The book of Genesis says that God saw everything He made and it was very good, including us. We are made in God’s image. We are the multiplication of His creativity, created to be creators. From earth tones to copper sculptures and everything in-between, our concept of taste is so diverse and complex and sometimes just straight-up bizarre.
The problem with taste and talent is there’s a gap. In our sin-stained current reality, the level of our creative talents are not as developed as our innate concept of taste built into us by our Creator. Even the concept of stylistic taste is underdeveloped. We don’t fully know what looks good and right and truly creative until we see how others have developed their God-given skills to create what we realize to be very good… just like Genesis.
What is good is that the gap between our taste and our skills can be bridged. Ira Glass shared one of the most powerful messages I’ve ever heard on bridging the creative gap.
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Even though Glass is a self-proclaimed atheist, I firmly believe he’s onto something here. Part of our calling as creatives is to chase the excellence of creativity that matches our divinely-given taste. Some of us are born with more natural creative skills, but we all have a natural draw to what’s creative, appealing, and eye-catching in our everyday lives.
Whatever your artistic outlet may be, drawing, engineering, designing, composing, or organizing, the distance between your current skills and your picture of what is good and excellent may be further apart than you may want. What you’re making right now may be bad, but you probably know it.
Work at your craft. Get expert advice, take a class, and develop thick skin to handle the truths of your current shortcomings. And don’t give up. Don’t let the naysayers and the critics and the ignorant suffocate your sacred echo of God-given creativity.
May your creative gap be shortened through many hours of work. May your resolve be stronger than your critic’s opinion. And may your creativity reflect Your Heavenly Father’s imprint of intelligent design on your own life.