First, watch this thing. If nothing else, watch the first four minutes.
http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html
Though this video is going on six years old, it's message is still tragically true.
Whether we realize it or not, much of our creativity has been killed off. We have a subconscious fear of trying something new because we are the products of a culture which trains us to believe that new ideas are often too dangerous to be pursued. Couple this with our ingrained need for affirmation in order to feel successful and you have a society which subtly ostracizes those who would operate outside of the norm.
Some of you may be thinking of very creative people who are society seems to celebrate. True, certain hallmark individuals have tried something new and were heralded as heroes. I'm glad you're thinking of these people, because I think they teach us a great deal about how creativity works in our society. We love creativity, but only when it "works."
An example; the film "Moneyball." If you haven't seen this movie yet, go watch it, because I'm about to ruin the ending (though it's still a very good story). Essentially, a man tries to reinvent the governing system of baseball, a system which has existed for over a century. In some ways, this man's new concept worked well. In the end, however, they didn't win the last game of the season, and this new ideology was decried as a failure.
Each of us has a time in mind when this happened. We tried something new, and ultimately it didn't work out, and we wanted to scrap the whole thing as a failure. I see this unfolding in my own blog archive. My post prior to this one didn't pan out the way I had hoped, and my friend James helped me to realize I had gone after that particular experiment with the wrong intentions. After thinking about it a great deal, I decided to abandon the project. The reason I haven't posted anything for almost four months is because I fell into the lie that if one creative idea doesn't pan out how you thought it would, it's better to scrap the whole thing than risk again.
This thinking, all too popular in our society, is destructive in more ways than we can imagine. The danger of only looking at the "success" of something in the short game is greater than we could know. Let's take a look at a some examples of pivotal events which, at first, look an awful lot like failures.
The Exodus: In terms of short term gains, the Exodus of God's people out of Egypt was a pretty gigantic failure. The Israelites traveled through the desert, experiencing God's provision and looking forward to the promised land. Upon arriving at said promised land, they got scared and ran the other way. In turn, they ended up wandering around the desert until an entire generation was dead.
Does that sound like something that worked? Absolutely not! This pattern of early failures continues throughout Scripture. Take another example:
Jesus After Feeding the Five Thousand: At the time in which Jesus had the most people following him, he decides to drop what someone might refer to as a "truth bomb," including some strange demands that sound an awful lot like cannibalism. At the end of the day, his crowds of thousands dwindled down until we're not sure who's left except the twelve guys who didn't really have anywhere else to go (John 6:68).
This continues right up to the modern day. A friend lamented to me that it seemed the gospel just wasn't having much of an effect. Our Christian community on campus seemed to be drawing in a bunch of people who were already Christian. Those who didn't already love Jesus seemed to be fantastically disinterested. From a certain viewpoint, it doesn't really seem like the modern Church is "working."
All this can seem pretty hopeless, but what happens if we stop? What would have happened if each of these new, creative ideas were abandoned?
The future of many things, including God's message to this world, have been given to us. We are the child Sir Robinson talks about, trying to draw the picture of God. At times, our picture looks ugly, misshapen, it looks like it failed. It certainly doesn't help that our society plays the role of the teacher, telling us we might as well give up because "nobody knows what God looks like." What happens if we choose to believe in that voice?
Let's not find out. Let's be the people who say to that teacher "they will in a minute," and keep right on drawing.
With God's love and grace,
Taylor
