The Genesis of Creativity
God Created Artists

What happens in the first two chapters of the Bible’s first book Genesis is too good to be true, except that everywhere we look, listen and breathe, it is true. God creates the entire world, every light in the sky, every brook and cliff, and every creeping, crawling, prancing, hopping, flying, swimming, splashing, drifting or climbing thing, the aphid as well as the eagle, and the first two people. These two chapters are where we find the world’s first and best garden. This is where we find the first week–six days of creating the entire world, every bee and thistle, and the first human–ending with a seventh day for rest. The Genesis passages, detailing the creation story, have been treasured by generations of readers.

One of the greatest treasures is that Genesis underwrites and blesses human creativity.

We read that “God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27 NRSV). What does “made in the image of” mean? In the Mideast tradition when the Bible was written, an image of a god was thought to be able to carry out the functions of the God, according to The Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament. So God gives the first two people, Adam and Eve, and their offspring, the responsibility for the entire earth (Genesis 1:26) in his stead, to be caretakers for him. Specifically, before those offspring come and fill the earth, Adam is to take care of and cultivate the Garden of Eden.

But there is more to being “made in the image of God.” The Bible Background Commentary also tells us that “in the ancient world, an image was believed to carry the essence of that which it represented.” That is why later on Genesis 5:3 uses the same language to tell us that Adam becomes “the father of a son in his own likeness, according to his image,” and names him Seth. The son has some of the essence of his father. This exemplifies for the first time a principle we find all through the Bible: To know the son is in some sense to know the father, and to know the father is to know the son. If the humans are made in the likeness of God, then they are in some sense like God. To know what the Bible says about humans–to understand it here in Genesis 1and 2 before disaster strikes in the next chapter–we have to understand what God is like.

Genesis soon confirms this idea. The confirmation is found in a strange, infectious little anecdote in Genesis 2:19–20. God gives Adam the responsibility to create right away, to create names for the animals. God “brought them to the human to see what he would call them; and whatever the human called every living creature, that was its name.”

We might find it odd that God, who has the reputation in the Bible for knowing and seeing all, doesn’t already know what Adam is going to name each animal. We might even get an image of God, standing just behind Adam and a little to his left, hanging about to hear what surprises will blurt from Adam’s mouth. It’s rather staggering to the imagination, but God has reduced himself somehow in order to be friends with Adam, to share life with him. This shows God’s humility, which is most brightly seen in God’s incarnation recounted in the New Testament.

But there is more. Adam’s naming the animals signifies several things: That his stewardship responsibilities are now being extended from the plant into the animal world, and that he is able to perceive the creatures’ true natures. But the most important thing is that God is letting Adam make up names for the animals all by himself, in perfect freedom. And God delights in it.

It should be no surprise then that in the Bible God loves human creativity and blesses it. For example: one thing God does throughout the Bible is to sometimes give people his own spirit, to carry out a special purpose with his power. But the first time this happens is when God gives his spirit to artists.

This occurs in the book after Genesis, Exodus. God has been instructing Moses, the leader of ancient Israel, in great detail about what the tent of worship will look like, what instruments will be used, and what the priests must wear. Then in Exodus 31:2–6, God tells Moses:

“See, I have called by name Bezalel, the son Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah. And I have filled him with the Spirit of God in wisdom, in understanding, in knowledge, and in all kinds of craftsmanship, to make artistic designs for work in gold, in silver, and in bronze, and in the cutting of stones for settings, and in the carving of wood, that he may work in all kinds of craftsmanship. And behold, I Myself have appointed with him Oholiab, the son of Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan; and in the hearts of all who are skillful I have put skill, that they may make all that I have commanded…” (New American Standard).

These artists and artisans, God goes on to say, will create not only the “tent of meeting” (where God will meet with the people), but everything within it: furniture, utensils, garments of the priests, anointing oil and incense. God appoints artists, not engineers or priests to create these things, showing that he is concerned with the beauty of these elements and not just their function. And he is so concerned that they be done well that for the first time, he is filling human beings with his own divine Spirit.

Throughout the Bible then, to create, to imagine, to cooperate with God is the delightful prerogative of all those who desire to become God’s children. But this is sometimes difficult to perceive. You see, after Genesis 2 disaster strikes very soon. The humans turn away from God, and the creation then turns away from them and often becomes their enemy. They will begin to destroy each other and the earth, and soon “every imagination of the thoughts of [human] hearts [will be] only evil continually,” as we read in Genesis 6. The humans’ will mostly use their imagination and creativity to take themselves farther and farther from God.

This brings us up to the present day. We do not cooperate with God very well. Humankind’s “caretaking” of the earth is often a sick joke, as human creativity is now greatly employed in engineering natural resources for human consumption, resulting in the rising extinctions of species and the rape of the land. Unlike Adam, we are blind to the “true natures” of the creatures around us and are not fit to name them. We are imprisoned in the mental darkness that results from rejecting the Creator of Light.

Many people think of the Bible as nothing but a book of rules, restrictions on our behavior. It is true that in places, such as the book of Exodus, God does begin to give people commandments and instructions. But he does it so he can begin to lead them out of their self-made prisons. “In the beginning,” however, it was not so. Commandments and rules are not how God originally intended those made in his image to live.

So as the Bible progresses, God carries out a plan to get people to desire to cooperate creatively with him again and to learn how. He says he will undo the mistakes of Adam and Eve, which changed people’s hearts for the worse. Through the prophet Jeremiah, God says that in the future he will give people new hearts, and they will no longer have to read instructions on stone tablets: “I will put my law within them, and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people” (Jeremiah 31:33 NAS).

In the New Testament, God begins to carry out his plan. He will not offer his spirit only to certain people to carry out a special purpose. He will make it available to all people, and this will be made possible through a new kind of human, his own son, Jesus Christ. When the plan succeeds, we will be able to creatively cooperate with God again. We will not need to refer to a rulebook, for we will have gained freedom both from prison and from rules. The creativity God originally made us with will be set free, to no longer destroy but to help creation live. We will be changed in order for us to use our creativity wisely again. In this state, which has already begun, neither any living creature nor us will ever be harmed by our most dazzling creations or our most unpredictable decisions. God, perhaps, will again enjoy seeing what we come up with.

The Bible gives strong hints that we will even have more creative power than in Adam’s day. Jesus, the new human being, exercises tremendous power over creation, such as healing the sick, raising the dead, calming dangerous storms, and walking on water, and he is “the first-born among a large family” (Romans 8:29 NRSV Catholic Edition) and the “author and perfecter of our faith” (Hebrews 12:2). This is why the Bible says “the creation waits with eager longing” for us to be changed and there is “hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Romans 8:19—21; NRSV). Creation will again be blessed by human creativity, even more than it was in Genesis 1 and 2. Who can imagine what wonders are in store, when our creativity only blesses and creation itself willingly cooperates with us? And this is why the Bible is the original and the archetype of the best stories, in which the horrifying disaster at the beginning is more than made up for by the joyous success at the end.

The Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament John H. Walton, Victor H. Matthews, and Mark W. Chasala. Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2000

Mark Filiatreau is a freelance writer doing graduate work at Regent College in Vancouver. He holds an MFA from Wichita State University.

© Mark Filiatreau, 2001