KENNETH'S KREATIVITY KONFETTI: Creativity & Innovation — “Christian Innovation”

In the course of researching for a revision of a book I had worked on, I can across this work by Professor Gary Oster. I knew at once I would share it on this blog one day. Well, today is as good as any other day, I think. I will publish this timeless and invaluable piece, because that is the weight I attach to it, in a two-part series. In it, the university lecturer makes a point connecting Christian Faith and innovation, showing a connection to which I fully subscribe. Enjoy!

Part 1

Innovation is the creative development of a specific product, service, or idea with the goal of pleasing customers and extracting value from its commercialization. To a corporation competing in the dynamic global economic environment, innovation is a matter of life or death. Innovation scholar Tony Davila observed, “Superior innovation provides a company the opportunities to grow faster, better, and smarter than their competitors—and ultimately to influence the direction of their industry…In the long run, the only reliable security for any company is the ability to innovate better and longer than competitors.”2

Beyond the struggle for corporate viability, engaging in the act of innovation allows individuals a unique mechanism to experience and communicate with God. Whether developing products or services for business clients or pursuing artistic endeavours for personal enjoyment, innovation encourages insight. Christians do not own innovation, which has also been ably informed within many other faith traditions through the centuries. Christians do, however, have a unique perspective on the source of imagination and creativity. They possess the record of God’s remarkable innovations through the millennia as recorded in scripture, a world-view that supports and encourages innovation, and innovation methods that often contrast with those of other faith traditions. This paper surveys the unique elements of Christian innovation.

Christian Innovation?

Is innovation simply a collection of methods to make customers happy and generate cash for a company, or might it be more? Can innovation be considered in the same breath as a Michelangelo painting or a Henry Moore sculpture? Should the imaginative process of innovation be classed with the arts, e.g. design, music, sculpture, graphic arts, etc.? As renown psychiatrist Rollo May questioned, “Suppose the apprehension of beauty is itself a way to truth? Suppose that elegance—as the word is used by physicists to describe their discoveries—is a key to ultimate reality?”3 As Grudin notes, “The generation of ideas involves factors that are not exclusively cerebral, factors that include the physiology, the emotions, and the outer world. We do not create, nor even learn, by conscious concentration alone…Original thought is the product not of the brain, but of the full self.”4

Faith would accordingly be included in that self. Innovation may be redemptive. Scripture and the personal experience of Christians worldwide show that God uses innovation for humans to know more of Him, to communicate with Him, and to ultimately accomplish His earthly will for mankind. What makes innovation Christian innovation? As Francis Schaeffer said of art, “The factor which makes art Christian is not that it necessarily deals with religious subject matter.”5 It also is not because the innovation was accomplished by a professing Christian. Instead, innovation is Christian when it is ultimately aligned with God’s purposes and methods.

Creator Vs. Created

It is important to recognize that, while man can make things different or better, only God makes something entirely new. Remember that only God can imagine and make something out of nothing. In this sense, he is the only One who deserves the title of Creator. We are merely creative. That is, we can only imagine and make something out of something else—something that has already been imagined and made, whether in the creation itself, or from the work of creative people.”6 Human innovation only vaguely mirrors the uniquely transformative act of God’s salvation, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.”7 There is an important contrast between the creator and the created.

Innovation Flows From World-View

Everyone has a personal world-view, which emerges from the enduring values learned by each individual. Values are constant, passionate, fundamental beliefs that propel the actions of individuals and organizations. They are acquired through education, observation, and experiences, and may be taught or influenced by parents, friends, work associates, religious institutions, community, culture, personality, and significant societal events. An individual’s values frame his or her worldview, “Worldview is the lens that people use to interpret their reality and assign meaning to events, experiences, and relationships.”8

Thinking

Christians develop and act upon a Christian worldview. “The term means literally a view of the world, a biblically informed perspective on all reality. A worldview is like a mental map that tells us how to navigate the world effectively. It is the imprint of God’s objective truth in our inner life. We might say that each of us carries a model of the universe inside our heads that tells us what the world is like and how we should live in it.”9

For Christians, faith influences their entire lives. As theologian and philosopher J. P. Moreland asserts “To live Christianity is to allow Jesus Christ to be the Lord of every aspect of my life. There is no room for a secular/sacred separation in the life of Jesus’ followers.”10 Similarly, philosopher Francis Schaeffer agrees “It is not only that true spirituality covers all of life, but it covers all parts of the spectrum of life equally. In this sense there is nothing concerning reality that is not spiritual.”11 Holmes similarly noted, “To bring our every thought into captivity to Christ, to think Christianly, to see all of life in relationship to the Creator and Lord of all, this is not an optional appendage of secondary importance, but is at the very heart of what it means to be a Christian.”12 And Noll adds, “The much more important matter is what it means to think like a Christian about the nature and workings of the physical world, the character of human social structures like government and the economy, the meaning of the past, the nature of artistic creation, and the circumstances attending our perception of the world outside ourselves.”13

In all things (including their innovation efforts) Christians are called to think and to act like Jesus. Making decisions in business is not a simple function of running anticipated actions through a formula or process…We are called to be like Christ and to think like he would think (Philippians 2:1-8). Christians know that this is made possible by the presence and inner work of the Holy Spirit, not by our efforts alone.”14

God’s Innovation Reveals Himself to Mankind

Our first glimpse of God in scripture says, “In the beginning, God created…”15 God’s character is revealed to mankind through His innovation, “Significantly, the world he created is complex and elegant – filled with clues about the character and nature of its creator. The more we learn about this created order, the more sophisticated its designer appears. The magnificent design of the solar system and all the many galaxies we are now able to observe make it clear just how creative the creator must be.”16 We cannot possibly ignore the elegance of God’s innovation.

As Scripture says, “He has made everything beautiful in its time,”17 “We are God’s masterpieces, poems…”,18 and “Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God will shine forth.”19 As Michael Card noted, “A thousand examples speak of a deep, inner hunger for beauty that, at its heart, is a hunger for God. We hunger for beauty because it is a beautiful God whom we serve… The deep-down interior of a red-wood or a geode or the DNA molecule or, for that matter, our own body, is a song of elegance.”20

Engaging God Through Innovation

We are not satisfied to observe God’s innovative perfection, but seek to lovingly mimic Him, “Creativity is worship insofar as it is, at its essence, a response…In the call to be creative, a call that goes out to all God’s children, we sense the call to listen to him and, in childlike naiveté, to imitate our father by creating works that will magnify his praise,”21 Grudin says. 
But independent insight in all fields involves in some way the experience of beauty. In fact, the thrill conveyed by inspiration in any field is perhaps best described as coming from a sense of participation in beauty, a momentary unity between a perceived beauty of experience and a perceiving beauty of mind.”22 Our response to God’s glorious innovation is praise-filled creativity, “A Christian should use these arts to the glory of God, not just as tracts, mind you, but as things of beauty to the praise of God. An art work can be a doxology of itself.”23 The Apostle Paul noted that everyone is given unique abilities to engage God through innovation, “Each person is given something to do that shows who God is: Everyone gets in on it, everyone benefits. All kinds of things are handed out by the Spirit, and to all kinds of people!”24 At specific times throughout history, God has chosen to communicate with and direct man during the innovation process.25 Through our own innovative efforts, we find a special way to connect with our creator, “All artists experience the unbridgeable gap which lies between the work of their hands, however successful it may be, and the dazzling perfection of the beauty glimpsed in the ardor of the creative moment. What they manage to express in their painting, their sculpting, their creating is no more than a glimmer of the splendor which flared for a moment before the eyes of their spirit. Believers find nothing strange in this – they know that they have had a momentary glimpse of the abyss of light which has its original wellspring in God.”26

TO BE CONCLUDED