goes as follows: God makes us as we are/ God made him/ God made him without powers.

I suppose on some level this is cute. I was struck not by how “cute” this was, or anything like that, but by how common this theological process is. I hear this same theological process all the time. Every time something happens that someone doesn’t like they generally follow this theological process. I didn’t like _______ when it happened/didn’t happen. The Bible says God is in control. I question/ doubt/ don’t like God because he allowed/didn’t allow _______ to happen. Are these situations really that much different? Would they be that much different from God’s perspective. My son doesn’t realize that people don’t have powers (unless of course there is a wide-spread governmental cover-up, which there could be), but we don’t realize the things we can’t see. If you were the all knowing, all seeing, all powerful God is there really that much difference between someone complaining about not being to see why they don’t have super powers and someone complaining about not being a able to see why He would allow them to be unemployed, or have a death in the family, or whatever.

These situations don’t change God. They only change us.

If you really, truly believe in God (which is a HUGE first step) when things like this come up you have limited options. He is either:

1. Creator, but not that involved

2. A mean child burning ants with a magnifying glass

3. A being that knows more than us, and faith is needed to proceed

I am not saying that doubt isn’t healthy. I believe doubt is very healthy for anyone who strives to find and follow God, because without doubt what we have is blind faith.

What I am trying to say is that faith is hard. Faith is hard for every person on the planet, and it is hard at every age. Faith is a learned skill. The people who are honest about their doubts, and still pursue faith… those are the people with super powers… those people are my super hero.

Jillian Michael’s smirk was in perfect symmetry with her midriff. It wasn’t so much the drop ceiling that stung on departure as it was the ceiling above it. When the world’s rotation slowed to a crawl between the time the nurse first pressed the cold, jello covered ping pong paddle against my wife’s lower belly and the first beat to lub-dub its way through the speakers, I’m pretty sure my body ricocheted out of the room and into the stratasphere. At least that is how it felt. The night before, someone told us a story about someone they knew that had no beat when they attended this exact Dr.’s appointment in their paternal journey.

The first Lub was followed startlingly closely by a dub. The nurse wasn’t phased by how quickly the lubs and dubs were coming. Tears. Relief. Harper!

That moment will forever be ingrained into whichever lobe holds those kinds of things. The sketch above is the mental image I couldn’t shake from my head if I stuck it in a paint mixer. A couple Dr.’s appointments later and we are still lubbing and dubbing nicely.

There was a moment there where it was as if God was playing some sort of celestial game of peekabo and He showed his face more clearly than normal. It was the exact moment when Harper’s strong little heart beat first vibrated though my hammer, anvil and stirrup.

In the Bible that is called a “Selah”. A selah is basically a musical instruction, mostly in Psalms, for the reader to “stop and listen”. I believe we all have Selahs periodically. Some are joyous and some are catastrophic. They are all selahs nonetheless. A Selah is life’s greatest apologetic. I can’t possibly prove that God is. Why should I try? If someone wants to ignore their selahs what would my words possibly do. It is far easier to live life like Statler and Waldorf then it is to believe what you feel.

May your selah slap you in the face on your way out of the earth’s atmosphere.

Lets assume God is up.

If you looked down at a large group of people, how would that change how you see them? Would that make them more or less visually recognizable? I would imagine only the most unusually shaped people would stick out. Those whose body type is seussically odd would be the most obviously noticeable.

We only know our experience. Reincarnation obviously aside, (may I not come back as a gym bag) we have no other life experience to compare and contrast our life to. This is partially why self assigned guilt is so powerful. We see our imperfections with the clarity of a fish looking up at dog through muddy water, but even still we understand our shortcomings far clearer than we do the other 7 billion or so people’s shortcomings who we share the planet with.

Imagine for a second you saw everyone’s shortcomings clearer than even they did. Imagine also how underwhelming and run of the mill yours would be. This in not to minimize how God-awful you are. At living rightly you suck. Unfortunately we all do.

I Peter 2:21 calls us to follow in Christ’s footsteps however, which means compare our life not to other’s lives but to the life Jesus lived. Which is where the balancing act comes in. We have to balance an understanding that it is in our nature to do wrong, we and shedding that nature like a man handcuffed to a treadmill locked on “sprint” sheds el-bees. We will never walk like a “Christian” (little Christs) but we must put one foot in front of the other regardless.

Too often I have seen young men weighed down with the weight of their guilt brought on by unbridled hormones to the point where they become disheartened about faith in general.

God sees all. God sees my wrong, but counts it as right because Christ was right. Our wrong however, is in exact ratio to our closeness with God, which is why our struggles call us to action.

Good luck on your balancing act fellow walkers of the tightrope over rationalization, guilt and a losing of the fight for right. Ours is a precarious and slow jaunt. The other platform our rope is attached to is the platform inscribed with “well done, faithful few”.

For he who is not against us is for us.

Mark 9:40

Are we on the same team as these two? If you were ask these guys their motives for making and wearing these jackets, their motives would probably be pretty similar to the motives behind why a lot of churches do what they do. If you were to ask them about their God they serve it would probably sound pretty similar to the way people who present themselves very differently would describe their God.

Am I on the same team as these guys?

I sure hope not, because they embarrass me. I want these guys in their jackets to drop me off around the corner from my school so no one sees me with them.

They probably feel as if their stance is the only reasonable one to take. They live lives marked by commitment, devotion, and dedication to what they believe.

I asked Jeremiah the older one if I could take his picture for this website, and he gladly posed. Jude hopped up and hopped over to take his stand next to Jeremiah. Jude had one leg, but he was given an opportunity to share his jacket so he wanted to do that. The fact he stood up and hopped over made me feel bad because I didn’t know then what I thought about them, and therefore what I would be saying about their beliefs when I wrote about them. Jude’s girlfriend was beaming with pride. Her shirt, which read “virginity rocks”, worked perfectly with her denim skirt as it’s hem traced the floorboards as she walked.

The breakfast restaurant I met them at shortly thereafter sat them up a steep flight of stairs. The stairs were laborious for Jude and his crutches. Though friendly, I found myself disliking the hostess.

I try to serve God with my life, but is the God on their jacket the same one that receives my prayers? I don’t honestly know.

The only thing I know is that they miss the point. They have reduced God to an executioner dangling danger in front of our faces. Jude’s jacket says “Fear God”. That bit makes a lot of sense positioned between threats.

I’ve never met someone who met Jesus in any real way through these sorts of tactics. I have met people who paint broad strokes about Christians that end up including me based on interactions with people like Jeremiah and Jude.

Do we serve the same God? No. They limit God to an angry shell of who He is. They defile His name and drive people away from Him. They present a partial view as the whole. I take it very seriously when I make claims about God. God promises His ways and thoughts are higher than ours, so it is inherent that when I say anything beyond what He says about himself I am off course. Conversations about God that include a one-way street of a few lines of propaganda cannot possible communicate anything true about Him. These gentlemen reduce God to slogans, and for that we are not on the same team, and in so doing they are not for me. They are against me.

The experience started unexpectedly. A coconut seemingly fell from out of nowhere into the river in front of us as we stood on the banks of the river. We were standing next to one of the eight rivers, that gives Ocho Rios, Jamaica its name. As we follow the flight pattern of the coconut in reverse we trace upwards until we see an early teen boy probably 80 feet in the air holding one-handed onto one of the tallest palm trees you will ever see. He was retrieving coconuts and tossing them down to the boys who would fish them out of the river before they float away to oblivion. Those were the boys whose job description I would want. He boy of elevated courage and well elevation would hold onto the tree with his legs and one of his arms and then whack at the connected coconuts with his fist until he dislodged one allowing gravity to kick in and do the rest. He dislodged four or five and then did a scooting maneuver quickly down the tree by holding onto it with his thighs and leaning against it as if it were a pole he was leaning against as casually as if he were leaning on a kitchen counter discussing a futbol game. Im pretty sure if I ever did successfully perform that same scooting maneuver I would get tree burn (somewhere between rub burn and road rash, but far worse than Indian rug burn on the spectrum) where the sun don’t shine, so I won’t be attempting it any time soon.

We were standing on the banks of one of the eight rivers waiting for our tube ride to start. I pictured a lazy river experience but it was anything but, for our guide at least. His name was Gabriel and he was a hard worker. A few more minutes and we were off the banks and in the tubes. Gabriel job was simple; His job was keep our tubes where they were supposed to be, and keep them away from where they weren’t. He was good at his job. When he wasn’t manhandling out tubes with us in them he was singing. Every so often he would jump out of his tube, stand in the way of the wrong fork in the river and anyone whose trajectory wasn’t going to naturally go the right way down the river he would stand in the way and do his best to prevent them from going that way. The only time someone went where they shouldn’t it wasn’t his fault. A middle aged woman was gliding down the river backwards with her eyes closed and caught a branch in the back of the head. He actually lightly scolded her, which was awesome.

I’ve been thinking a lot about my role as pastor and the chasm between what people often want from us and what they need from us. Not all, but a lot of people want a pastor who is charming, funny, creative, sincere, a leader and a manager, big picture but will never forget to return an email. People want sermons that are creative and fresh, but built on a scripture that in theory has never changed. People in general want to be told what they already believe. Now, I’m not saying that you can’t challenge beliefs, but if you challenge beliefs to often or beliefs that have been held too long people will leave, because that isn’t what they want. I actually read a published article that said a certain controversial former pastor should just focus on what everyone already believes “including him”, that way people would listen to(translation: like) him again. Is that what he/I is/am called to do, teach people what they already believe and know and have believed and known for years… SIGN ME UP FOR THAT!

I don’t know anything but I view my job as a pastor as similar to Gabriel’s job. He fights against the current and helps people who could be helping themselves more navigate their way down the river. To do this he has to quite literally put his feet down. If he stays in the tube he can’t do much, he will be carried with the current just like the people he is serving.

The current I fight is a bit more complex. It is a combination of people’s very nature and the culture we find ourselves in. If you combine culture and our nature a person can very easily just pick their feet up and they will most definitely not stay stationary. They will progress miles down the river.

I, at times have to warn of on-coming danger

I, at times, although rarely, have to scold the careless

I, all the time am surprised by the river itself

I, at times have to help those I have already warned out of the danger I told them was coming.

I am Gabriel. I will be your tube guide today. God made me so and I’m glad he did because I love my job.

“Your ministry is perfectly designed to produce the results you are currently experiencing.”
Andy Stanley

How many areas of life does this phrase apply to?

Your family is perfectly led to produce the dynamics you are currently experiencing.

You body is perfectly worked out for the shape you are currently experiencing.

You relationship with God is perfectly fed for the results you are currently experiencing.

The Panera by my house just recently started posting the calories or every item on the menu next to the item. I haven’t bought any baked goods since. No more “Sure! A cookie does sound good with my meal.” That little cookie’s consequences are obvious. If your choice’s consequences were that obvious would you make different choices?

The truth is our choice’s short-term consequences are rarely much more convoluted than that little cookie’s. When I play basketball too often, I know before I leave the house my son will feel a disconnection from me until I invest intentionally into that relationship. When I feel entitled to raise my voice at my wife, I know before I do it that it will canyon the distance between her and I.

Then what I am talking about can’t be short-term consequences. In the basketball situation, if I choose poorly often enough I’ll never be able to get that relationship back to where it could have been. People’s health choices have obvious short-term consequences, but they never choose to go to the gym to avoid getting a knee replaced in 30 years.

I’m a better arguer than my wife is. Even when I am wrong I can sometimes “win” the argument, but when one party always wins there is an emotional toll to be paid by the loser. If you push the fast forward button 20 years and we would never truly discuss anything ever. At some point she would have given up trying. The short-term consequences were obvious, a frustrated wife. The long-term consequences would have been far more insidious, a permanently severed relationship.

I think of Samuel’s sons in the Bible and the heartbreak that was avoidable. David’s whole life changed after the Bathsheba incident. Do you think the price his children were going to have pay flashed across his mind when he saw her in the tub, because I don’t.

Choices have consequences both short-term and long. Even if you don’ t factor them in their fees must be paid. Think short but for your own sake and the sake of the people around you, think long.