God has many titles: our Father, our shepherd, our rock, our fortress, the list of metaphors and analogies continues. But of all these descriptors, I have always found the “Creator” title particularly puzzling. Perhaps this is because I find the act of creating so personal. I don’t know if I would call myself a creator, but I do like to think of myself as an artist: doodling new characters in the margins of my lecture notes, practicing new piano pieces in the hopes of one day creating my own masterpiece, and spending my free time developing potential web comic plots. So I want to believe that there is more to God’s title as our creator, THE Creator, than simply reiterating the fact that he created our universe.
After all, our indescribable God begins to take shape when we compare Him to what is familiar. And unlike the shepherd or fortress analogy that might need more context, the idea of a creator seems to have aged better.
So today, I want to explore this idea of God as our creator. Though we are not capable of fully understanding who God is, we are capable of understanding the analogies. And hey, if there exists a way to know God better, I think it’s worth taking a closer look.
Before we get started though, I want to make clear what I am NOT doing: I’m not trying to convince you that my comparisons are correct, and I’m not trying to equivalate myself to God in any way. These are my honest observations, so if some points seem romanticized or far-fetched you can blame that on me being an enneagram four. Ultimately, I want this to be a time rooted in awe and wonderment of God’s character. Nothing tricky, nothing clever. Just plain discussion of who God is.
So let’s get to it. To better understand how my analogy is going to work, I think I should first tell you about the kind of artist I am. Take my artwork that’s hanging above my bed frame for example, I call it “green universe.”
It’s a picture of all the different planets circling the sun, drawn in different types of media from watercolor to needlework, and is all colored in, you guessed it, green. To most people, that’s all it is: a green replica of our solar system. But if you look closely, each planet and orbital is further composed of little images that have personal meaning: a microscope to symbolize my exploration of biology, the symbols from the korean flag to represent my heritage, a frying pan because I had just discovered the joy of cooking. And all done in different shades of my favorite color since birth. It was the purest way I could express myself as a rising sophomore, and because it represents such an intimate part of my being, it holds immense value, even if no one else views it in the way I do.
It seems pretty obvious, but pouring a piece of yourself into your work gives that work inherent significance. Now, I know God isn’t some angsty teen just trying to “express himself’ and ‘figure it out,” but he chose to create us in His own image, to pour a bit of Himself in us.
So if God feels anything close to what I feel about my green universe, I can begin to understand just how precious we are in His eyes. Because this would mean that just by existing we are meaningful to Him, even if no one else can see the meaning that He does. As Jesus points out when he says “look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?” (Matthew 6:26), there is even a distinction between us and his other creations. Out of all the creatures God breathed life into, man alone was made in God’s own image. So God’s love is fatherly, yes; it is protective, gentle, kind. But there is also an element of something grander at play that we can’t forget: the inherent, intimate significance between Creator and created.
In saying God is our Creator, there is this unique creator-created relationship. So next comes the question: what about the creation itself?
My green universe was actually supposed to represent the ways I organize different aspects of my life: the concentric orbitals and planets hold my most important identities in the middle (my faith, my ethnicity). And to further emphasize this concept of organization I drew each horizontal slice in a different medium and each vertical slice in a different shade of green, transitioning from a lighter green on the left to a darker, bluer green on the right. Even without recognizing these components, it’s still a pretty picture. But there is a lot more to consider when analyzing its purpose: why a computer icon here? Why this pale green color there? Why oil paint and not colored pencils in this section? Really, everything about the piece was made to point the audience towards this idea of organization and identity.
So, if God created with anything close to my desire to communicate, the question becomes: what is God’s creation pointing towards? Because this would mean that there is a reason for why He created the world with certain rhythms, in certain ways.
Of course, for this question we know the answer: God wants to be known to us. And this is clear as God describes what will happen in the end: “No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest (Jeremiah 31:34). Until the end, where God puts the law on our minds and writes it on our hearts (Jeremiah 31:33), we are meant to know the Lord. This is the goal we are supposed to teach each other. And the ultimate reward in fact, is for all people to finally know God when the end comes, a place all of our stories are leading towards.
If we believe that our purpose really is to know God, we can begin to see how this world was built to support this purpose. God has surrounded us with people who know Him and can point us towards Him, He has created grand canyons and magnificent waterfalls to make us question just how significant we are in the grand scheme of things, and He has created the very metaphors we have used for centuries to understand His nature: rocks, fortresses, the concept of a father, the concept of a shepherd, light, salt, etc. We reach a beautiful realization that our God, who is so great and powerful that He is indescribable to us humans, has intentionally created this world to give us a million different ways to understand what he is trying to tell us; to repeatedly remind us that He is here, that He is present, and that He wants to spend eternity with us, if only we might let Him into our lives.
So not only is there this intimate Creator-created relationship, but also God has carefully crafted His creation to point us in His direction. And this further hints at the absolute mastery that God, as the creator, has over His creation.
I spent hours upon hours, days upon days, carefully and painstakingly crafting my green universe. And having made each marking and stitch, I can say with full confidence that I know this painting better than anyone else in the world. Sure there were some “happy little accidents” that occured along the way -- a misplaced brush stroke, an odd colored microscope -- but nothing I couldn’t handle; with a little thought, I could weave them into the final picture. In fact, I was probably the only person capable of doing so; like I said, I knew the painting better than anyone else could, I knew best how to achieve the overall picture I had originally envisioned.
So when the angel visiting Mary declares “for nothing will be impossible with God” (Luke 1:37), he means that nothing that happens on Earth will ever be outside of God’s imagination and by extent, God’s influence. When Psalm 47 proclaims “Great is our Lord, and abundant in power; his understanding is beyond measure,” it means that, as our creator, God has completely mastered the skills of His craft and knows more about our world than anyone else can ever know. And when God states “I, I am the Lord, and besides me there is no savior,” (Isaiah 43:11), He means that there literally is no other savior capable of doing what He can do.
God is all-knowing and God is all-powerful. He knows His creation so well, He is so skilled in the craft of His work, that he can use whatever we give him, fix whatever we break, to still create the greater picture he originally envisioned. And He is the only one who can do this work.
I could keep going with this analogy, but I will stop here because I have already written too much; what else would you expect from trying to describe an indescribable God? Hopefully though, I have shed light on a different aspect of His character.
God is our Creator.
And this means that there exists an intimate relationship between Him and His creation. This means that there is purpose behind His carefully crafted creation. And, this means that God, as the sole master of His craft, is the only one capable of fulfilling our redemption story.
