The Red Letter Words Of JesusSample

Framing Genius

Let’s take a minute to frame the conversation of genius and why it matters to God’s kingdom.

Your genius is given by God, confirmed in community, and aimed at kingdom impact.  

The topic of creativity stirs up a lot of emotion. A few people get excited to talk about it, but most just shut it down as quickly as they can. And that’s exactly why the conversation about genius is so crucial.

When I talk with others about creativity, I get a few standard reactions.

“I’m not creative at all.” A friend has said this to me many times, but I see something different when I look at her life. She has always been able to re-create herself. Without much education, she has navigated the mortgage business, started several small businesses on the side, and learned to sustain life at a young age. Yet she defines creativity too narrowly. Folks look up to her, and she looks down on herself.

“No one understands my creativity.” A friend grieves that her creativity was stifled when she was a child. Those around her pushed her aside as if her creativity were a cute detail she would graduate from some day and move into the real world. She always felt undervalued, and to this day she struggles to know how to express her creativity and enjoy the mind God has given her. She feels she needs to turn off the switch and simply be the person others want her to be.

“I wish I was creative.” A friend looked up to visual artists, but he never saw himself in the role of a creative because he never created visible works of art. He is very literal, very serious, and very calculated, and he thought that amounted to a lack of creativity. God rescued him from a life of addiction, and he has to be incredibly creative to figure out how to live a new narrative and follow God into marriage and fatherhood.

“I used to be creative.” People remember a time when they created art. Today they’ve gotten busy with the perils of real life: bills, busyness, schedules, kids, and occasional boredom. A friend has taken his artistic creativity into the medical world, where he invests himself in the marvels of modern medicine. The human body became his canvas.