When I was a sophomore in high school, my family moved to a new town in a different state. On my first day in my new school, I learned in a hurry that I did not fit in. As a protestant Christian, I was in the religious minority, and many of the other students in my school were told they were not allowed to spend time with me because I did not belong to the right church. My first few weeks at my new school were painful. I struggled with loneliness, sadness, and the nagging question, “Will I ever find friends here?” 

In my class schedule, two classes were my saving grace: German class and band. In German class, we all had to become like children again and learn an unfamiliar language in delightful ways. We played school and made pretend businesses so that we could practice buying things and making change. German class was a little bright spot for me at the beginning of my school day, but I spent the rest of the day, every day, every week, waiting for band class.

Band was at the end of my class schedule, and by the time I got there, I often had tears in my eyes and a feeling of emptiness in my chest. I was worn down from hurtful comments, and I was tired of feeling like I was never going to belong anywhere. But, when I sat down and put my clarinet to my lips, suddenly, I was surrounded by a sound that was only possible when we all worked together. Every crescendo reminded me of the power people have when they work together toward the same purpose. Every soaring melody line felt like a healing ointment that worked to heal my fractured spirit. In band, I got to experience the spiritual power of creativity. I would close my eyes as I played, and the notes became a prayer. In those moments, I forgot about my loneliness, and I forgot about my anger about having to change high schools as an almost-16-year old. 

When I played music, I realized that the world was so much bigger than me. But, I also realized how important it was that I was in the world. I couldn’t play the music without each of those unique people in the room, and they could not play the music the same way without me.

This morning, we are continuing our sermon series Questions of Faith. When I first read the question for this week, I secretly hoped that I would get to talk about it because creativity and imagination are some of my favorite things. I didn’t tell Jeff how much I hoped I would get to preach on this topic, but as we made our preaching schedule, it turned out it would be my turn to address this question, and I’m pretty glad about that! So now, I just hope that I do the question justice.

Our question for today is this: Why does God give us ingenuity if that ingenuity often leads to destruction? The person asking the question supplied an example: Why would God command human beings to take care of the world, if God knew we would do such a poor job of it? That’s a tough question, indeed. Within this question, I hear the person wondering why God would give human beings the freedom to make beautiful things and accomplish amazing things if that same freedom could result in disastrous consequences. 

We see examples of this every day. Human beings have made atomic bombs and symphonies. We’ve painted threatening things on the doors of our neighbors, and we’ve painted murals to welcome people into town. People have planted gardens and over-harvested things to extinction. I am reminded of the movie based on the book The Lorax. The Onceler created a useful, glorious thneed that met a whole lot of needs for people, but when greed took over, he made so many thneeds that the truffula tree went extinct. Why would God give us the freedom to be creative and inventive, while also knowing we would use these things for destruction as well?

To help us explore this question, we will be looking at two familiar passages of Scripture: the story of the Tower of Babel, and the passage in Ephesians that reminds us we are saved by grace through faith, and not by our works.

Let’s first take a look at the story of the Tower of Babel. Before this, there was a great flood on the earth. Noah and his family were spared, and then the writer of Genesis shares the family tree of the sons of Noah. After this, the text tells us that the people migrated together. Way back in the story of creation, God commanded the first humans to fill the earth, but these humans decided to stick together rather than scatter. And honestly, I don’t entirely blame them. I can’t imagine deciding to split off from the group to journey through the wilderness into an unknown place. There’s safety in numbers.

When the people arrived at Shinar, they decided to settle there–or, as the Hebrew says, they sat down. The people devised a plan for a new life in the land of Shinar. They decided to make bricks and build a city. They wanted to build a tall tower and make a reputation for themselves. And, they accomplish all of these things. God sees the grand tower and the city the people had built, and God knows the people have no intention of branching out to fill the earth. They are quite comfortable in Shinar, and they have found strength and security in being one people group in one city with one way of doing things. 

In order to get the people to follow through on God’s command to fill the earth, God confuses their language. This is a marvelous play on words in the Hebrew. The Hebrew word for confused is “balal,” which sounds a lot like Babel. The moral of the story is not that the many languages in the world are a punishment, or that building and creativity are bad, but rather that God has bigger plans for human beings than a plan where everyone is the same. The problem in Shinar wasn’t that the people wanted to create a city or form a magnificent tower, but that they wanted to protect their sameness. They wanted to insulate themselves in their one mind and one language, when there is such beauty in the creativity and diversity of God’s good world.

Creativity and ingenuity have the power to draw us closer to God who made everything we can see, and even all the things we can’t see. Just like we heard from the people who shared their creativity with us this morning, when we paint a picture, we may find ourselves marveling at all the beauty God created. When we embroider, we might find ourselves caught up in the wonder of a God who made so many colors and so many skills and talents. When we do magic tricks, we may find ourselves worshiping the God who is not bound by the laws of logic and physics, but instead makes the miraculous possible. God created us with the ability to be inventive and imaginative because God the Creator made us in his image. Whenever we are creative, we are embracing this image of God within ourselves, which has the potential to be a beautiful and awe-inspiring experience. 

Creativity and ingenuity can also become our end goal or a way to separate ourselves from others. The people in Babel were using their ingenuity and creativity in a way that kept them from looking outside themselves. We can use our creativity and ingenuity to love God and our neighbor, or we can use our ingenuity to put our own interests above the interests of anyone or anything else. When human ingenuity turns destructive, it is often because we’ve lost sight of the consequences of our actions. We focus on the immediate, or on how our ingenuity might benefit us, but we don’t ask who is harmed or excluded, or what the long term effects of our actions might be.  

 As a pastor, I have read a lot of leadership books and books about helping congregations and communities change. Often, these books focus on casting a vision or presenting new ideas to the people in the church. Sometimes the suggestions are good, but many of them have left me feeling uneasy, without really understanding why they left me feeling that way. But, I recently started reading a book called Leading Faithful Innovation, and I was surprised by what the authors wrote. They said this: “It is not up to human leaders to bring an exciting vision, sell it to the congregation, and try to compel people to enact it to reach a destination the leader has predetermined. Rather, if the Spirit of God is alive among the people of God–which we firmly believe–then the task for human leaders is to create the conditions under which the people can deepen their attentiveness to God’s influence in their lives.”

In other words, creativity isn’t the answer. Ingenuity isn’t the answer. Creativity and ingenuity are tools–beautiful and useful tools–that can help us when we are listening for God and following God’s lead. 

In Ephesians 2, we find a beautiful passage about grace. In this passage, the writer reminds us that we were dead in our sins because we were following after other powers and other rulers. We followed our passions, but we were often misguided in how we used and expressed our passions. But God loved us, saw how lifeless and dry we were, and saw our potential. God poured out grace on us, not because we had done anything to earn it, but because God loved us and wanted better for us than we wanted for ourselves. 

In verse 10, it says, “For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.” I think the New Revised Standard Version missed an opportunity when it translated the word poiema as “what he has made us.” Another translation says, “We are God’s workmanship,” and that gets at the meaning a little better. Another says, “We are God’s accomplishment.” And a paraphrase tries to help us further understand the meaning of the word by rendering it, “We are God’s masterpiece.” 

Our word “poem” comes from the Greek word poiema. I don’t know if you’ve ever written a poem, but I have spent a lot of time writing poetry. Even though I would hardly consider myself a poetry expert, there is one thing I know for sure: a poet chooses her words carefully. Each word, each description, each line break, is lovingly and purposefully chosen. God created us with care as beautiful creations, and we were made to do beautiful things. The world would be such a dull place if this were not true. 

Can you imagine a world without creativity? I don’t particularly want to think about it. A world without stories and songs, paintings and photos, varieties of bird calls and plants that pop up in places we least expect them to. What a boring place this would be. Instead, out of God’s abundant love, God made a beautiful world and beautiful people with beautiful gifts and talents. And along with that, God gave us the freedom to be inventive, even though that freedom could also be dangerous. 

Our job is to put our creativity to a simple litmus test: Am I loving God, my neighbor, and this world God placed me in with what I am doing? In other words: am I using the gifts God has given me to harm, or am I using them with faithfulness, listening to God’s guidance and direction?

I hope this week you take a moment to celebrate the ingenuity around you and in you. Pause in your yard and listen for a bird call and wonder which bird might have made that sound. Smell the flowers (unless you’re allergic), and take in the colors of the produce at the grocery store. Let’s celebrate creativity and ingenuity, and let’s ask God to guide us as we use the gifts we’ve been given. To God be the glory! Amen.