Why Did God Give Us a Desire for Creativity?

By Brian Lowther

Today, I continue my series exploring six common human desires and why God instilled them into us. You can read the first two installments here: The Desire for Survival and Pleasure, and The Desire for Power. As I noted in those two posts, I’m writing from the assumption that our desires at their roots are good and programmed into us by God for a good reason. Specifically, I think his reason is to help us participate with him in bringing his kingdom on earth as it is in heaven, which is essentially a battle against darkness and evil.    

Creativity

Beyond survival, pleasure and power, I have a desire to express creativity. I like to think of myself as a creative person. That is, I’m a comically bad dancer and I may be the least musical person in the Western Hemisphere. But besides these embarrassing shortcomings, I get a lot of satisfaction out of many creative pursuits, like drawing or writing.

This is usually where our definition of creativity stops, with artists, writers and entertainers. Because of this many people don't feel like they are very creative. But perhaps creativity is broader.

When God first created the world in Genesis, we are told that the earth was “formless and void.” This phrase has always brought to my mind a planet-sized glob of mush floating among the stars. But God apparently saw something in this glob of mush. In Michaelangelo’s words, “I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.” This may be what went through God’s mind as he fashioned our planet.

I think of this process as bringing order out of chaos. That is my preferred definition of creativity. Apply this definition to any masterpiece—be it visual or performing art, architecture or literature—and it holds true. This definition also fits the work an accountant does to make sense of someone’s taxes, or the work a parent does in raising children, those formless globs of mush. 

Chaos

Interestingly, in the RWI view our planet wasn’t initially a glob of mush. It didn’t begin that way. It was good at its inception, but something went wrong. It became a glob of mush as a result of a cosmic war between God and Satan. The common Biblical phrase “formless and void” can also be translated, “destroyed and desolate,” as a battlefield after a great war. That is the world into which Adam and Eve were placed, a world at war.

But what is this war exactly? It is a subject of lingering confusion. Once while discussing the war with a friend, he very astutely asked, “But how do you fight a war against Satan?” It’s not like we can fire a nuclear missile at him.

I didn’t have an answer for him then. But now I would say, “I think the war is about Satan creating chaos. We can speculate that he creates chaos at the micro level through gene mutations; he creates chaos at the human level by destroying relationships; chaos at the spiritual level by choking faith; and chaos at the macro level through floods, earthquakes, etc. At the same time, God is at work bringing order out of all this chaos, bringing good out of evil, and he invites our participation.”

Why Did God Give Us the Desire for Creativity?

As with the other desires I’ve explored in this series, I believe God instilled this desire in many of us because we would need it to battle evil, to bring order out of chaos, to address major problems like spiritual darkness, disease and natural disasters. These things require great ingenuity.

God’s goal and pleasure seems to be bringing order out of chaos in the context of relationship and teamwork with us. When you ask a creative person how they did something, they often say, “I don't know. The idea just came to me.” My best ideas always come while waiting at a stoplight, or while mowing the lawn or while taking a shower, evidence that perhaps these ideas aren’t mine alone. These epiphanies come when my mind is quiet on account of being occupied by some routine or meditative task. Is this mental quietness necessary in order to hear God’s “still, small voice?” (1 Kings 19:12) I suspect so.

Self Worth

One last thing I find most interesting about the desire for creativity is—as with my desire for power—it’s not so much about the beautiful masterpiece I can create, or the problem I can solve. While there is satisfaction in those things, the much greater satisfaction comes when someone recognizes my creation or solution as elegant, sublime, valuable, etc. “If I create or achieve something worthwhile,” my internal monologue goes, “people will ascribe worth to me. If others ascribe worth to me, then I can have self worth.” That’s at the root of the desire for creativity. The deeper motivation is self worth. I’ll explore this desire for self worth a bit more in a subsequent entry.

Photo Credit: girl_onthe_les/Flickr

Brian Lowther is the Director of the Roberta Winter Institute

Why Did God Give Us a Desire for Power?

By Brian Lowther

Today I continue my series exploring six common human desires and why God instilled them into us. You can read the first installment here: The Desire for Survival and Pleasure. As I noted in that post, I’m writing from the assumption that our desires at their roots are good and programmed into us by God for a good reason. Specifically, I think his reason is to help us participate with him in bringing his kingdom on earth as it is in heaven, which is essentially a battle against darkness and evil.

Power

Beyond survival and pleasure, I desire power. Is that wrong to admit? When we say someone is powerful that can either mean he or she has a lot of physical prowess, or it can mean that they wield authority over others through wealth, or wisdom, or influence. As an adolescent, I wanted physical prowess more than anything. I wanted to be the best athlete in school. One day my coach told me, “No matter how good you get, there will always be someone who is better.” I took this as a terrible discouragement at the time. But as it turns out, he was right. There are few things more short-lived than athletic success.

When I became a young man, wealth became my desire. The idea of having a 10,000 sq. ft. mansion and a stable of exotic cars was so appealing that I began to orient my life around one thing: financial success. I pursued it with tremendous resolve and embarrassing greed. One tragic day, my father-in-law was killed in an accident. As is often the case with the sudden loss of a loved one, his death prompted me towards introspective soul searching. Along the way I landed on Jesus’ advice, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven…” (Matthew 6:19) These words were an alarm clock to my sleeping soul. I had been chasing precisely the wrong thing. I’ve spent the fifteen years since his death trying to redirect that tremendous resolve (minus the embarrassing greed) toward glorifying God.

However, now into my late thirties, I still can't seem to shake this desire for power. Only I desire it not in the form of physical prowess or wealth, but in the form of wisdom and influence. I want people—either singularly or en masse—to embrace the ideas I hold dear. And I want those ideas to result in their flourishing. Is that such a bad thing to desire? I don’t think so. Though I suppose it is a bit arrogant. But isn’t this desire at the core of many professions like teaching, pastoring, counseling, or self-help book writing?

Why Did God Give Us the Desire for Power?

I think God instilled in many of us a desire for power because we were made in part, to oppose the enemy. When Jesus said, “the gates of hell shall not prevail against my church” (Matthew 16:18), he may have chosen these words because gates are a defensive structure, intended to protect against an onslaught. As though we are supposed to be on the offensive against Satan and not just defending against his attacks. It takes a lot of physical and moral power to storm the gates of a terrible enemy. Additionally, I think God instilled in many of us a desire for wealth, wisdom and influence because we would need those things to subdue (kabas) the earth (Genesis 1:28), which has connotations of military victory in other passages, and to guard (samar) the garden (Genesis 2:15). [1] In a war, wealth can provide rations, boots, and weapons; influence can recruit an army; and wisdom can make a plan of action while minimizing unintended consequences.

Now, it’s no surprise that God’s idea of power, and our idea of power are quite different. For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength. (1 Corinthians. 1:25)

1. Sacrifice as Power: The most profound display of power in history came when Christ allowed himself to be crucified. Somehow by dying he destroyed the power of death. (Hebrews 2:14)
2. Generosity as Wealth: Similarly, the most admirable use of wealth is when it is given freely to the needy. Jonas Salk became a national hero, his generosity and compassion legendary because he chose not to patent his polio vaccine, forgoing a personal fortune.
3. Humility as Influence: In an era of swaggering self-promotion, entitlement, and unbearable arrogance, Mother Teresa had no ambition to become a celebrity. Instead, her goal was to wholeheartedly give free service to people who were a burden to society and shunned by everyone. Along the way she won a Nobel Prize and always makes the list of the most influential people of the last century.
4. Foolishness as Wisdom: This principle is why—to paraphrase C.S. Lewis—an uneducated believer was able to write a book that astonished the whole world. [2] That believer was John Bunyan and the book was Pilgrim’s Progress. Bunyan was born poor, never went beyond the second grade, and did most of his writing while in jail, yet Pilgrim’s Progress became the most widely read piece of 17th-century English literature.

The point is, God’s version of power, wealth, influence and wisdom are counter-intuitive, paradoxical even. In foolishness, sacrifice, generosity and humility we are powerful. These things somehow overpower and defeat the strongman (Satan), take his armor and divide up his plunder. (Luke 11:22)

Self-respect

One last thing I find most interesting about the athletic achievements and the extravagant lifestyle I once desired is, I didn’t so much want those things for the pleasure of having them, but for how people would perceive me for having them. The same holds true for the wisdom and influence I seek today. “If I am powerful/wealthy/wise/influential,” my internal monologue goes, “people will respect me. If they respect me, I can respect myself.” That’s at the root of these desires. The deeper motivation is self-respect. I’ll explore this desire for self-respect a bit more in a subsequent entry.

Endnotes

[1] Greg Boyd, “Satan and the Corruption of Nature: Seven Arguments”
[2] C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Photo Credit: Laura Ferreira/Flickr

Brian Lowther is the Director of the Roberta Winter Institute

Why Did God Give Us Our Most Basic Human Desires?

By Brian Lowther

If you’ve been tracking with the RWI for any length of time, I imagine you are the type of person whose deepest hope is to live a fruitful, meaningful life in view of the kingdom of God. But, do you ever struggle with the fact that you have other, more surface-level desires that often stand at odds with that deep hope? As an example, I have always wanted to own a jet pack. Just think of the traffic I could avoid! I also have a deep and abiding love of naps, palindromes, listening to my dad recount the events of a baseball game, and a very quiet part of me would love to spend a few leisurely years sailing around the Caribbean. These trifles make me feel quite happy. But what good is happiness if the real goal is God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven, which is essentially a battle against darkness and evil? [1] Are all of these surface-level desires engineered in me by God’s enemy to divert me off course? Or has God instilled them in me for some good reason?

To answer, it goes without saying that Satan can corrupt our desires causing us to pursue them too far. The word for that is sin. But in this five-part series, I’ll assume that these desires at their root are good and programmed into us by God for a good reason. Specifically, I think his reason is to help us participate with him in bringing his kingdom on earth as it is in heaven, which involves destroying the works of the devil. What follows are six of the most common human desires and how they help us participate in this task.

Why Did God Give Us a Desire for Survival?

My most basic desire—in agreement with popular psychological theories like Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs—is survival. I desire food, water, rest, sanitation, hygiene, security, and safety.

It seems obvious how this desire would help me in the battle against evil. Without it, I would give up and end my life when I encountered hardships.

The will to live is remarkably strong. I witnessed my wife battle through a terrible case of morning sickness. For five months extreme nausea was her all-day companion, vomiting was the norm and eating was unthinkable. I was terrified that she would starve to death. We went to urgent care countless times for intravenous fluids. But somehow, she never gave up hope. And one day, she started to get better. Now we have two children, meaning she went through this ordeal twice. How do people survive such things? Or worse things, like concentration camps or human trafficking? Why is this desire to live so strong?

I think it is because God knew that at times, the enemy’s attacks could be grisly, heinous, and appalling. Our desire to survive must be proportionally tenacious.

Why Did God Give Us a Desire for Pleasure?

If my ability to survive is not threatened, my next immediate desire is pleasure. I desire solitude, amusement, thin-crust pizza, frequent trips to the beach, maybe a jet pack—and any number of other physical or aesthetic comforts.

I think pleasure has a two-fold purpose in the battle against evil. First it acts as our “leave” from active duty. It recharges us so we can rejoin the battle. Even in wartime, soldiers don’t fight a battle indefinitely. They must take leave on a regular basis, or risk losing their minds.

Second, pleasure acts as aspirin or morphine when we experience the pain and suffering of battle. Such as: 1) The physical pain of existence, e.g., injury, handicaps, disease; 2) The mental anguish from failures, burnout, rejection, conflicts, or loss; and 3) The emotional turmoil from doubts and fears which I believe are whispered into our psyches by the enemy as a form of psychological warfare (see here for more on this). I think of pleasure as a momentary escape from these forms of existential suffering.

In the next installment, I’ll tackle the question, why did God instill in many of us a desire for power?

Endnote

[1] I realize that the battle against evil is a main theme among other main themes in scripture. I fully embrace the idea that God’s original and ultimate plan was and is for us to dwell with him and his holy angels in harmony for an eternal future. However, in the mean time, the RWI seeks to explore and advocate a “warfare worldview,” partly because we feel it is underemphasized in the body of Christ today and partly because we think it will inspire new action. If you’re new to the RWI, see the following brief essays for an introduction to the warfare worldview:

1. The Warfare Worldview           
2. The Story of the Cosmic Conflict    
3. Kingdom Mission So Far, in 500 Words
4. Three Views to the Problem of Evil: View #3

Photo Credits: 
1.  Jetman: Ars Electronica/Flickr
2. Bindweed plant breaking through asphalt: Mark Dixon/Flickr
3. Strawberry Shortcake: Sonny Abesamis/Flickr

Brian Lowther is the director of the Roberta Winter Institute.

What Population Growth Reveals About False Ideas of Disease

By Ralph D. Winter

The human period of history is paper thin when compared to the vast expanse of the previous story of the development of life on earth. But even in the few thousands of years of the existence of homo sapiens, it would seem clear that the growth of human population is directly related to the degree of acquired human knowledge of, and intentional resistance to, microbiological pathogens. A whole flood of books have appeared in recent years commenting on the plagues of history and on the general conquest of disease through medicine. Both war and pestilence have long been noted to be an impediment to population growth. But pestilence appears to be the greater problem.

The Second World War, we understand, was the first war in history during which more people died from military action than from war-introduced disease. Progress has been slow and even today, as antibiotics seem to be running their course, it has been a story of reverses and plateaus, not just triumphs. But the calibration of our conquest simply and crassly by population growth (or non-growth) is roughly workable. The phenomenon of population growth, however, is not widely understood or easily measured.

Our current theological literature, to my knowledge, does not seriously consider disease pathogens from a theological point of view—that is, are they the work of God or Satan?

If the estimated 27 million world population in Abraham’s day 4,000 years ago had grown at the present rate of the world population, there would have been six billion people only 321 years later. Had it grown at the rate of Egypt’s current rate the six billion would have been reached in only 123 years. What actually happened was a growth so slow that 2,000 years later, at the time of Christ, world population was not six billion but only one thirtieth of that.

Again after three centuries of literacy during Roman occupation of southern England, the Roman legions were withdrawn to protect the city of Rome itself. Soon Britain lapsed back into illiteracy and into horrendous war and pestilence to the extent that its population did not increase in the slightest for the next 600 years (from 440 AD to 1066 AD).

At that point the tribal backwater that was Europe began gradually to crawl into conquest of both war and disease. The rest of the story of cascading increase in Western populations, as well as colonially affected global populations, is common knowledge. This increase, as already noted, is a rough and ready measure of the conquest of disease, a story which, as I say, is documented very clearly in a recent flood of books on plagues and the history of medicine.

Curiously, what is perhaps the most enduring characteristic in this conquest is the removal of false ideas about the nature of disease. The very discovery of unbelievably small pathogens was long in coming. Our major western theologians, whether Thomas Aquinas or John Calvin, knew absolutely nothing about the vast world of microbiology. They, in turn had been influenced by Augustine, who is credited with giving God the credit for much of what Satan does.

Thus, even our current theological literature, to my knowledge, does not seriously consider disease pathogens from a theological point of view—that is, are they the work of God or Satan? Much less does this literature ask the question, “Does God mandate us to eliminate pathogens?” 

This entry was excerpted from an essay Ralph Winter wrote in the Winter of 2003 entitled, "Where Darwin Scores Higher Than Intelligent Design." The full essay can be read here.

Photo Credit: James Cridland/Flickr

Where Intelligent Design Fails to See Intelligence

January 8, 1944- The HMCS Camrose which helped sink a German submarine in the North Atlantic during Second World War. VAC | ACC/Flickr

By Ralph D. Winter

In saying that some of our creationists are glossing over the surprisingly prominent reality of intelligent evil in nature, I don’t mean that any of these ID people really deep down are unwilling to confront the enigmatic reality of evil. I just mean that, from the current discussion as seen in their written materials, that would appear to be the case.

As a matter of fact, I myself have all my life believed in what C. S. Lewis called “that hideous strength.” Yet only recently have I begun to reflect on the possibility that this hideous and intelligent evil must not reasonably be dealt with among us any longer merely by superficial references to the philosophical concept of sin and to a fall of man. Why? Because the mere idea of sin is not personifyable. Sin as an abstraction is defined by some as the departure from what is right. In that case the concept itself does not necessarily imply the potent and powerful existence of a diabolical personality any more than would a wrong score on a third-grade arithmetic test. The key question is, “Does it make any practical difference if we conceive of ourselves, on the one hand, as tempted by freedom to sin or, on the other hand, fighting against an evil one who tempts us intelligently?”

Note, for example, the huge difference, back in the days of the Second World War, between, on the one hand, the often nearly invisible icebergs that sent many ships to the bottom of the ocean and, on the other hand, the stealthy, intelligent submarines which caused far greater damage. What if the sinking of thousands of ships had been conceived of as merely the result of inanimate forces? What if scientists had not figured out a way to bounce underwater sound off steel-hulled submarines in such a way as to distinguish the difference between an iceberg and a submarine? This technique, to be called sonar, came late in the war, and implementing it took even longer. By that time not a thousand ships had been sunk, not two thousand, but six thousand ships crossing the Atlantic, loaded with food and war material, had gone to the bottom. It may be hard to believe but the outcome of that enormous war turned on the subsequent success in fighting these intelligent submarines.

It could be alleged that I am missing a main point. A conversation I had with Philip Johnson several years ago brought this forcibly to my attention. I began by congratulating him (and Michael Behe) on the potent logic of the ID movement, but I said, “When you look at your computer screen and if it says suddenly, ‘Ha, I just wiped out your hard disk,’ you have not the slightest difficulty in concluding that you have suffered the onslaught of a computer virus concocted by an intelligent, real person. Curiously, then, when we contemplate a real biological virus, which, though only a tiny assemblage, assails the health of an enormously larger human being, why do we have trouble concluding that we are dealing with an intelligent EVIL design?”

His answer, essentially, was, “Ralph, in my writings and public appearances I can’t even mention God much less Satan. I have a very specific battle to fight, namely, to take apart the logic of unaided evolution. That is all I am trying to do.” Okay, I have respected that response. I have not pestered him further. In fact, I am not even now endeavoring to fault the ID movement and its objectives.

Rather, I would ask a larger question. There are very many people, even Bible-believing Christians (not just non-Christians), who are to this day profoundly puzzled, perplexed, and certainly confused by the extensive presence in the created world of outrageous evil, created apparently by what we believe to be a God who is both all-powerful and benevolent. In coping with this, they may frequently attribute to God what is actually the work of an evil intelligence, and thus fatalistically give not the slightest thought to fighting back.

• When my wife died in 2001 more than one person tried to console me by observing that, and I quote, “God knows what He is doing.”
• When Chuck Colson’s daughter concluded that her brain-damaged son was, and I quote, “exactly the way God wanted him to be,” the impressively intelligent and influential Colson actually applauded her conclusion.
• When Jonathan Edwards fatally contracted smallpox in his effort to try out a vaccine that might protect the Indians in Western Massachusetts, the vast majority of the hyper-calvinistically trained pastors of Massachusetts concluded that God killed him because, to quote them, “he was interfering with Divine Providence.” These pastors went on to organize an anti- vaccination society.
• Going further back in time, a Mother Superior in Spain woke up one morning and detected a small lump in her forehead. She concluded that it must be God who was doing something to her presumably to deepen her devotion and nourish her character. When it finally turned out that a worm was burrowing there, and had broken the surface so you could see exactly what it was, she concluded that it was God’s worm. When she would stoop over to pick something up, and it would occasionally fall out, she would replace it so as not to obstruct the will of God.

These are, however, only a few examples compared to the thousands of times a day among even modern Evangelicals that some blatant evil goes unattacked because it is resignedly if not fatalistically assumed to be the initiative of God. I am not so much interested in the philosophical or theological aspects of this situation as I am in the resulting passivity before eradicable evil, the practical fatalism.

I will go one step further. If we are dealing with an intelligent evil, even our thinking about that fact may likely be opposed and confused by that same evil force, that evil power, that evil personality. Is there any evidence of this additional complexity? In what form would it appear? How could we identify it? 

This entry was excerpted from an essay Ralph Winter wrote in the Winter of 2003 entitled, "Where Darwin Scores Higher Than Intelligent Design." The full essay can be read here.

Where is Satan in the Old Testament?

Note from the Editor: One of the main reasons we as an organization are so concerned about disease is because of the questions it poses about God. If God is who we say he is (i.e., all good and all powerful), why is there so much disease in the world? The answer we like the most points to Satan as the root cause of much disease and suffering. We find this answer to be biblically compelling and logically valid. (See here, here and here.) But what do we do with the numerous scripture passages that attribute suffering to God’s judgment or his mysterious will? (See here and here.) Another related question is, if Satan is behind much of the evil and suffering in the Bible, why is he almost invisible in the Old Testament? Below is an interesting take on the subject from Brad and Dorothee Cole.

Palmyra: Temple of Baal - Stijn Nieuwendijk/Flickr

From Old to New

By Brad and Dorothee Cole

Our brief survey of the Old Testament revealed a deeply rebellious time in which God’s chosen people were only occasionally interested in following the true God and were more often attracted to the cruel gods of the other nations—deities that demanded human (even child) sacrifice, and in which the worship experience involved temple prostitutes, fertility cult worship, extreme cruelty, and snake veneration. In this context, what we see in the Old Testament is God shielding the people from the full revelation of a great Adversary:

The nations surrounding Israel were polytheistic, worshiping many gods. In a polytheistic culture, the good things are attributed to the good gods, bad things to the evil ones. And those evil deities could be so volatile that humans were constantly brewing up incantations and magic rituals to placate them. . . . The great danger for Israel lay in the temptation to worship Satan as another god. So rather than just forbidding magic and incantation, God went a step further and claimed full responsibility for both good and evil. . . . As a result, throughout most of its pages, the Old Testament portrays God as the active agent in all things. God is the one who causes everything. Satan simply drops from sight until the very end of the Old Testament. . . . Indeed, only three passages in the entire Old Testament are explicit in their reference to the “Satan” who was God’s great adversary, and all three passages were either written or canonized toward the end of the Old Testament period (Alden Thompson, Servant God [Loma Linda, CA: Loma Linda University Press]).

Out of mercy, God veiled Satan and met the people where they were. He did not open up to them the potential dangers of worshiping His antagonist, but instead made Himself out to be the only viable divine power who would either bless them if they were faithful or curse and bring ruin to them if they were unfaithful. “If you obey the LORD your God . . . he will make you greater than any other nation on earth. . . . But if you disobey the LORD your God ... all these evil things will happen to you: The LORD will curse your towns and your fields” (Deuteronomy 28:1, 15-16).

Much of the book of Deuteronomy is filled with blessings and curses—all at the hands of God. In most of the Old Testament, God does both, including bringing punishment down to the third and fourth generation for the sins of the parents (Exodus 20). “I create both light and darkness; I bring both blessing and disaster. I, the LORD, do all these things” (Isaiah 45:7).

There is, however, a progressive unfolding of reality throughout the Old Testament. For example, in Ezekiel 18 God makes it very clear that, despite the words in the Ten Commandments, He does not punish the children for the sins of the parents. It isn’t until the New Testament, however, that everything is fully turned on its head. The promise for obedience in the New Testament is not blessing in this life, but rather persecution (Matthew 5). Those who are stoned in the New Testament are not the rule breakers, but rather those who are faithful to God. And, most important for our discussion, the Devil is the roaring lion who destroys in the New Testament, not God.

In the Old Testament, God is usually dealing with immature people just as parents deal with immature children—with rewards for good behavior and punishment for bad. Through Jesus, God calls His people to grow up. With maturity comes a greater understanding of our complex universe and the God who created it all.

This material was excerpted from Brad and Dorothee’s Bible study, Truth, Love and Freedom Bible Study Guide.

Drs. Brad and Dorothee Cole work as neurologists at the Loma Linda VA hospital and teach neuroscience and neurology education at Loma Linda University (LLU).  Brad and Dorothee also edited Servant God, a multi-authored book about God’s character.