Yet, there’s a more fundamental and foundational life than the Christian life: that is, “creature life.” Before we are Christians, we are creatures; before God is our Savior, He is our Creator. And He’s not just made us, but in His Word (via sound interpretation) and in His world (via sound scientific research), He instructs us how to care for the apex of His creation – our body-and-soul humanity.

A renewed understanding of our full-orbed creatureliness, with due place given to the body, will produce safety, piety, productivity, and creativity.

Safety
Starting with salvation rather than creation results in a dualism that views the soul as the only important element of our humanity, the body being either a hindrance or an irrelevance. All our problems are “spiritual problems” and the almost exclusive focus is soul-health.

In general, those who cultivate healthy souls enjoy healthier bodies. However, God did not just give us souls to protect our bodies; He gave us bodies to protect our souls. If we sleep well, rest well, exercise well, eat well, and so on, our minds will be clearer, our resolve will be stronger, our emotions will be steadier, and our moral defenses will be higher. When we are tired or stressed, we are much more susceptible to temptation than when well-rested and well-fed. Why do you think the devil assaulted Christ after 40 days of fasting in the desert?

While we cannot neglect our bodies and expect our souls not to suffer serious consequences, conversely, increased body-care should boost soul-care too.

Piety
An excessively soul-focused Christianity also tends to end up with a narrow view of Christian piety and devotion, where worship becomes associated only with “soul” activities such as prayer, Bible reading, and praise.

However, when we include the body in our “spirituality,” the opportunities for piety and devotion are multiplied beyond church and quiet times. By caring for our bodies in accordance with God’s instructions we worship and serve our Creator rather than the creature. Restful Sabbaths, sensible sleeping and eating habits, regular exercising, etc., may then be transformed into conscious acts of worship.

Yes, that means a sleeping Christian may be worshipping God more sincerely than a pastor vainly burning the midnight oil to perfect his sermon (Ps. 127:1-2).

Productivity
If living as a creature with a limited and needy body means taking a day off and working shorter hours, will my productivity not take a hit?

Apart from the fact that even secular research is now revealing significant productivity loss if we work more than 40 hours a week, we may find that trusting our Maker’s instructions for our bodies actually produces greater long-term productivity. The 19^th century Presbyterian pastor, Thomas Murphy, wrote words about the ministry that apply to every walk of life:

The minister must have his resting day as well as other men or he will suffer the consequences. His physical constitution demands it. If it is denied, in time he will break down in health, as hundreds are doing. Nor must it be supposed that devoting one day of the week to absolute rest will be a loss of time in the end. No, the work of the other days will be more vigorous; the physical and mental tone will be kept up, and at the end of the year far more will be accomplished.

Also, although famous pastors who worked twenty-five hours a day, eight days a week are often held up as examples, what’s usually ignored is that long-term ill health or early death limited their productivity.

Creativity
Human beings bear God’s image. Part of that means being creative in our callings, whether that be as teachers, parents, students, mechanics, gardeners, etc. We all have opportunities to invent, innovate, and improvise.

Jonah Lehrer’s book Imagine! begins with an analysis of how the most creative people make breakthroughs. He found that most “Eureka” moments came during “downtime,” in periods of resting, relaxing, and recreation. It’s not called “re-creation” for nothing!

So, if you’re looking for fresh ideas, your first step should be to rest and refresh yourself. The more we live as dependent creatures, the more creative we will be.

An edited version of this article first appeared in Tabletalk, the monthly devotional from Ligonier Ministries.

Yes, our Creator’s call to create like Him will not just help you see your daily work and calling in a brighter and better light, it will also improve your professional prospects and increase your salary.

As Tony Wagner reported in Creating Innovators, corporations and institutions are increasingly looking for evidence of creativity and innovation in their hiring and promotional decisions:

• According to a 2008 Conference Board report, “U.S. employers rate creativity/innovation among the top five skills that will increase in importance over the next five years.”
• Stimulating innovation/creativity and enabling entrepreneurship is among the top 10 challenges of U.S. CEO’s.
• In a 2010 McKinsey & Company global survey, 84 percent of executives say innovation is extremely or very important.

In a world of intense global competition, companies are desperately trying to stand out through innovative products, services, and marketing. In most fields, it’s no longer enough to be average or even good at what you do. Human Resource managers want to see evidence of initiative and innovation, even if it’s in an entirely unrelated field. It’s problem-solving ability and opportunity-making (and taking) character they are looking for. “Has he taken any risks in his life? Has she branched out on her own before? Has he done anything different?”

Christians who know THE Creator and learn from Him how to create like Him in their own little corner of the creation, should have a massive competitive advantage in the workplace and marketplace.

They also get to glorify and enjoy God better.

And stressed-out Mom, when you did the kitchen makeover, did you once think, “I’m creating like my Creator”?

My muddy plumber friend, have you ever seen your daily work as a replay of Genesis 1, bringing light out of darkness, order out of disorder?

Inspiring teacher, do you know that you are creating like your Creator by spicing up your world history lessons with videos and group activities?

No, I didn’t think so. Creativity and innovation is for science labs, artists’ easels, and designers’ studios isn’t it? It’s got nothing to do with learning, organizing, draining, or teaching does it? It’s for Steve Jobs, Salvador Dali, and Coco Chanel, not students, Moms, plumbers and teachers isn’t it? It’s for the extraordinary; not us ordinary people, right?

Extraordinary calling for ordinary people
Wrong. No matter how ordinary we are, we all have an extraordinary calling to be creators. Our Creator created us like Him, and called us to create like Him in everyday life.

Every word we speak, every decision we make, every service we offer, and even every customer complaint presents us with a choice: create, status quo, or destroy? Make, maintain, or mutilate?

Just think about the next conversation you have. Each sentence is your creation. You decide whether to create it and how. Will it build up, destroy, or do nothing. Will it be positive or negative? Long or short? Loud or quiet? Angry or kind? Factual or figurative? The creative possibilities are endless.

Saucers, staplers, and screwdrivers
Even problems are creative opportunities, because every problem is overcome by creating a solution. Every item in your kitchen drawer, office cupboard, or tool box is the result of creative problem solving, usually by unknown ordinary people going about their ordinary everyday lives.

And yet we don’t often think like this do we?

And the main reason is we don’t know Genesis 1-2 well enough and the patterns it lays down for our everyday lives. I was struck by my own ignorance of this when I started reading secular books on creativity and began seeing how many of them unknowingly paralleled the creation account in Genesis 1-2. As the authors laid out their techniques and methods of creativity, I kept thinking, “That’s what God did. That’s what God’s like.”

When I went back and re-read Genesis 1-2, I began to see principles and practices of creativity that I had completely overlooked. When God created everything, He laid down patterns for His image-bearing creators living and working in His creation: planning, imagination, teamwork, initiative, action, organization, routine, focus, beauty, happiness, optimism, satisfaction, rest, and so on.

First question
That means the first question we need to ask in the morning is not “What will I do?” but “Who am I?” Or, even more accurately, “Whose am I?”

When we see ourselves, and help our children to see, that we are God’s creatures, made in His image to create like Him, we not only know who we are, we will also know what we should do, how we should do it, and why we are doing it.

All Christians believe in the truth of a Creator and do creative things. But we need to bring that truth and these practices together and to the front of our Christian minds. When we see our calling is to create like our Creator, we exalt Him in everything and also invest every activity with new significance, meaning, and even worship.

Eyes Wide Open

It also leaves me open-mouthed asking, “Why isn’t everyone talking about it? Why isn’t this book all over the Christian blogosphere?”

When I went to its Amazon page, I was stunned to discover only one review! It was a five star review, unsurprisingly. The surprise was only one review. Where are your friends when you need them!?

Marketing or Beauty Failure?
When I see the dozens of reviews and five stars attached to so many other Christian books of far less worth, I’m inclined to think that this is failure of marketing.

Or maybe it reflects a general lack of Christian interest in and passion for beauty in our world. Some Christians are perhaps too “spiritual” to see anything beautiful in the world. Others are possibly too “worldly” to appreciate beauty and see its spiritual dimensions. And the myriads of busy activists don’t want to pause and ponder: “Just give us something practical.”

A Transforming Book
So, how can I encourage you to read this book? Let me put it in one sentence: It will utterly transform the way you view, experience, and interact with the world and the God who made it. Yes, it’s one of the most spiritual, beautiful, and practical books I’ve read in a long time.

It’s good to see a growing number of Christian authors calling Christians to rediscover their biblical calling to be the greatest creators, connoisseurs, and communicators of beauty. But I’d recommend this book to thoughtful non-Christians too as it paints a picture of Gospel-centered Christianity in such a positively beautiful and inspiring light.

Top Ten Truths from the Book

1. God created beauty, is the Beauty behind every beauty, and is the measure of what is truly beautiful.

2. As God created beauty to lead our affections to Him, all created beauty should lead us to give thanks, honor, and worship to Him. The ultimate goal of all beauty is wonder and worship.

3. Nature is God’s self-portrait…God creates beauty so we can know what He is like. God made everything – every atom, every grain of sand, every bird, every water molecule, every person (including you) – as a reflection of His nature.

4. As should be expected of those made in the image of the Creator our passion for creating and the pleasure we experience from human creativity dominates our lives and culture: home décor, landscaping, photography, clothes, woodwork, bird-watching, scrapbooking, sports, mowing straight lines, fit bodies, etc.

5. Jesus is the Beautiful One. His beauty is a tapestry of all that is glorious in God intertwined with humanity’s capability to reflect the image of God.

6. Humanity’s blindness to Jesus’ beauty is spiritually devastating.

7. Until we see the beauty of Christ, we will never see the true beauty in anything else. If we love Him, we will love seeing Him in all the created wonders in this world. Once our heart is alive to God’s beauty in Christ, it is also alive to God’s beauty everywhere else.

8. Our five senses should become partners with the eyes of the heart in perceiving the glory of God…Everywhere I look, everything I feel, hear, smell, and taste transmits the beauty of God through the beauty of creation.

9. A Christian’s experience of wonder and joy in beauty should be far greater than that of a non-Christian. A Christian’s God-focused enjoyment of creation makes it taste better, look better, feel better, smell better, and sound better. Eternal beauty will remind us of this world’s wonders and pleasures, but only faintly. We won’t miss them or long for them.

10. Heaven will be a super-sensory, indescribable, and joyous experience of beauty that will turn seamlessly unite pleasure and worship.

Top Ten Quotes from the Book

1. Beauty is both a gift and a map. It is a gift to be enjoyed and a map to be followed back to the source of the beauty with praise and thanksgiving.

2. Beauty boomerangs from God into created beauty, then through the senses and soul of the image-bearer, and finally back to God with praise and glory.

3. Alice must grow small if she is to be Alice in Wonderland. – G. K. Chesterton

4. Since everything God created is theology (God-knowledge) all creation is a treasure hunt in which God has left clues—essentially pictures of Himself.

5. Like a bread-crumb trail, earthly beauty chaperones us on a path to “see” the beauty of Christ, for His beauty to lead to wonder, and for wonder to lead us to a life of worship.

6. Each human person individually bears more of a reflection of God than the rest of the universe combined.

7. It’s only the serious theologians who are on the beach at sunset. I refer to us as “theologians” because, whether we realize it or not, we are all going to enjoy a theological experience.

8. Art has the mystical task of reminding us in its productions of the beautiful that was lost and of anticipating its perfect coming luster. – Abraham Kuyper

9. The Son of God was a carpenter. He created things. That says something, doesn’t it? God likes it when image-bearers reflect His character by creating beauty.

10. Beauty is beautiful no matter who makes it.

Why did these ideas never happen? In many cases it was fear of exposing the idea to public scrutiny and the possibility of criticism, mockery, or —worst of all — silence. The idea was born, lived, and died in fatal isolation.

Scott Belsky’s survey of top creatives in Making Ideas Happen found that community engagement was absolutely essential to moving ideas forward. The myth of the solitary genius is just that, a myth. Although some of the great inventions are associated with individuals — Thomas Edision, Alexander Bell, etc. — closer inspection almost always reveals that it was a community effort.

Physical and digital communities
Although your community may be limited to your physical environment – your family, church, workplace, neighbors, etc., the hyperconnectivity of the Internet age has multiplied the possibilities for community engagement:

• A writer can share draft chapters on her blog.
• Artists or photographers can display their work on a website or Flickr.
• Singers can post free mp3’s of their new songs for review.
• Preachers can post their sermons in written or audio form.
• Teachers can share their lesson plans.

Benefits of sharing our work with a community are:

• Accountability is strengthened through public commitment.
• Creative energy is channeled into stated goals.
• Feedback exposes holes and refines the idea.
• Relationships provide support and inspiration.
• Resources are multiplied through sharing.
• Marketing and promotion opportunities are increased through wider stakeholding.
• New ideas are generated and new dimensions to old ideas are developed.

Some other tips from these chapters:

• The more diverse the community group the more helpful the engagement (variety in ages, genders, social circles, ethnicity, character – dreamers and doers, etc).
• An MIT study published in the Harvard Business Review found that employees with the most extensive online and face-to-face networks are up to 30% more productive.
• The most successful creatives have a fearless approach to sharing ideas.
• Take an interest in helping others with their ideas too.

Best-selling author and Wired Magazine editor Chris Anderson says: “I don’t believe you can do anything by yourself. Any project that’s run by a single person is basically destined to fail.” (Making Ideas Happen, 121).

Previous posts in the Making Ideas Happen series:
Making Ideas Happen: 99% Perspiration
A Swear Word for Creative Types
Paper v Pixels 

“ORGANIZATION!”

It’s a terrible word isn’t it.

Don’t dare mention it in the hearing of creative people.

In his research for Making Ideas Happen, Scott Belsky found not only that most creatives described themselves as messy or chaotic, but that the vast majority wore it as a badge of honor!

I once knew a Pastor like that, a “Conquistador of Chaos” as Julie Morgenstern would describe him. Procedures, systems, routines, filing, diaries and To-do lists were traitors and enemies to be kept out of that study at all costs!

While bureaucracy has sometimes suffocated good ideas, Belsky argues that “your approach to productivity largely determines your creative output. The way you organize projects, prioritize, and manage your energy is arguably more important than the quality of the ideas you wish to pursue.” [14]

Belsky uses a mathematical equation to prove his point:

Creativity x Organization = Impact.

100 Creativity x 0 Organization = 0 Impact

2 Creativity x 50 Organization = 100 Impact

But imagine if you were able to combine left-brain with right-brain to produce this sum:

100 Creativity x 100 Organization = 10,000 Impact

Well you don’t need to imagine, because there is such a company and it’s name is….Apple!

Surprising in a way isn’t it. Apple is usually associated with stunning innovation and beautiful design. But Apple is also consistently in the top 5 of Fortune 500 companies for such mundane matters as managing the supply chain.

Structure and organization are at least as important as idea generation if we are at all interested in execution and production. And we shouldn’t be surprised at this; after all, THE Creator is a God of order, not confusion (1 Cor. 14:33,40).

Belsky pleads with creatives (and that includes preachers, teachers, entrepreneurs, students, homemakers, etc.,) to have “a relentless bias toward action” in order to push any idea forward to execution, and quotes a number of successful creatives to back him up:

The truth is, creativity isn’t about wild talent as much as it’s about productivity (Robert Sutton, Professor at Stanford School of Engineering).

Seth Godin once said that the vast majority of the products or organizations he had built failed. “But,” he explained, “the reason that I’ve managed a modicum of success is because I just keep shipping.”

Jesse Rothstein, super-salesman at Proctor & Gamble and founder of Coach for America, has a secret: “Perseverance and a simple conviction that he adheres to with an almost religious fervor: he follows up like crazy.”

“I’m starting to believe that life is just about following up,” he told Belsky.

Rothstein’s brilliance lies with the fact that he always identifies the necessary actions for each project and then takes them (and enforces them) relentlessly. He always follows up until every action is done. [86].

See my Introduction to Making Ideas Happen here. Tomorrow we’ll look at Belsky’s Action Method, his simple organizational tool for helping us Make (more) Ideas Happen.

“I block out the morning from 8 am to noon to think, read and write. ” He unplugs everything electronic, including his Internet connection. Although he has a reputation for reclusiveness, when asked about this, he replies: “I’m not reclusive. But I need to be in the cave to work.”

One of his favorite quotes comes from the famously disciplined French novelist Gustave Flaubert: “Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.” For Collins, high-quality work requires long stretches of high-quality thinking. “White space,” as he calls it, is the prerequisite for fresh, creative thought. It’s the time that he spends with nothing scheduled, so that he can empty his mind, like the proverbial teacup, and refill it with new thought.

He aims to spend 100 days next year in the white space. “As a great teacher, Rochelle Myers, taught me, you can’t make your own life a work of art if you’re not working with a clean canvas,” he says. (Another smart bit of Collins philosophy: “Speak less. Say more.”

So how much white space do you have in your life? And how do you secure it?

1. Without the doing, the dreaming is useless.
2. There will always be another idea that looks better than the one you’re working on.
3. Don’t let your high expectations hold you back.
4. The answer will only arrive after we stop looking for it.
5. Grit, the stubborn refusal to quit, is the single best predictor of success.
6. Creative greatness is the result of an ensemble.
7. Find your unique superpower.
8. Create an environment where people can be their best selves.
9. Keep a work diary because you’re busy.
10. Celebrate your small wins.
11. We’re most productive when we’re doing meaningful work.
12. You need to earn every single user who visits your site.
13. Always say “Yes, and…”
14. Be positive, be real, and act confidently what you are
15. Diversity isn’t just nice – it’s necessary.
16. Don’t found “the next big thing,” found “the next big culture.”
17. Perfection is not overrated – quality matters.
18. Trust the data, even if it surprises you.
19. Forge ahead: invent your own research process.
20. Transparency and vulnerability always wins.
21. It’s not the first impression that counts. It’s the second, third, fourth, and fifth impression.
22. Listen to your customers to transform your business.
23. Hire slow, fire fast.
24. Do your “One Thing” better than anyone else.
25. At the core of any exciting project is a difficult problem.
26. You must ship (preferably within a year).
27. If you’re not having doubt, you’re not pushing hard enough.
28. Frustration is where my creativity comes from.
29. Think of your work as a gift.
30. Just ask! Ask for more time, more creativity, more money.
31. Fall in love with building the capacity of people.
32. Propose ideas without polish.
33. Don’t surrender strategy to execution.