The Tasks of Creation (theology of creativity)

In my men’s group this morning one of the participants gave a summary of Jamie Buckingham’s books, Strength Finder and Stepping Out. I self scored low on eight strengths but relatively high on creativity. Here’s why: I have a theology of creativity based in Genesis 1. I describe it here, applying the tasks of creation to Ecclesiastes U.

The Universe	Ecclesiastes University
In the beginning God created heaven and earth with a big bang	On December 15, 2011 I began creating this graphic novel with a big burst of enthusiasm
The earth was without form …	I’ve completed two drafts of this book so far and they are without (much) form. My ambition with Draft Three is to impose form on this mass of paper, words, and faces
And void…	As I peruse the 428 pages of Draft Two I see plot holes, glaring inconsistencies, and a Milky-Way-sized humor void
And darkness…	The subject matter in Ecclesiastes is dark, gray, and ambiguous
Was on the face…	Into these 428 pages I’ve scotch taped approximately 2568 faces frozen in time
Of the deep…	Qoholeth is so deep I’m afraid I’m in over my head. I want to shine a light on the profundity of skepticism
And God separated…	My big task with Draft Three is to separate (see below)
And God put them in the garden…	Once I tease out all the tangled threads of Draft Two I hope to reweave them into the tapestry of Draft Three
Humans were created in the image of God	I believe humanity has been endowed with the God-like ability to separate and then reconnect

This will be difficult but in combing though (separating) the tangle of Draft Two I hope to end up with the following discrete and tidy threads.

Separate certainty from faith from doubt

Separate individual characters from each other

Separate characters’ earlier selves from their later selves

Separate students' responses to what Dr. Q is saying from their misunderstanding of what he's saying

Separate boomerisms (there are many) with Gen-Y-isms (there are too few)

Separate panels into one, two, three, or more per row

Separate the texts into smaller sections distinguished by different background colors

Once all separated into tidy piles I hope to then reconstruct them so they look like jazz: improvised and complex yet organized.