The church and creation

We share God's creativity

Richard Kew, Director of Anglican Forum for the Future, says:

We in the church have abandoned creativity and imagination to the Disney organisation. Most great imaginative ideas come out of entertainment. We rarely see them in the life of the church.

However, if God is such a creative God as this vast and varied universe so eloquently declares, then his people should be the most creative people on earth. We only have to look at the variety of living forms to see something of the amazing creativity of God. We are told that approximately 1,750,000 species of life have been formally described since 1753 and 1758, the starting years for plant and animal names respectively. That is when the Swedish naturalist Carl von Linne published seminal works listing biological names. Currently, some 13,000 new species are formally described each year. At this rate it will take the next millennium to complete the task of recording the estimated 13 million yet to be listed. God's delight in his creation, which the psalmist obviously shares, is beautifully spelt out in Psalm 104. The death of the sparrow is meaningful to him (Matthew 10:29).

Surely, being created "in the image of God" means that we share his creative desire. We are, as J R R Tolkien said, "sub-creators". We cannot start from nothing as God did, but he has given us plenty of raw material to work with. Whether it be in dance, song, music, poetry, art, decoration, writing, storytelling, drama, craft, imaginative worship, education, philosophy, science or whatever, the church should be at the forefront of creativity. And this should apply to our work and ministry in the secular world, much as in church-centred activities. James Torrance, in Community & the Triune Grace of God says:

Our chief end is to glorify God, and creation realises its own creaturely glory in glorifying God through human lips.

Surely, also, God's creation may glorify him through the creative work of human minds and human hands where that is our intention.

God's attitude to his material creation

This brings us to the question of what our attitude should be towards the material creation itself. It is significant that seven times in Genesis 1 God declares that what he had created was "good". The final statement is: "God saw all that he had made, and it was very good" (Genesis 1:31). This is in sharp contrast to the view of some religions that this material world is not good and is something we have to try to escape from. However, there are two other great events recorded in Scripture, one in the past, the other yet in the future, that particularly underline the goodness of creation.

First, God himself has chosen to become personally involved in his creation in the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus. When Jesus was conceived in the womb of Mary, in some way we can barely imagine, far less understand, Mary's material DNA became joined with the divine. As someone has put it, though Jesus was still as much God as if he had never become man, he became as much man as if he had never been God. He fully shared our human nature. For thirty years he lived as the God-Man. He died a human death. And then, after something like 36 hours a further miracle happened. His human body was raised to life. This is one of the reasons that the story of the empty tomb is so important. At his ascension to heaven from the Mount of Olives he took back into heaven part of his creation. In the body of the risen Christ, the Creator and his Creation are linked, never to be separated in all eternity. In this sense Jesus is now different to what he was before his coming. Humanity has been added to the Godhead.

It is true that Jesus' risen body was in some sense different from what it was before his resurrection. He could appear to his disciples behind locked doors. But, though transformed, his body was real. He could say to his frightened disciples: "Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your minds? Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have" (Luke 24:38, 39).

The other relevant event, that the whole Bible looks foreward to, is the final redemption of this material creation. Paul refers to this significant event in Romans 8:18-27. He speaks of the present creation as "groaning in pain, like a woman about to give birth" (v. 21, 22). You will notice in this passage that not only the creation groans, but also we groan (v. 23) and the Spirit groans (v. 26). Not only humans, but somehow the whole of creation was affected by the intervention of the Evil One and the rebellion of men and women against God. However, Satan does not have the last word. Somehow, what Christ achieved for us by his death and resurrection has its effect on the whole of creation. "The creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God" (v. 21). No doubt it is partly this transformation of God's created universe that Paul had in mind when he declared that "God will bring all things in heaven and earth together under one head, even Christ" (Ephesians 1:10) and that he has reconciled to himself all things "whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross" (Colossians 1:20).