Why Did God Give Us a Desire for Creativity?

By Brian Lowther

Today, I continue my series exploring six common human desires and why God instilled them into us. You can read the first two installments here: The Desire for Survival and Pleasure, and The Desire for Power. As I noted in those two posts, I’m writing from the assumption that our desires at their roots are good and programmed into us by God for a good reason. Specifically, I think his reason is to help us participate with him in bringing his kingdom on earth as it is in heaven, which is essentially a battle against darkness and evil.    

Creativity

Beyond survival, pleasure and power, I have a desire to express creativity. I like to think of myself as a creative person. That is, I’m a comically bad dancer and I may be the least musical person in the Western Hemisphere. But besides these embarrassing shortcomings, I get a lot of satisfaction out of many creative pursuits, like drawing or writing.

This is usually where our definition of creativity stops, with artists, writers and entertainers. Because of this many people don't feel like they are very creative. But perhaps creativity is broader.

When God first created the world in Genesis, we are told that the earth was “formless and void.” This phrase has always brought to my mind a planet-sized glob of mush floating among the stars. But God apparently saw something in this glob of mush. In Michaelangelo’s words, “I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.” This may be what went through God’s mind as he fashioned our planet.

I think of this process as bringing order out of chaos. That is my preferred definition of creativity. Apply this definition to any masterpiece—be it visual or performing art, architecture or literature—and it holds true. This definition also fits the work an accountant does to make sense of someone’s taxes, or the work a parent does in raising children, those formless globs of mush. 

Chaos

Interestingly, in the RWI view our planet wasn’t initially a glob of mush. It didn’t begin that way. It was good at its inception, but something went wrong. It became a glob of mush as a result of a cosmic war between God and Satan. The common Biblical phrase “formless and void” can also be translated, “destroyed and desolate,” as a battlefield after a great war. That is the world into which Adam and Eve were placed, a world at war.

But what is this war exactly? It is a subject of lingering confusion. Once while discussing the war with a friend, he very astutely asked, “But how do you fight a war against Satan?” It’s not like we can fire a nuclear missile at him.

I didn’t have an answer for him then. But now I would say, “I think the war is about Satan creating chaos. We can speculate that he creates chaos at the micro level through gene mutations; he creates chaos at the human level by destroying relationships; chaos at the spiritual level by choking faith; and chaos at the macro level through floods, earthquakes, etc. At the same time, God is at work bringing order out of all this chaos, bringing good out of evil, and he invites our participation.”

Why Did God Give Us the Desire for Creativity?

As with the other desires I’ve explored in this series, I believe God instilled this desire in many of us because we would need it to battle evil, to bring order out of chaos, to address major problems like spiritual darkness, disease and natural disasters. These things require great ingenuity.

God’s goal and pleasure seems to be bringing order out of chaos in the context of relationship and teamwork with us. When you ask a creative person how they did something, they often say, “I don't know. The idea just came to me.” My best ideas always come while waiting at a stoplight, or while mowing the lawn or while taking a shower, evidence that perhaps these ideas aren’t mine alone. These epiphanies come when my mind is quiet on account of being occupied by some routine or meditative task. Is this mental quietness necessary in order to hear God’s “still, small voice?” (1 Kings 19:12) I suspect so.

Self Worth

One last thing I find most interesting about the desire for creativity is—as with my desire for power—it’s not so much about the beautiful masterpiece I can create, or the problem I can solve. While there is satisfaction in those things, the much greater satisfaction comes when someone recognizes my creation or solution as elegant, sublime, valuable, etc. “If I create or achieve something worthwhile,” my internal monologue goes, “people will ascribe worth to me. If others ascribe worth to me, then I can have self worth.” That’s at the root of the desire for creativity. The deeper motivation is self worth. I’ll explore this desire for self worth a bit more in a subsequent entry.

Photo Credit: girl_onthe_les/Flickr

Brian Lowther is the Director of the Roberta Winter Institute

Why Did God Give Us Our Most Basic Human Desires?

By Brian Lowther

If you’ve been tracking with the RWI for any length of time, I imagine you are the type of person whose deepest hope is to live a fruitful, meaningful life in view of the kingdom of God. But, do you ever struggle with the fact that you have other, more surface-level desires that often stand at odds with that deep hope? As an example, I have always wanted to own a jet pack. Just think of the traffic I could avoid! I also have a deep and abiding love of naps, palindromes, listening to my dad recount the events of a baseball game, and a very quiet part of me would love to spend a few leisurely years sailing around the Caribbean. These trifles make me feel quite happy. But what good is happiness if the real goal is God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven, which is essentially a battle against darkness and evil? [1] Are all of these surface-level desires engineered in me by God’s enemy to divert me off course? Or has God instilled them in me for some good reason?

To answer, it goes without saying that Satan can corrupt our desires causing us to pursue them too far. The word for that is sin. But in this five-part series, I’ll assume that these desires at their root are good and programmed into us by God for a good reason. Specifically, I think his reason is to help us participate with him in bringing his kingdom on earth as it is in heaven, which involves destroying the works of the devil. What follows are six of the most common human desires and how they help us participate in this task.

Why Did God Give Us a Desire for Survival?

My most basic desire—in agreement with popular psychological theories like Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs—is survival. I desire food, water, rest, sanitation, hygiene, security, and safety.

It seems obvious how this desire would help me in the battle against evil. Without it, I would give up and end my life when I encountered hardships.

The will to live is remarkably strong. I witnessed my wife battle through a terrible case of morning sickness. For five months extreme nausea was her all-day companion, vomiting was the norm and eating was unthinkable. I was terrified that she would starve to death. We went to urgent care countless times for intravenous fluids. But somehow, she never gave up hope. And one day, she started to get better. Now we have two children, meaning she went through this ordeal twice. How do people survive such things? Or worse things, like concentration camps or human trafficking? Why is this desire to live so strong?

I think it is because God knew that at times, the enemy’s attacks could be grisly, heinous, and appalling. Our desire to survive must be proportionally tenacious.

Why Did God Give Us a Desire for Pleasure?

If my ability to survive is not threatened, my next immediate desire is pleasure. I desire solitude, amusement, thin-crust pizza, frequent trips to the beach, maybe a jet pack—and any number of other physical or aesthetic comforts.

I think pleasure has a two-fold purpose in the battle against evil. First it acts as our “leave” from active duty. It recharges us so we can rejoin the battle. Even in wartime, soldiers don’t fight a battle indefinitely. They must take leave on a regular basis, or risk losing their minds.

Second, pleasure acts as aspirin or morphine when we experience the pain and suffering of battle. Such as: 1) The physical pain of existence, e.g., injury, handicaps, disease; 2) The mental anguish from failures, burnout, rejection, conflicts, or loss; and 3) The emotional turmoil from doubts and fears which I believe are whispered into our psyches by the enemy as a form of psychological warfare (see here for more on this). I think of pleasure as a momentary escape from these forms of existential suffering.

In the next installment, I’ll tackle the question, why did God instill in many of us a desire for power?

Endnote

[1] I realize that the battle against evil is a main theme among other main themes in scripture. I fully embrace the idea that God’s original and ultimate plan was and is for us to dwell with him and his holy angels in harmony for an eternal future. However, in the mean time, the RWI seeks to explore and advocate a “warfare worldview,” partly because we feel it is underemphasized in the body of Christ today and partly because we think it will inspire new action. If you’re new to the RWI, see the following brief essays for an introduction to the warfare worldview:

1. The Warfare Worldview           
2. The Story of the Cosmic Conflict    
3. Kingdom Mission So Far, in 500 Words
4. Three Views to the Problem of Evil: View #3

Photo Credits: 
1.  Jetman: Ars Electronica/Flickr
2. Bindweed plant breaking through asphalt: Mark Dixon/Flickr
3. Strawberry Shortcake: Sonny Abesamis/Flickr

Brian Lowther is the director of the Roberta Winter Institute.

Five (obvious) Questions about Malaria Eradication

By Brian Lowther

There is absolutely no evidence I know of in all the world of any theologically driven interest in combating disease at its origins. I have not found any work of theology, any chapter, any paragraph, nor to my knowledge any sermon urging us—whether in the pew or in professional missions—to go to battle against the many disease pathogens we now know to be eradicable.
~ Ralph D. Winter, December 2001

This quote has inspired much of our effort here in the Roberta Winter Institute. It has also compelled us to search high and low to prove this notion wrong. In recent years a few initiatives addressing malaria have cropped up; some led by Christian groups. Off the top of my head, here are two:

• The United Methodist Church’s participation in the “Nothing But Nets” campaign.
• Compassion International’s Malaria Bite Back Program

The key to both of these initiatives—as with most malaria projects—is bed nets. These two endeavors and their secular counterparts (such as the Roll Back Malaria campaign) should be supported and celebrated. But I can’t get a few rather obvious questions out of my mind.

Malaria patient Yim Pros, 12 from Orumchek village in Western Cambodia, came to Ta Sanh Health Center complaining of high fever, chills, and nauseau. He was diagnosed with a severe case of malaria. Yim's mother laid a damp towel over her son to help bring down his fever while he waited for treatment. Gates Foundation/Flickr

Question 1

Will passing out bed nets—crucial as that activity is—eradicate malaria? Even if every person in the world slept under a bed net, mosquitoes would still thrive, because they feed off of animals, not just human beings, right?

Answer

Well, apparently with the exception of one species of mosquito that causes malaria in Macaques monkeys, the mosquitoes that feed off of animals are of limited public health importance.

Question 2

Okay, but even then, what about when people aren’t sleeping? People aren’t going to wear nets 24-hours a day, are they?

Answer

The Anopheles mosquitoes, the most dangerous ones, prefer to feed at night. So wearing bed nets during the day is not necessary.

Question 3

But, bed nets prevent mosquitoes from biting; they don’t kill the mosquitoes, right? I’m reminded of a story in Dan Fountain’s book, Health, the Bible and the Church, in which he describes a village in Africa that was tormented by lions. To prevent the lion attacks, the villagers erected a fence around the entire village. This was effective, but had they really solved the lion problem? A few days later a woman and two children went outside of the fence. Suddenly a lion attacked and carried off one of her children. The woman ran screaming back to the village, “Why can’t you get rid of the lions?”

Answer

Apparently the nets are treated with insecticide, so they do kill at least some of the mosquitoes that land on them, as long as those mosquitos haven’t developed a resistance to the insecticide.

Question 4

The most simplistic solution to malaria—one that my seven-year-old could have thought up— is to wipe out all the mosquitoes. Mankind has shown a remarkable albeit unfortunate effectiveness in driving other species into extinction. Why can’t we apply that same hunter’s ingenuity to mosquitoes? In the 19th Century, hunters nearly wiped out all of the bison in North America because their hides were so lucrative. Why don’t we make mosquito carcasses lucrative?

While this solution is simplistic, I’m not the first one to think of it. In 1996, Manila had a cholera outbreak that killed seven people and sickened 310 others. Health officials determined that flies and roaches were the culprits. So the city government decided to pay 4¢ for every ten dead flies and 6¢ for every ten dead roaches. Eliminating the insects before they infected people helped to end the epidemic. Could this be done with mosquitoes? A $100,000 grant from Bill Gates would buy a lot of dead mosquitoes.

Answer

Well, apparently this solution isn’t the panacea. When the British invaded India, they tried this same method with cobras. Unfortunately people started to breed cobras and once the British Colonists found out, they nixed the reward. Subsequently, the people released their cobras and they ended up with a bigger cobra problem than when they started.

Also killing off all the mosquitoes on earth is tricky. Many of the most successful efforts at eliminating them have involved the use of toxic chemicals like DDT, which has since been banned in many places because of its side effects.

The real question, however, is not can mosquitoes be eradicated, but should mosquitoes be eradicated? The downside to a world without mosquitoes is that other parts of the ecosystem will suffer. There are plants that rely on mosquitoes for pollination, fish that count them as their sole food source and even caribou depend on being bothered by swarms of mosquitoes in order to prompt their migratory patterns. It's unclear whether the plants and animals that depend on these pests would adapt and survive without them. Ridding the world of mosquitoes might save millions of human lives, but the environment would pay the price in more ways than one.

Question 5

So, what’s the solution?

Answer

The current strategy involves insecticide treated bed nets, draining standing water and spraying insecticides. This lowers the mosquito population enough so that sooner or later the malaria infected mosquitoes disappear from a given area, as happened in North America, Europe and much of the Middle East (though each of these regions had the advantage of DDT).

But unless mosquitoes (or more specifically the P. falciparum Plasmodium) are eradicated from the entire world, malaria could become re-established. As long as we have airplanes, a few cases each year will pop up even where malaria has been eliminated. In the U.S. alone there were almost 1,700 cases in 2010, and 2,000 in 2011, a 40-year high.

Thus we turn to vaccines. Perhaps the only real solution is to make all human beings immune to the disease through vaccinations, as happened with smallpox. Vaccines may be especially important in the face of mosquitoes that are becoming increasingly insecticide-resistant. As of this moment, a completely effective vaccine is not yet available for malaria, although several vaccines are under development. Bill Gates—who funds much of this research—recently said, "I'd be disappointed if within 20 years we're not very close to eradicating this globally."

In the end, it may require a completely new solution that we haven’t even considered. But I’ll leave that one to my seven-year-old.

Brian Lowther is the director of the Roberta Winter Institute. 

N.T. Wright and a Theology of Disease

Flickr/Jordon Cooper

By Beth Snodderly

One way to describe the overarching goal Dr. Winter had in mind for the Roberta Winter Institute (RWI) is, “To prompt the theological world to begin working on a ‘theology of disease.’” Admittedly this came to Dr. Winter’s mind as a crucial need due to his first wife’s fatal bout with cancer. Throughout those and the following years he reflected on the types of inadequate responses to disease that are prevalent in the evangelical world and concluded that this was an obstacle to the spread of the gospel among thinking people in major unreached blocs of the world’s peoples. After his wife’s death he founded the RWI to address these issues. These are some quotes from a compilation of his writings I put together several years ago:

The Roberta Winter Institute will try to upgrade our desire to bring glory to God by ending our apparently Neo-Platonist truce with Satan in the realm of all his ingenious and destructive works. Our global mission agencies, which already have to their credit the discovery of the nature of leprosy, will declare war on other sources of disease in addition to being helpfully kind to sick people and preaching resignation amidst suffering.

We need to rectify our understanding of a God who is not the author of the destructive violence in nature, including disease, and who has long sought our help in bringing His kingdom and His will on earth.          

To “destroy Satan’s works” (1 John 3:8) means to take it as part of our efforts, our mission, to glorify God to restore, with God's help, what Satan has distorted. Thus, you see the rationale for establishing the Roberta Winter Institute.

The primary focus of this new institute is public and mission awareness of the need for a new theological sensitivity for destroying the works of the devil.

Several years ago, I came across N.T. Wright’s work and noticed that in many of his writings he has come close to the perspective Dr. Winter was advocating.

Those who now belonged to Jesus’ people  … were thrust out … to fulfill Israel’s vocation on behalf of the world. (The New Testament and the People of God, p. 458)

[Messiah’s message] … compels the followers of Jesus, energized by the power of his Spirit, to go out into the world and make new creation happen, confident that as that work has already begun in Jesus’ resurrection, and will be completed when heaven and earth are united at last, so the signs of that completion can truly be brought to birth in changed lives and societies in the present time. (Judas and the Gospel of Jesus, pp. 145, 146)

The New Testament points to the ultimate future, to the promise of a world set free from evil altogether, and invites us to hold that in our minds and hearts so that we know where we’re going. We are to implement the achievement of Jesus and so to anticipate God’s eventual world. (Evil and the Justice of God, p. 104)

The Christian imagination … needs to be awakened, enlivened and pointed in the right direction. … Christians need to sense permission, from God and from one another, to exercise their imaginations in thinking ahead into God’s new world and into such fresh forms of worship and service as will model and embody aspects of it. We need to have this imagination energized, fed and nourished, so that it is lively and inventive, not sluggishly going around the small circles of a few ideas learned long ago. (Evil and the Justice of God, p. 126)

It seems to me that the Roberta Winter Institute is trying to do what Wright is calling for, attempting to awaken and enliven the Christian imagination to include this new form of service to bring glory to God. Once we acknowledge disease in the category of “evil” (rather than as “God’s will”) we can see the need to mobilize the body of Christ to seek to eradicate diseases as a means of anticipating “God’s eventual world.”

Ultimately, what Dr. Winter would have loved to see is someone like N.T. Wright publicly acknowledge efforts to eradicate disease as one of the signs of what the new creation will look like, and getting behind a scholarly movement to work toward a theology of disease.

---

Beth Snodderly is the RWI's Theologian in Residence and Chair of the Advisory Board.

Do the Good Works of Believers Attract People to Faith in God?

By Brian Lowther

Tourists pass a Gypsy beggar, Venice, 2007. By Ted Pushinsky - Flickr/Renegade98

A Hunch and a Hypothesis

In the Roberta Winter Institute we’ve held a hunch and a hypothesis for quite a while that might just be completely mistaken.

First, the Hunch

Our hunch is that the good works of believers attract people to faith in God.

Shortly before his death, Ralph Winter wrote an essay entitled, The Future of Evangelicals, which appeared in the book MissionShift: Global Mission Issues in the Third Millennium. In this essay he wrote:

…the usual way in which individuals come to faith is primarily by viewing the good works of those who already have faith—that is, by seeing good works that reflect the power and character of God.

Then a little later in the same essay he wrote,

… in order for people to hear and respond to an offer of personal salvation…it is paramount for them to witness the glory of God in believers’ lives—seeing the love and goodness in their lives and deeds, and their changed motives and new intentions. That is the reality which gives them reason to turn away from all evil and against all evil as they seek to be closer to that kind of God and His will in this world.

Is this true?

Do the good works of believers cause people to seek to be closer to God? Many passages seem to suggest as much. Matthew 5:16 comes to mind. “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father in heaven.” Other examples include Mt 15:30-31, Mk 2:12, Lk 5:26; 17:11-16;18:43, Jn 20:30-31.

A historical example comes to mind as well. John Wesley was on board a ship bound for America in 1736. A group of Moravians were also aboard the ship. Over the course of the voyage Wesley came to admire the Moravians’ humility and meekness. One day a life-threatening storm occurred. Waves nearly engulfed the ship and the main mast split into pieces. Everyone screamed out in terror—everyone except the Moravians. The depth of their faith was apparently such that they quietly prayed and sang hymns in the midst of the storm. Wesley took note of that.

How about you?

Did a believer’s good works or admirable character attract you to faith in God?

1. Was it their personal character (love and goodness in their words and conduct)?
2. Was it a transformation (change in motives and behavior)?
3. Was it their good works (generosity or helping the poor, the sick, orphans, widows, etc.)?
4. Or was it something else completely?

In my own story, it was the transformation I witnessed in my father. My dad was a drinker and smoker since his early teens, and a life-long agnostic. He came to faith when he was 44-years-old and immediately quit smoking and drinking, stopped going to bars on the weekend, started treating my mom, my siblings and me differently. It was the epitome of a 180-degree change, a complete reversal in thinking and behavior. It had such a powerful impact on me that within three months—on the day after my 18th birthday—I started following Jesus in a very serious way and have never looked back.

Now, the Hypothesis

Our hypothesis is that innumerable numbers of people would come to faith in Jesus (i.e., evangelism and discipleship would become profoundly more effective and fruitful) if the body of Christ marshaled its resources and significantly helped eradicate the next disease.

This hypothesis comes partly from something Ralph Winter often said, “Historically, the mission enterprise more than any other thing has fallen on the heels of the impact of medical missions.” And it comes partly from the results of the eradication of smallpox in 1979.

In his book Viruses, Plagues and History, author Michael Oldstone called the eradication of smallpox, “one of the greatest accomplishments undertaken and performed for the benefit of mankind anywhere or at any time.” What would be said and believed about Jesus if his followers teamed-up to eradicate the next major disease, let’s say malaria, or AIDS?

Let’s say a bunch of churches, denominations, mission agencies, philanthropists, Christian universities, etc., committed massive amounts of funding, human resources, and collective resolve and together formed the International Coalition for the Eradication of Malaria (for example). How much more would God be glorified if it were clear that it was done for that very reason? I think it would be talked about by nearly every thinking person in the world and in the pages of every newspaper and website.

But, is this true? And if so, would it affect the fruitfulness of evangelism, discipleship, missions, and church-planting?

There exists a fairly similar example right under our noses. The Rotarians have been at the forefront of the Polio Eradication Campaign since its inception in the mid 1980’s. Since that time they’ve contributed countless volunteer hours and over a billion dollars in funding, resulting in a 99% decrease in cases of polio worldwide.

Yet, even though I’m very passionate about the cause of disease eradication, I don’t have a burning desire to join the Rotary Club.

Do you?

Testing Our Hypothesis

I’ve thought about why, and—as embarrassing as this is to admit—I’ve decided it is because polio hasn’t affected me personally.

So, I wondered, what if the Rotary Club had eradicated a disease that affected me personally? Then would I join?

That disease would undoubtedly be pancreatic cancer, which took my beloved grandfather fifteen years ago. It’s the same disease that took Michael Landon, Luciano Pavorotti, and Patrick Swayze. Let’s say—prior to when my grandfather was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer—the Rotary Club set out to eradicate it, and they largely succeeded. If those circumstances were in place, would I be a member of the Rotary Club today?

Would you, if it were a disease that had affected you very personally? Would you donate money? Would you participate in any of their activities or fundraisers? Would you pray about their efforts?

I would. But I don’t think I’d join a local club.

Why Not?

I think it’s because I don’t have a close, personal relationship with anyone in the Rotary Club.

According to Rodney Stark in The Rise of Christianity, people come to faith not because of good works, or doctrine, but because of the faith of multiple people they trust. He says that people overwhelmingly come to faith as a result of relationships.

To quote mission researcher Justin Long, “If a person does not have a relationship with a believer–in fact, several relationships with several believers whom they respect–they will likely not [come to faith].” [1]

This holds true in my story. It wasn’t just because of my dad’s transformation. It was also because of my relationships with my Uncle Mark, my Uncle Mike and my friend Will. All these men were my elders. I respected them. I liked them. It was inevitable.

So much for our hypothesis.

But wait just a minute. Even though something as far-reaching and world-changing as the Rotary Club eradicating pancreatic cancer wouldn’t have caused me to join the Rotary Club, it would have had an impact on me. It would have said something to me about the Rotary Club. It would have resulted in a secret admiration in me for them because of the great service they had done for not only my grandfather and me, but all of mankind. I may have sought out friendships with them.

And given Rodney Stark’s research, if those friendships developed to the point that I knew multiple people in the Rotary Club whom I respected, I probably would have joined the Rotary Club. Think about it. If your three closest friends/mentors were part of the Rotary Club, wouldn’t you be inclined to become a member?

Brian Lowther is the director of the Roberta Winter Institute. 

The point is, missions and disease eradication fit hand and glove, and the opportunities for close cooperation should be fully explored. Because the good works of believers can and do attract people to faith in God…as long as the additional ingredient of social proximity is also in place.

End Note

[1] This quote is from a blog entry that is no longer online.

Founding the Roberta Winter Institute

In case you haven't noticed, things are looking pretty good over here at robertawinterinstitute.org. Along with our sharp new website, we have added some fantastic content and pages detailing the ins-and-outs of the institute. 

The Birth of an Institute follows our timeline from the Winters' early days among the Mam people in Guatemala, through Roberta's cancer diagnosis, which led Ralph to the pivotal shift in understanding upon which the RWI is founded. Ironically and tragically, not long after establishing the RWI, Ralph was diagnosed with the same disease that took Roberta’s life (multiple myeloma).

Through the establishment of the RWI, he was able to disseminate "some of the most interesting and far-sighted ideas of his career," before being taken out by the very “works of the devil” he was seeking to destroy. But the vision lives on, read the full story of the passing of the torch and RWI's continuing endeavours to ignite in the body of Christ a theological shift regarding disease and its eradication.