Dear Reader,
I have a value proposition for you -
50 weeks of Friday newsletters with news insights and ideas from a Christian worldview
12 podcasts with a variety of special guests interviewed on a variety of timely topics
12 in-depth book reviews that will encourage and inform you in your own reading
and a custom T-shirt (see color and design below) as a way of saying thanks
- all for $50. Since this is the second week of 2022, that’s a $1/week for the rest of the year.
Why am I “going paid”? Because maybe over time (and we’re talking years), I could get to a point where I could make a living from my writing. “Going paid” is a step in that direction.
I estimate that fulfilling the list above will require approximately 500 hours (10 hours a week) of extra work across the rest of the year. That’s plenty on top of a full-time job, but I don’t mind. I just wish I could do more research and dig in at a deeper level each week.
The Friday newsletter will continue to be free; the podcasts, book reviews, and T-shirt will be a $1/week more. What would be priceless is knowing that fans are willing to pitch in $50 for the year as a way of saying, “Hey, I appreciate the effort and hope you get there. Keep writing.”
The deadline to subscribe and get a T-shirt is midnight on Sunday night. This will be my last pitch for the year. I hope you’ll upgrade your subscription and find value in my extra work.
As always (and at whatever level of subscription you choose), thanks for reading.
Craig
Hot Takes
A quick look at some news this week:
“Supreme Court Blocks Biden's Vaccine-or-Test Mandate for Large Private Companies” - It’s not been President Biden’s best week (but then again, I’m trying to think of one that was, particularly with regard to the courts):
“The U.S. Supreme Court struck down the Biden administration's vaccine-or-test rule Thursday, declaring that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration had exceeded its authority. But at the same time, the court upheld a regulation issued by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services that mandates vaccines for almost all employees at hospitals, nursing homes and other health care providers that receive federal funds.”
As I wrote on Facebook, I might be a little more sympathetic to the President if there weren't so many other blatant power grab attempts at the hands of this administration and the Democrat leadership of the House and Senate. Virus aside, the past year has been one attempt after another of the White House trying to force the American people to bow at the altar of government, and I'm pleased (though surprised) that the courts and even some in his own party (Democrat Senators Manchin and Sinema, among others) are pushing back. As so many different reports - inflation at 40-year high, supply chain snags, forecasted future gas prices, etc. - confirmed this week, the President is not getting the job none, nor do a majority of the country think he is.
Two Sides of the “Voting Rights” Debate - Speaking of another overreach—federalizing voting—here are the basic pros and cons of the so-called “voting rights” debate. I’m not even going to address this, as the mental gymnastics required to understand why anyone would argue against voter identification and signature verification for secure elections are beyond me (and don’t start with the misappropriated “give water to the thirsty” rhetoric the President trotted out as his own brand of Christian nationalism this week; it’s bad form coming from either the Left or the Right).
“Americans Reading Fewer Books Than in Past” - Surveys like this always make me sad, as if people are saying, “I give up,” with regard to the life of the mind.
“The new data on book reading reinforce that the popularity of reading is waning, with Americans reading an average of three fewer books last year than they did five years ago and had typically read for the past three decades. The decline is not because fewer Americans are reading at all—a percentage that has held steady at 17%—but because Americans who do read are reading fewer books. The changes are especially pronounced among the most voracious book readers, namely, college graduates, women and older Americans.
Pick up a book this weekend and read 15 minutes before bed. You can do it!
Americans say they read an average of 12.6 books during the past year, a smaller number than Gallup has measured in any prior survey dating back to 1990. U.S. adults are reading roughly two or three fewer books per year than they did between 2001 and 2016.
The Only Legitimate Mandate
Earlier this week, I reached out to Craig Miller, a friend and local architect, to ask if he’d be up for spending some time with a young architecture student in town on break from his studies at the University of New Mexico.
Craig was amenable to the idea and told me his two schools of choice had actually been UNM along with his eventual alma mater, Montana State University here in Bozeman. He also told me Antoine Predock (an architect based in Albuquerque and with whom the student is familiar) is one of his favorite architects.
I figured 45 minutes in his office in downtown Bozeman would be plenty for the visit. We set a time for mid-week, I communicated it to the student, and left it at that.
The next day, I received a text message from Craig that read,
“Hey, what might be more fun and informing is to go out to this really cool house I did on the Gallatin (River). The house has been done for a number of years and we can go through it. I can try and find the original concept sketches and then the CDs so he can see the evolution. The owner is not here, so we can view at our leisure.”
The jaunt took place Tuesday afternoon and the excursion exceeded expectations. Here are a few pictures taken from walking through one of Craig’s finished designs:
Later that night, I texted Craig to thank him for what had been a three-hour tour:
“So the field trip today was apparently ‘amazing.’ I came home from work and both daughter and friend are sitting at the table, drawing. Katie’s words: ‘I’m so inspired. I want to create something.’ They showed me pictures and recounted the tour. Home run, Mr. Miller. Thanks for taking the time.”
To which Craig texted back:
“Ahhhh. My maniacal, twisted plot to pervert the youth of America into believing one’s creative passion can solve the world’s problems is working! It was great fun for me - a captive audience that had no choice but to listen doesn’t get any better. They are both great kids with some serious talents that will take them far. It was my pleasure.”
I laughed. We need more of this kind of passion and creative perversion.
Common Grace & the Cultural Mandate
The problem, of course, is “passion” has been too narrowly applied to only (and often self-proclaimed) “creatives”—artists, actors, activists. As a result, too many of us feel we need permission to think of ourselves as passionate creatives because, well, we don’t live and move and have our beings solely within these associated vocations (though some of us dabble where and when we can).
But show me a dedicated homeschooling mom with four kids and the truth and I’ll show you a passionate creative. Spend time with a farmer still working his small 600-acre farm and fending off offers from the corporate agribusinesses and I’ll show you a passionate creative. Spend time with an architect walking through an amazing house he labored over and designed for years and I’ll show you a passionate creative.
I could list a dozen more examples—genius cryogenics company founders, coffeehouse baristas and brewery entrepreneurs, dedicated 1st grade teachers, everyday students—and so could you. But have you ever wondered why these non-artists/non-actors/non-activists can be passionate creatives, too? It has nothing to do with haircuts or tattoos or which side of the brain guides them (I’ve watched left-brained wizards work literal magic with on an Excel spreadsheet), nor does it have to do with wealth or status (regardless of social standing, there is no more passionate or creative act than a woman growing and birthing a child).
It has everything to do with a healthy dose of God’s common grace in fulfilling what biblical scholars call God’s “cultural mandate,” as introduced in Genesis 1:27-28:
“So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.And God blessed them. And God said to them,
“Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it,
and have dominion over the fish of the sea
and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing
that moves on the earth.”
Do we recognize that our call as “little creators” is key to doing the passionate and creative work God has given each of us (not just the artists, actors, and activists) to do? If not, the world needs us to figure it out…and to help others do so as well!
God as Creator
“In the beginning, God...” (Genesis 1:1a) sums up very nicely that all that is or will be is a direct work of the passionate creative hand of God. Scripture tells us that, before anything else, God simply was. It is from this understanding (finite as it is) of God’s presence in the midst of nothing that we begin to realize just how great a Creator He was—and is—as we consider all we see and experience in our natural world today.
But in considering all that was created, we must go beyond that God was responsible for the work done in creating it and not forget that He first imagined it before speaking a word of creation to bring it into being. In considering creation, we can’t get caught up in a series of events and become less fascinated with the Person responsible for them. Without investigating and embracing the attributes of the Person of God, our perspective of our Creator—and ourselves—will be skewed.
Being a Creative Person in a Creative Process
Because Scripture tells us we were created in God’s image, we bear the call to be “little creators”—to both the fullness and the limit that our humanity allows. Too often the cry of “I’m not passionate or creative” becomes a cop-out to leaning into and fulfilling the cultural mandate. Despite what we may have been taught or learned (i.e. only creative people can be creative), to fulfill God’s cultural mandate, we need to embrace being a creative person even as we embrace engaging a creative process.
Passionate creativity does not rest in some cosmic 12-step program, nor must it be relegated to the dark confines of someone else’s cluttered cubicle; it resides within our spiritual DNA, passed down from our Heavenly Father, the Ultimate Creator. It is this DNA, combined with our submitted will, that helps us obey. George Carey, retired Anglican bishop and Archbishop of Canterbury from 1991 to 2002, said,
“In creating man, God completes His activity and in obedience to God, man continues God’s creativity.”
Charlie Peacock, Christian thinker and musician, agrees, writing in, New Way to Be Human: A Provocative Look at What It Means to Follow Jesus:
“As image-bearers we are to mirror God’s creativity. We are in truth created to be creators. We are to use our intelligence to think, to speak and to act imaginatively and creatively. We are made, in a very real sense, to partner with God in continuing the process of creating the world and all that is in it.
Our work is to flesh out the incredible creative potential of what God has created. God is the origin of everything, the true throne of originality belongs to Him alone. Only He can create out of nothing, because in Him is the very power of being, what theologians call aseity or self-existence.
When we make something new, something never seen before in history, we create out of what God has called into being. We are image-bearers, yet utterly dependent on the One whose image we bear, for in God we move and live and have our being.”
In viewing ourselves as “little creators,” we follow in the footsteps of the Ultimate Creator—He who has created the heavens and the earth (Gen. 1:1); great creatures (Gen. 1:21); man, male and female (Gen. 1:27); north and south (Ps. 89:47); people not yet created (Ps. 102:18); our inmost being (Ps. 139:13); a cloud of smoke by day and a glow of fire by night (Isa. 4:5); Jacob/Israel (Isa. 43:1); darkness and disaster (Isa. 45:7); righteousness (Isa. 45:8); new hidden things (Isa. 48:7); the blacksmith who fans coal to flame (the Spirit), forges the weapon for its work (the Word), and the destroyer to wreak havoc (Isa. 54:16); the breath of man (Isa. 57:16); new heavens and new earth (Isa. 65:18); a land of ancestry (Ezekiel 21:30); the wind (Amos 4:13); us (Mal. 2:10); good works...for us to do (Eph. 2:10); one new man out of two (Eph. 2:15); all things (Eph. 3:9); and all food (I Tim. 4:3), to name just a few.
Would a better understanding and embrace of this call increase our passion and creativity in life? Might we be more passionately creative in the midst of the mundane? I think so, but we have to know the Person, not just figure out a process.
Unemploying the “Creative Types”
The fundamental mistake we often make is thinking that we are to “do” creative (or have someone “outside” do it for us) rather than “be” creative, developing and nurturing what may lie dormant within. While this is not a call to do away with certain “professional creatives,” perhaps it is a plea to give them a little competition!
Why relegate conception, incubation, development, and birth of a new idea to others simply because, well, “we have a department that handles that.” How can we keep ourselves close to the ideas, dreams, and imaginings that God Himself is asking us to bring into fruition?
How we think of ourselves in terms of passion and creativity—and how willing we are to get our hands dirty and our heads and hearts hurting concerning them—will mark us, not only in terms of our lives and ministries, but also in the accuracy and intimacy with which we as finite humans reflect the infinite and creative God. This special dignity and privilege, according to theologian J.I. Packer, is no less than that,
“As humans, we may reflect and reproduce at our own creaturely level the holy ways of God, and thus act as His direct representatives on earth. This is what humans are made to do, and in one sense we are human only to the extent that we are doing it.”
Here’s to being more passionate, more creative, and more human in 2022!
Post(erity): “When Was the Last Time…?”
Each week, I choose a post from the past that seems apropos of something.
This week’s post, “When Was the Last Time…?”, was an exercise I created back in circa 1996 to try to help me be and think more creatively in my everyday life.
Fresh & Random Linkage
“Every Pair of Sunglasses in The Matrix Movies, Ranked” - I’ve yet to see the new one yet, but the movies’ sunglasses are indeed as varied as they are unique.
“Farmer Gives Cows VR Headsets to Reduce Anxiety and Increase Milk Production” - Paging Wendell Berry. Smackdown needed in the dairy section.
Until next time.
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