Take a moment and try to think something you've never thought before. Is this a hard task? Where do original thoughts come from? How do you FORCE yourself to think one? One thing you might do is look for something you've never looked at before. This might be something from nature that you have to dig around in your yard to find. It might be some dusty chest storing heirlooms from your family that you've never really taken the time to examine. If you have art supplies lying around, you might mix colors in a way you've never mixed them before so that you can look at a whole new color. If you have a musical instrument at home, play a tune or rhythm that no one has ever played before. You might look at a familiar thing in a new way. You might find a piece of art in your house that you've always looked at with living-room lighting, take it down off the wall, and go look at it out in the sunshine. You might turn it upside down to see something you've never noticed about it before. Harder, I think, would be to think of something both original and abstract. You might think of familiar thoughts and then combine them in new ways. What does sailing have to do with hopscotch? Harder still would be to come up with something entirely new from nothing at all: as you rummage around in your thoughts you have to reject the familiar until the new something comes along and fills the void that you have to keep making.
Did you do it? Did you think a new thought? Congratulations! You just CREATED something. To turn that thought into something tangible might leave you with a souvenir of your accomplishment, but you don't have to go that far. You can feel good about your own private thought-accomplishment for the rest of your life whether you ever act on it or not. You should probably name it. Can you invent an entirely new word for the thing you just thought? I'm sure you can, since you just proved you can think new things. I hope this little exercise is fun for you.
Some philosophers think that words and thoughts are basically the same thing. Sometimes this comes out sounding like, "If you can't say it, you can't think it," as though a bigger vocabulary would increase your cognitive abilities. I don't understand it this way. In my mind, the thoughts you think ARE words of the language of thought. When we think a new thing, that, itself, is a word; when we make up a word for that new thing, that is a translation from the language of thought to the language we speak. In this way, every time we create a new thought, we are using words to do it.
You know who else creates things using words? "In the beginning when God began to create the heavens and the earth, the earth was complete chaos, and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light." God creates with words in Genesis, chapter 1 (NRSVUE). God speaks things into existence. The Word--the Eternal Word of God--"was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being," says John chapter 1. God creates with words and Jesus is THE Word. We do, too.
This is amazing, but also, it's entirely to be expected. "God said, 'Let us make humans in our image, according to our likeness.' " The Latin word for this is imago Dei: we were created in the image of God. Because God creates things, and because we are made in the image of God, we can create things, too. We can think original thoughts and name them with original words. When we do that, something existed that didn't exist before, just like light existing when God spoke it into existence.
Of course, we are not God. As amazing as our creative ability is, God's is more amazing. Ephesians says that God "is able to accomplish far more abundantly than all that we can ask or think." Remember your accomplishment in thinking a new thought? God thought up all things in the universe. Before there was anything, God thought up a new thought and made up a word for it and spoke that word to create "light." Everything that we see or touch comes from God, including our own creative power. God's creative vocabulary is the superset of ours. God can speak more words than we can. God can think more thoughts than we can. To God be glory in the people that God has created and in their thoughts and creations, too. Ephesians says, "to God be glory in the church." That's us: the people that God created and called to do God's work, to accomplish God's things. Ephesians says, "to God be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen." That's us, the church and that's our Lord, Jesus Christ who is the very creative and eternal Word that God speaks to create us.
This also happens when we use words out loud. When we say things among other people, we are also creating. When we say something like, "that church down the road just hired a lady preacher," we create a reality where "lady preachers" are unusual. There are many ways we use language (without thinking much about it) that create realities that are bad for people or classes of people. We might say something about poor people that implies they are lazy, even though we know nothing about their situation or why they're poor. We say things about people of color or other denominations or religions or cultures or political parties, and the things we say might be new thoughts to those who hear us. This creates a reality in their minds, and that spoken reality can end up causing real justice issues in society.
We have in our imago Dei something like God's creative power, but we are not God. We, as fallen creatures also have the struggle of finding the righteous or ethical thing to do. That applies to what words we say as well. When we create things, are we creating the reality that God wants? or contributing to sinful, fallen reality. Reading and studying God's word, the Bible to understand the will and thoughts of God's Eternal Word helps us know what God's vision for reality is. "God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation," says 2 Corinthians. "Justice will roll down like a river," says Amos. "The wolf will lie down with the lamb," says Isaiah. In Revelation we see the river of life:
The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him; they will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And there will be no more night; they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.
When we create things--when we think new and original thoughts, and when we use words to create those thoughts in the minds of others--are we creating the realities that God wants?
Sin, in a nutshell, is any turning away from God. Repentance is turning back toward God. May we turn all our thoughts, words, and deeds toward God's reality and the Word which God sent into the world and the Spirit who empowers us to make it real in this world.
--Chas
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