The Creator and the Critic

So God created mankind in his own image; in the image of God he created them… Genesis 1:27

I once went to one of those paint-a-painting-in-an-evening classes. If you’re not familiar, it's an event where for around $30, you can start the night with a white canvas and two hours later you have a frame-worthy work of art, made by yours-truly, ready to be hung in a place of honor over your fireplace. There is an instructor who provides all the materials and if you’re lucky, there’s wine. I should preface this by saying I am not an artist. Stick-figure drawings are about the extent of my artistic ability. Paint by numbers is more my style. But, I was being a good sport and sat before a blank canvas, eager to reproduce the seascape that the (very talented) artist-teacher held up for us all to examine and emulate.

There were about thirty of us (and no wine) who each began layering the acrylic of the sand and waves background. I was hopeful. It looked, kind of, like the example... Next came the foreground… Alright. That’s okay. It looks a little bit like the example… except for that part there, and this… Oh, well... Then the finishing touches... Ouch! That’s not right! Uh, oh! Ugh! I think I just ruined it… Like I said, I’m not an artist. No one can expect me to recreate a lovely little seascape on my first go, can they? Chalk that one up to a fun experience with friends, even sans wine.

But... guess what happened?

I took my painting home and apathetically leaned it against the wall. I went to bed. In the morning, when I woke up and walked downstairs, there stood my painting, and it really wasn’t so bad. It did look like a seascape! Sure, it didn’t look like the teacher’s example, well, maybe a little. But in its own way, it was pretty; endearing even. I found a place and hung it on the wall (and it’s still there).

My point being this, when I was looking at the expert’s example, mine paled in comparison. The teacher’s painting was probably not perfect, but to my untrained eye, it looked pretty-darned good. Looking at mine, all I could see were the flaws; the places that mine were different, wrong. I would never be able to perfect the original, even if I had the thirty-years experience that my artist-teacher did. Was the purpose of this class to make an exact replica of the original or was it to put my own interpretation, my own spin on it?

Inside of each of us are two voices, two opposing forces: the creator and the critic. It is the nature of every human being to create. We create art. We create architecture, music, food, bridges, poems, photographs, lectures, lessons, gardens, empires, collections, stories, families… The list of what we can create is endless. Even the smallest of children creates with blocks or in sandboxes or with crayons.

We are driven by a desire to contribute to the beauty of the world. It is part of our spirit to leave a piece of ourselves in our wake. It is proof of our existence. It is an expression of our truth, our beauty, our joy. Some people, like me, create with words. Some people create with sound, with clay, with paint, with gears. The world has been populated by creators and The Creator lives in each of us. Imagine a world without any of these things: books, songs, sculptures, movies, restaurants. It doesn’t seem possible.

It is all creation.

We are made in the image of God who is Creator... creative. He thought up the blue whale, and the mosquito and the Rocky Mountains and rain. What unimaginable creativity it must have taken to imagine blood-vessels and mitosis and continents and oceans. We are made in the image of God. We are made to create. God created the world and everything in it… and then He said “it is good”. But since we are broken and human and flesh, we create and are accosted by the other half of our human nature, the critic. We create and the critic says, “it’s just okay” or “it could be better” or “it’s not good” or worse... We are imperfect people, living in an imperfect world, striving to perfect a level of perfection that is not even plausible. We can never achieve it.

Imagine God looking at the rocky mountains, disparaging in their asymmetry and saying, “Whoops, I could do better.” Imagine Him inspecting his work in the Blue Whale and saying, “That’s weird. No one is going to believe that it can live in the water and breathe air. Also, it’s a little on the large size.” (It kind of feels a little blasphemous to even say that. God is good, all the time.) Isn’t the beauty of The Rockies the fact that they are uniquely lopsided, crooked and uneven. The majesty of a whale is its size and the miracle of its nature is that it is mammal but it lives in the ocean? If they were “perfect” the Rockies would need renaming: The Smooth Mountains? The Identical Mountains? Can you imagine a friend saying, “We just had the most amazing trip through The Smooths.”? (Ugh!) A small whale that doesn’t breathe air is just another fish, right? “Hey, everybody, let’s get on a boat and go fish watching.” No, thanks.

The beauty is the imperfection.

Our inner critic says we have failed in the imperfection. (No!) It tells us to erase, rewrite, think again. (No!) I have seen five year olds practicing to write their letters and words, they erase entire pages to do it over because it “wasn’t just right”. Swiping away bits of eraser shavings to start again; striving for “perfection”... At. Five. Years. Old. (No, no, no!)

Perfection is a fallacy. Perfection does not exist outside of the divine.

Is there ever a “just right”? A “good enough”? Yes!

Good enough is where we get to sigh with contentment. Sign the canvas. Submit the design. Just right is where we get to smile at a job well done. Well done is just right. Good enough is good enough. There is no forward motion with acceptance of a completed work this side of perfection.

There is, of course, a time and place for the critic. No one would want to read a novel that hadn’t gone through the fine tuning which is the editing process. We would have trouble reading one another’s handwriting if we quit practicing at five years old.

Again I say, we are created in the image of God and God is infallible (refer above to the Rockies and whales). But in our humanity and brokenness, we are fallible. We fail. Over and over again and guess what? It’s okay. We all fail. Let’s hear it in the cheap seats: We all fail! Period. Exclamation mark! We make mistakes (what does the old adage say? Mistakes are proof you’re trying.) Mistakes are why a pencil has an eraser. But as we learn, the pendulum swings to both sides. In embracing our mistakes, we must embrace the creator inside of each of us. It is there. It is waiting to come out.

If you want to find the fullness of your joy, learn to create. Learn what creation is living in you, tap into it, embrace it. Allow yourself to make mistakes; big ones and little ones. Use the eraser. Find the harmony between the creator and the critic, because both live inside you, because both are you and and both are necessary and beautiful!