The greatest people to walk the earth all have one thing in common: they created. When we think about the worst vices and the most grievous sins, our minds might take us to one of the many societal ills of our day. While these sins are all acts against truth, goodness and beauty (and the God thereof), they are all acts against creation. But here, we should not think about creation in terms of the first line of Sacred Scripture; rather, we should think about creation in terms of man’s individual creative potential. “Immorality, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, party spirit, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and the like” (Galatians 5:19–21) are all, indeed, sins against “the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1), but they are more so sins against the virtue of creativity — the interior disposition that prompts man to reflect his Creator more intimately than anything else.
Because creating is the very nature of a loving God, this is the essential way in which man represents God. In man creating, therefore, he participates in the eternal, the divine, the supernatural. This is what existentialist Rollo May (1909–1994) hints at when he says, “By the creative act ... we are able to reach beyond our own death" (The Courage to Create, 19). Understanding creativity — or the natural and innate tendency to make — as intrinsically related to the divine, helps us better understand why evil is a deprivation of the good. Every sin is an uncreative act, for it deprives by its very nature. With this in mind, we can better know why some of the worst sins of our day are so bad. In short, they all deprive people of the greatest good; that is, life (i.e., creation).
There is nothing unique, though, about repeating the age-old teaching of the nature of evil. So although this reality is a necessary foundation, it is hardly the main point. Creating, which is synonymous with building or establishing, is the distinctive mark of a human and Christian existence. God created man so that man would create. He did not create man in order to “get through life,” or in order to merely “get to Heaven.” These simplistic phrases completely miss our raison d'être. If man is called to be free and liberated in this life; if the chief Christian prayer petitions, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10), then man’s focus certainly shouldn’t be “out there somewhere.” In fact, the Author of that chief Christian prayer repeatedly explains that His kingdom is “at hand.” In other words, it is imminent or within grasp. If the purpose of life is to merely “get to Heaven,” then there is no sense of urgency to create. Catholic theology goes deeper than this. Jean Leclercq (1911–1993), a French Benedictine monk and expert on the topic of early Christian spirituality, did not equate the Church established by Christ to a religion of delayed gratification. For Leclercq, the true faith (i.e., the Catholic religion) is more human, more “in the moment,” and more real: “The only desire which is legitimate is to possess God here below and forever: here below, in the very midst of sorrow, and because of it; later, in Heaven" (The Love of Learning and the Desire for God, 31). The purpose of life is to establish, build and participate in the Kingdom here and now — with the hopes of experiencing the Kingdom in its fullness later on. If this is true, then creating becomes the essence of a full human existence.
Creativity is what elevates man above this world, it is what allows people to see the supernatural in the natural. As us theists would say, it is what allows us to see God’s hand in human affairs. Rollo May, who was by no means a Christian, identified artists, poets and saints as the most creative and honorable of men, for they “threaten the status quo” with their fearless and resilient dedication to creativity at all costs (The Courage to Create, 22). May posited that these kinds of men were impossible to control, and this allowed him to see a spark of the divine in their efforts. He believed that there may be a “religious quality with artists" (The Courage to Create, 75). And it was specifically their ability to bring into being that made him see things this way: “This is why many artists feel that something holy is going on when they paint, that there is something in the act of creating which is like a religious revelation" (ibid.). Indeed, there is something holy about creating, for this is mimicking the Creator of the universe, who painted everything in existence.
From the beginning, man’s vocation had everything to do with creating. In his being created, he was called to create. Having dominion over everything on the earth, man was specifically called to “be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it” (Genesis 1:28). Many Christians, both Catholic and Protestant, have convinced themselves that Christ’s coming changed man’s primordial vocation so that he no longer has dominion over the earth with a duty to subdue it. The very reason Christ came was to subdue the earth. This is the peace Christ speaks of. He came to remind man of his primordial vocation. And more so, He came to give man the power to fulfill his primordial vocation, for He came not to abolish but to fulfill (Matthew 5:17). The people in spiritual slavery, whom Christ came to set free, were not embracing their God-ordained authority to subdue the earth. Inverting God’s design, they subjected themselves to the world. Subduing the earth, which was and is the mission for all of Christ’s followers, is the creative process of establishing and building the Kingdom of God “on earth as it is in heaven.” It is here in the Kingdom where peace, freedom and liberation are found.
Immoral acts against life, such as the one’s mentioned earlier, are sins against creation and destroy the creative tendencies in man. They deprive in two ways: First, they deprive society of the multiplicity of life; and second, they deprive the individual of his ability to create. The latter deprivation is of more concern here. Man, who is called to create and to be creative, sins most gravely when he does not. Again, this is based on the reality that God made man for the purpose of creation; that is, He created man to create. In the creative process, man emanates God’s image to a greater extent than any other act. This is based on the basic truth that creating is the essence of the Creator, and as such, creating is what makes man more like the Creator. Because of this, depriving oneself of creativity ought to be seen as a bigger deal than it typically is.
While creating is intrinsically connected to life, it is not restricted to those who have the ability to procreate. Put simply, somebody who is truly creative and has the virtue of creativity, brings forth life. The creative person, then, is the person who is fully alive, the person who has life himself and helps others to discover their own. The highest form of creativity is Christian creativity, wherein somebody takes divine truths and creates based off of that supernatural foundation. This is actually the entire purpose of divine truth. In fact, this is what evangelization is, for somebody has to take the message of the Gospel and prudently transmit it to others. In order to be a good evangelizer, one needs to be creative, for one needs to “become all things to all men” (1 Corinthians 9:22). This is how Christians have used science, music, art, and even athletics, to evangelize the world. Being all things to all men does not merely relate to languages and tongues; it relates to the ability to use the goods God gave us for the purpose of His will.
Even with divine truth, there is always room for deeper understanding. In speaking about private judgement, St. Cardinal John Henry Newman says that it “seeks to understand what has been defined by the Church" (Newman on Doctrinal Corruption, 223). This has everything to do with the creative characteristic of the Christian life, for we ought to ponder and seek to know on a deeper level the highest truths. For example, one can know that the Eucharist is actual flesh of Christ, or that Mary was immaculately conceived, or that the Church is indefectible, but the human intellect seeks to understand these teachings as much as possible.
The necessity for Christians to be creative is most easily understood when we look at two things: (1) Jesus’ call for man to allow and work for His Kingdom to come, and (2) the human desire for transcendent truths found in things like science, music, art, and athletics. Just as man is called to be divinized, for “those in whom the Spirit dwells are divinized” (CCC, ¶1988), so too is creation itself. This happens through human efforts to cooperate with grace and use creation for its proper intent. Adam and Eve’s vocation to rule the world on God’s behalf is the same vocation Christians today have. Christians can do this by being “other Christs,” or by allowing their Godly image to shine forth in the world. In man’s Godly image radiating throughout the world, creation is capable of being divinized. This is what the Kingdom is. It is the divinization of creation, wherein everything made by God is ordered to Him and His Kingdom. It is man using science to know natural truth, using music to elevate the mind to God, using art to express the transcendence of creation, using athletics to teach masculinity and femininity, where the Kingdom of God is made manifest on earth.
