The Partnership

“So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” -Genesis 1:27

As humans, we all have a deep desire to create. We create amazing works of art with a paintbrush and a little bit of paint. We create engaging stories with a pen and a piece of paper. We create delicious meals from a few fresh ingredients. We create buildings. We create music. We create poetry. We create technology. The list goes on and on. We enjoy and delight in the act of creating—just as our Creator enjoys and delights in the act of creating.

In the first chapter of Genesis (NIV), the sentence “And God saw that it was good.” is repeated five different times. Then in the final verse of the chapter, we see the words “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.” At every step along the way, God recognized God’s creation as good. God delighted in the act of creating, and at the end of all six days of creation, God declared it all as “very good.” Our deep desire to create, along with the joy we receive through the act of creating, reflect our Creator. There is, however, a distinct difference between the things we build and what God creates. C. S. Lewis puts it this way:

“This act [creation], as it is for God, must always remain totally inconceivable to man. For we--even our poets and musicians and inventors--never, in the ultimate sense make. We only build. We always have materials to build from. All we can know about the act of creation must be derived from what we can gather about the relation of the creatures to their Creator.” - C. S. Lewis

You see, we can’t truly create anything. No matter what we build, we are always utilizing materials that have already been created. Even in the intellectual realm, the thoughts and plans and ideas we have are all rooted in concepts or things that have already been created—it is impossible for us to create something from nothing. Only God can do that. 

I believe deep down we all recognize this fundamental difference between us and God. When we see someone pushing the boundaries of what they can create, we call it “playing God” and label it as a pursuit of more power than we could possibly control. In the movie “Jurassic Park III” there is a scene where the group of survivors walks into a facility that holds the remains of one of the cloning facilities on the island. As the group looks upon the abandoned clones floating in tanks, one of them asks “This is how you make dinosaurs?” To which another responds “No, this is how you play God.” The writers of this script understood that the cloning and attempted recreation of dinosaurs pushed the boundaries of what humankind is capable of doing. In fact, the movie as a whole shows the results of this type of push to “be like God.” The power is more than anyone can handle, and the dinosaurs break out and kill many of the people who tried to create them. As C. S. Lewis stated, we are not meant to be creators, but instead to reflect the Creator as builders.

This brings us back to Genesis 1:27. I believe that part of the concept of being “created in the image of God” means that we reflect some of the distinct qualities of God—qualities like will, love, reason, and the act of creating. As a reflection, each of these qualities falls short in us when compared to God. We can never love in the same unconditional way as God does. We can never attain perfect reason like God has. We can never create from nothing like God does. We were never meant to be God—we are meant to reflect the image of God. When it comes to the act of creating, I believe this opens up a wonderful opportunity for each of us. Instead of giving us the ability to create from nothing—or providing everything we could possibly need with no work on our part—God created a countless number of things we can build with and instilled in us a deep desire to build from those materials. 

God invites us to partner with God in the act of creating. God provides for us a wealth of materials we can use, and then delights in the many different things we build from those materials. When we begin to think of the act of creating in this way, it opens the door for us to recognize the presence of God in every creative thing that we do. It allows us to worship God through our creativity—not because we paint a cross or sing a song about Jesus, but simply because God was present with us as we worked to build something beautiful or interesting or exciting. When we bake bread we can see God in the flour and yeast. When we take pictures we can see God in our subjects and composition. When we paint we can see God in the beautiful colors we have to work with. God is inseparable from every creative act we do. Let’s accept this invitation from God and partner with God in creation.