The War of Art

So, right, I mentioned that I was reading a book a month this year – and, hey! Book #1 is complete. Well, it’s been complete, but I’ve spent the last month pondering it. A book like The Art of War demands both immediate action and a long period of contemplation. If you’re engaged in any kind of creative activity - whether music, painting, writing, or even starting a new company – then you absolutely need to read this book. It explains why you encounter so much resistance whenever you sit down to create and what you can do to push through it.

The author, Steven Pressfield, diagnoses the resistance to and activity of creation as ultimately spiritual. I think he’s absolutely right, but for some different reasons than he mentions in the book. I think he paints a good picture that angels act as muses. But it’s only partway to the truth. I think the ultimate muse is God.¹

We are created in the image of (or bearing the mark of) God, and He is love. He created because He is love, and love gives itself away. While we all carry brokenness in some way, we all also in some way carry a resemblance to the Creator. When we create, we aren’t just creating by ourselves, we are co-creating with God. Or, as John Chandler at Collide Magazine wrote, at the very least “a person who makes, who creates, is a human who is straining into the image of God that abides in their soul.”

Scripture tells us that we are both children of and ambassadors for God, and that we are able to exercise his authority on Earth. I think part of that authority is creating. But there’s another authority that is operating in the world, one that is much darker and sinister: the opposite of love. If love is about giving away, anti-love is about taking.² And if love creates, then anti-love will resist the act of creation – and if it fails in that task, then it will twist the thing being created in order to take instead of give.

Giving into resistance is giving into anti-love, and ultimately is abdicating our role as children, ambassadors, and co-creators. The tragic thing is that “the whole creation is groaning”³ for us to step into these roles. Donald Miller says it well

Made in the image of God, able to speak something into nothing, able to create solutions to the world’s problems, we stammer about in disbelief, waiting for somebody else to take responsibility for our lives and for the lives we have been given to care for.

Harsh indictment, perhaps. But I’m writing this not to condemn but to encourage. The battle against resistance is real and hard. But don’t give up the fight. Bring into being the thing that the Creator has put into you, because the world is crying out for it.