On the Fecundity of Man

People make things. They always have. They always will. 

This is one of the beautiful realities about humanity (although, perhaps also one of the most frightening). Humans can construct and create. We have this amazing capacity to manipulate the physical world around us and use it to our ends.

This mystery of creativity is truly striking. What enables a person to envision a skyscraper? What reality allows someone to design a faster airplane? How can a mind devise the intricacies of something like the Large Hadron Collider?

As I reflected on this mystery, I realized that this human capacity of creativity even transcends modification of the physical world – this human capacity for creating also impinges on other realities.

It seems to me that we as humans also have the capacity to create (i.e. bring about or actualize) non-physical things as well. We have the capacity to create virtuous communities and we do that by actualizing love, mercy, kindness, etc. We have the capacity to change someone’s life by speaking words of wisdom and discernment to them.  We have the ability to bring hope to desperate situations by supplying compassion and tenderness.

The future of reality awaits creation. It seems to me that this is what Christians are supposed to be about.  If nothing else, we are called to a particular way of living – we are called to realize a certain set of realities. All of the realities that the Spirit of God promises to bring to bear on a believer’s life are waiting to be – they’re waiting for us to create their reality in the here and now.

Now, before you start thinking I’m encouraging us to go overthrow our socio-political structures and beat down the door of the surrounding secular institutions in order to set up a Theocracy, let me assure you my thoughts are much more modest.

I envision this happening at a much more base level. I’m talking about living into these realities through daily choices made towards God and other human beings. This is not political activism (although perhaps at times it may have to be). Rather, it is primarily living life well in the nitty-gritty; being empowered by the Spirit of God to actualize the realities of God in a world that desperately needs the presence of divine things.

So, while it is truly beautiful to see how people can lasso the world outside of them, I wonder if it might also be worthwhile to turn our attention to our internal world and exercise our creativity there as well.