Man as Sub-Creator

J.R.R. Tolkien's poem depicting human persons as sub-creators:

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Although now long estranged,

Man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.

Dis-graced he may be, yet is not de-throned,

and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned;

Man, Sub-creator, the refracted Light

Through whom is splintered from a single White

to many hues, and endlessly combined

in living shapes that move from mind to mind.

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Christians should be shapers, makers of culture, not simply critiquing it.

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COMMENTS
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Janet Spitler

Your ability to discern the "heart" of the matter is incredible. As Christians (especially reformed), it seems we have become a passive people. Most of the time I think that we don't realize what being redemptive looks like. Or maybe we have been so dumbed down that we no longer possess the skills to make or shape culture. We can judge a painting, but we can't paint. We can judge music, but we can't compose or play an instrument. We can judge a book, but we can't write. To me any time we take an ordinary activity and turn it into an art form, we are being redemptive. My job is about making listening, speaking, reading, and writing art forms. Greg and I are proactively making cooking, gardening, and hospitality art forms. These are the activities that are near and dear to Greg and me. There are many others to be claimed.
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Martine Smith

Excellent quote, Rick - and Janet's comment was a perfect follow-on. It is sad to see how we as Christians are always in the critic's box, rather than out on the frontlines of creativity, taking the blows that come with any creative effort. It's "safer" to just sit on the sidelines and be righteously disparaging. Yet in the end I know I will be the one most saddened to see all that God equipped me to do, but that I shunned doing out of fear.
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Janet Spitler

Well said, Martine. I want to believe that I am never too old to begin, and I am tired of beating myself up because for most of my life I have chosen (out of fear) to merely survive. However, I survived by always running--moving on to the next thing. I never stayed long enough to really invest my heart and mind. Believing it was my enemy, I avoided the ordinary.