Start something
Kids initiate. They create situations. They start ruckuses. All of them. Left to his own devices, the ruckus-causing initiator will continue to do so forever. He won't stop at five or ten or twenty years old. The essence of being human is to initiate. But we are not left to our own devices. We are smothered by parents, snubbed by peers, scolded by teachers, organized by authorities, hired by factories and brainwashed, relentlessly, to cease any troublesome behavior.
Seth Godin
Poke the Box
I don't know anything about Seth Godin, but I think that he's right about kids. I am a parent, an educator, I'm married to an elementary school teacher, and I'm a long time school trustee. In other words, I've spent a lot of time around children. There is no question that under the right circumstances they will try things. Experimenting with whatever is to hand is pretty much normal with kids.
Godin is a bit hard on teachers, characterizing them as "scolders." But the professional educators I spend time with tell me that our way of teaching students is more oriented to the left brain (or at least to our logical, detailed, and verbal faculties) than the right (our propensity to be creative, intuitive, emotional). In addition, boys and girls learn differently, I'm told, and our educational practices cater more to the female way of learning. Sorry guys--we don't stand a chance! Our creativity is annihilated.
Management practices are, similarly, oriented to "left side" thinking. One only has to consider how business administration students are taught to make good decisions, for instance. Everything is quantitative analysis, cost-benefit studies, and so on.
But we are made, our faith informs us, in the image of God. And God is presented to us in the Scriptures as first and foremost a creator, an initiator. Adam and Eve (whom I understand as highly useful theological metaphors) are given work to do as part of their state of perfection, and very little by way of instruction in how to go about it. The whole wide world is spread before them, and they are told simply to "subdue" it (i.e., be in charge of it, have responsibility for it), and to have "dominion" over it (i.e., to govern it, steward it) in Gen. 1:26-28, and to "work it and care for it" (literally, serve it) in Genesis 2:15. The form this takes is, at least in the Genesis story, left up to them to decide. They are to take initiative and be creative with it.
For an excellent study of the role of humanity vis-a-vis creation, see Theodore Hiebert, Rethinking Dominion Theology at http://www.directionjournal.org/article/?922.
[Note that such things as economic scarcity, monotony of labour, exploitation of the earth and fellow human beings, and so on all come after humanity's fall from grace. But work was part of the perfect creation.]
We are not far into Genesis before we find humankind has developed agricultural activities (growing crops and the domestication of animals), architecture and building, the development of musical instruments, and the manufacture of tools. Again, I understand these chapters as metaphors, not as literal stories, but they indicate that creative work was normal for God's creatures, however fallen.
I leap to the conclusion (not too blindly, I hope) that the eternal state, minus the limitations we endure at the present time, will be no different. We will continue to be creative as God is, and as God intended us to be.
We come into this world with varying abilities, interests, gifts, and skills, all in some way hampered by the "fallen" parts of existence--developmental challenges, discrimination, lack of opportunity, etc. Imagine having these obstacles removed. The child with autism becomes an orator; the visually impaired woman a great artist. The man enslaved as a child in South Asia assumes a leadership position; the boy born to Don and Reita Sutherland in Trenton Ontario a wonderful athlete (speaking completely hypothetically, of course); and his aunt born with Down Syndrome (not hypothetical) a teacher and nurturer.
And I know without a shadow of doubt that someone in that heavenly state will invent calorie-free butter tarts. Amen and amen.
Kids initiate. They create situations. They start ruckuses. All of them. Left to his own devices, the ruckus-causing initiator will continue to do so forever. He won't stop at five or ten or twenty years old. The essence of being human is to initiate. But we are not left to our own devices. We are smothered by parents, snubbed by peers, scolded by teachers, organized by authorities, hired by factories and brainwashed, relentlessly, to cease any troublesome behavior.
Seth Godin
Poke the Box
I don't know anything about Seth Godin, but I think that he's right about kids. I am a parent, an educator, I'm married to an elementary school teacher, and I'm a long time school trustee. In other words, I've spent a lot of time around children. There is no question that under the right circumstances they will try things. Experimenting with whatever is to hand is pretty much normal with kids.
Godin is a bit hard on teachers, characterizing them as "scolders." But the professional educators I spend time with tell me that our way of teaching students is more oriented to the left brain (or at least to our logical, detailed, and verbal faculties) than the right (our propensity to be creative, intuitive, emotional). In addition, boys and girls learn differently, I'm told, and our educational practices cater more to the female way of learning. Sorry guys--we don't stand a chance! Our creativity is annihilated.
Management practices are, similarly, oriented to "left side" thinking. One only has to consider how business administration students are taught to make good decisions, for instance. Everything is quantitative analysis, cost-benefit studies, and so on.
But we are made, our faith informs us, in the image of God. And God is presented to us in the Scriptures as first and foremost a creator, an initiator. Adam and Eve (whom I understand as highly useful theological metaphors) are given work to do as part of their state of perfection, and very little by way of instruction in how to go about it. The whole wide world is spread before them, and they are told simply to "subdue" it (i.e., be in charge of it, have responsibility for it), and to have "dominion" over it (i.e., to govern it, steward it) in Gen. 1:26-28, and to "work it and care for it" (literally, serve it) in Genesis 2:15. The form this takes is, at least in the Genesis story, left up to them to decide. They are to take initiative and be creative with it.
For an excellent study of the role of humanity vis-a-vis creation, see Theodore Hiebert, Rethinking Dominion Theology at http://www.directionjournal.org/article/?922.
[Note that such things as economic scarcity, monotony of labour, exploitation of the earth and fellow human beings, and so on all come after humanity's fall from grace. But work was part of the perfect creation.]
We are not far into Genesis before we find humankind has developed agricultural activities (growing crops and the domestication of animals), architecture and building, the development of musical instruments, and the manufacture of tools. Again, I understand these chapters as metaphors, not as literal stories, but they indicate that creative work was normal for God's creatures, however fallen.
I leap to the conclusion (not too blindly, I hope) that the eternal state, minus the limitations we endure at the present time, will be no different. We will continue to be creative as God is, and as God intended us to be.
And I know without a shadow of doubt that someone in that heavenly state will invent calorie-free butter tarts. Amen and amen.
