“Often our best creativity comes from the extreme emotions that we work so hard to avoid.”
I believe it was legendary music producer Phil Spector that once said that there were only four songs we could ever write; I love you, I hate you, go away, or come back. He wasn’t all that wrong. Those emotional extremes probably produced most of the songs that you love.
Often we are taught in our lives to avoid our emotional extremes, but in my short life it’s been in those places that I feel like I’ve created some of the best art of my life. Whether celebration or hurt when I allow myself to feel those things deeply it produces something in me and something emerges that clearly and powerfully communicates what I’m feeling.
As a Christian I believe I should constantly be creating better art because as a Christ-follower my goal is to live in a perpetual state of emotional extremes. Let me explain. On the positive side I have a hope beyond all hope. I have a hope in Jesus Christ and because he is my Savior I will live forever in eternity. There is no g
So here I sit in a state of perpetual paradox desiring to exist in 2 emotional extremes simultaneously. That is my desire as a believer in Christ. I want to live in the highest state of celebration and create art from that place, but I also want to live in the state of brokenness that God desires (Psalm 51:17) and create from that place as well.
I believe this desire to be exclusively Christian because only through Jesus can I find joy in brokenness and brokenness in joy. It is a paradox of extremes that I am grateful to navigate. Most people who sing of brokenness do so to alleviate it, but as a Christian I do so to celebrate it. Most people who sing of joy do so in hopes that it will never leave, but as a Christian I do so that it may drive me to deeper brokenness. As these extremes grow in my life I hope the power of their expression grows as well and that the power of that expression would better serve the Kingdom of God.
(This post is from thoughts on worship leader creativity and is reposted here by permission.)
Testing the comment installation.