The Relationship of Creativity to Faith, Hope, Love

7 Habits of Highly Effective People (Stephen Covey) – Summary of Habit 2: Begin With the End in Mind. Principle: Mental creation precedes physical creation. All things are created twice. We create them first in our minds, and then we work to bring them into physical existence. By taking control of our own first creation, we can write or re-write our own scripts, thus taking some control and responsibility for the outcome. (http://www.timemanagementhq.com/7-habits-of-highly-effective-people-summary/).

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 13:13).

Creativity and hope are closely aligned. Whenever we move to seek the solution to any type of riddle, there is an immediate hope that creativity will produce practical results. However as with sex, we anticipate immediate reinforcement followed by consummation. Which comes first, creativity or hope?—is a riddle in itself. How do we differentiate the drive of hope and the drive for creativity? They join together and share a unitary spark deriving from intimate congruence.

Love and faith are likewise closely related to hope and creativity. God is Love. God is Creator. Creativity calls forth love and love calls forth creativity. Faith is the assurance that all this has ultimate overriding purpose. We sense that creativity, hope, and love are weighty and great matters that have inherent worthiness bestowed by purpose.

Finally as the second principle suggests, mental creation precedes physical creation and has implications for improvisation within the present. That is, we craft the present with an eye to the future.  As Pastor David mentioned in today’s sermon*, Martin Luther King, Jr. had a dream, he did not have a detailed step by step plan to arrive in the Promised Land. The Promised Land will not be schematized by one individual or a few but the contributing improvisation of many over time. For one man alone to actualize a dream robs others of responsibility and is anyway flat-out impossible as dreams have an essential communal nature in formation and realization. That is why dream attribution is mainly a matter of convenience. The distribution of wealth as if dreams were solely individualistic in nature is basically fraudulent. That is why love (from which generosity in attribution flows) is greater than faith and hope.

* Pastor David's message today: http://pastordavidmiller.wordpress.com/2013/08/25/matthew-25-sermon/

Print Page