Create Or Consume

Humankind were made to be co-creators with God.

Popular culture, however, is rooted in consuming.

Creating and consuming aren’t necessarily opposed to each other. But here is where they collide:

Our children are not likely to create something of value without first developing the character of a creator: patience, a critical mind, a stable interior life, original thought, logical strategy, and the courage to push a thing to the end.

That character growth is what God intended for our children – rooted in His own character.

But contrast that character description to what a 'consumer culture' nurtures – it is quite the opposite: impatience, uncritical thought, fickle desires, group-think, and little fortitude to create something other than what is readily available or offered.

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These autumn evenings I’ve been re-reading a novel to our older children.

The author describes a primary character, in his youth, as being too excitable by what ‘appears to be’. He had not yet learned to deeply consider a matter – to sit quietly and “make [a thing] walk up and down before him” until he could truly see it for what it was.

The rest of the story details his character development as he grows to be a creator and redeemer in the world around him.

The book was written in 1891 – but we modern parents have the same struggle in our digital age: how do we teach children to question what 'appears to be', and value what brings true meaning in life?

Further back – around 1662 – Blaise Pascal grasped for a solution:

     Anyone who does not see the vanity of the world is very vain himself. So who does not see it, apart from young people whose lives are all noise, diversions, and thoughts for the future?
     But take away their diversions and you will see them bored to extinction. Then they feel their nullity without recognizing it, for nothing could be more wretched than to be intolerably depressed as soon as one is reduced to introspection with no means of diversion.

I am not suggesting we go full-on luddite and fight modernity. Modernity was not the problem in 1891, nor in 1662. It was “diversions.” Distractions. Empty entertainment for the sake of placating our better sense and our creative potential.

Cultivating the ability to be thoughtful – and out of that thoughtfulness, to create – that is the remedy. But it will never happen until we strategically remove vacant diversions.

Here are some things you can do. Try one or two. If you are already doing them – then you are on the right path:

1. Model human engagement with your spouse, your children, and your guests.
2. Periodically ask God: What of our “diversion” culture needs to be pared back our home?
3. Pray that God will reveal the true emptiness of our culture’s distractions and grow a longing for what is truly good and life giving.