When we say that Jesus is Lord, we confess he is the Lord of everything and as our creator we should mirror his creativity.  In the recent past many Christians were held in bondage to legalism, we were told that godly people don’t go to the cinema, theater, or participate in ungodly amusements. We have reacted to this legalism by  embracing freedom but sometimes we wonder how to use that freedom. Is the only creativity valid for a christian that which is explicitly christian or is there a wider dimension to it all?

Creativity: Our starting point should be that all creativity reflects the creator, if this is so then as we create we will want to do so for the glory of God. when bach composed any piece of music he did so desiring to glorify God, this applies to his concertos as much to his religious music. Bach knew that he served Christ as Lord and therefore in all he did he wanted to reflect the beauty of the creator. Having a personal relationship with Jesus should make us more creative, we can cook,paint, compose music, write novels and plays all to the glory of Jesus. we don’t necessarily have to anything that shows that we are christian s  in what we do. Some people have felt that for a work to be christian it has to have a message that shows that it is christian, our creator has designed us to be creative in all that we do.

Culture: according to the Bible Christ is the transformer of culture. He is the one who we submit all our cultural endeavors to. We lament that this world is going to the devil but we fail to follow our master in creating good things. with all the musical ability we have in the christian community,surely we have the ability to compose wholesome pop songs and compose other types of music that reflects the creativity of our Saviour. If we are really to change our culture from the bottom up, we will need to serve the Lord in all of these areas. We must not narrow all of this down to evangelistic and prophetic creativity ( I am thankful for books such as “Born to Create” which demonstrates how God can use the arts to minister to people). We need to embrace the fact that God created us to enjoy life and to serve him in our culture by making things of beauty.

The Arts: I have said quite a bit about the arts above but I believe that we need to grasp a truth that Calvin demonstrates in his commentary on the book of Genesis and that is that all creativity is a gift of God’s common grace. If we see creativity as a gift of God then we will find a new found freedom to create. Several writers have dealt with thee issues in more depth, I would particularly to recommend the writings of Francis and Edith Scheaffer ,and those of H.R Rookmaaker, H Dooyeweerd and Richard Mouw.

In all that we do let us seek to live under the conscious acknowledgement of the Lordship of Christ and as we do so we will show forth his beauty in a multitude of ways.