I Have Never Had An Original Idea

Every idea you have ever had came from somewhere and you can name the place.

That is what you told me, more or less, and you said it as though it settled something.

The thing you made last spring was from a picture you saw. The one before that, your aunt used to do it. The colors were the colors in a room you liked. Every single one traces back, and you can do the tracing yourself, quickly, which is why the conclusion feels so airtight.

Nothing of mine is mine.

And therefore, not creative. Because creative means original, and original means it came from nowhere, out of you, unprecedented.

Now I want to look at that definition, because I do not think you chose it and I do not think you have ever examined it.

Where would an original idea come from?

Not a rhetorical question. Actually try to imagine one. A thing with no source, no influence, no precedent, made by somebody who had never seen anything. It would not be creative. It would be unintelligible, and nobody would recognize it as a made thing at all, because everything anybody makes is made out of things they have met.

The people you think of as creative are not exempt from this. They are doing exactly what you are doing, which is combining things they got from somewhere, and the only difference is that they have not thought to feel guilty about it.

There is no new thing under the sun

Ecclesiastes says the feared thing out loud, as a settled fact about the world, and then does not treat it as a tragedy.

The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun. (Ecclesiastes 1:9, King James Version)

There is no new thing under the sun.

Read that again with the definition in mind. Under that definition, the verse abolishes creativity entirely. There would be no creative people anywhere, ever, because the condition it sets has never once been met by anybody.

A definition that nobody in history satisfies is not a standard. It is a locked door with nothing behind it.

You are holding a standard that no human being has ever met, and Ecclesiastes 1:9 says so about the whole world without apology. The Holy Spirit is the one who takes the bleakest sentence in the book and turns it into a release for a woman who has been disqualifying herself.

And notice the tone of the writer. He is not distressed about this. He is stating a condition of the world, and the book goes on to tell people to eat their bread and do their work with their hands.

You have been living under a condition that Scripture states plainly and then works around, and it is already settled in the written word that nothing new was ever the point. His Spirit is the one who says that over a woman who can trace every idea she has and thought that was the problem.

Tracing is not a fault, it is how it works

Now let me stay on the tracing, because there is a real ability in it and it has been reading as an accusation.

Naming the source of every idea used is not common. Most people cannot. That is a decent memory and an honest mind, and most makers could not give you half of their sources if you asked.

So the tracing is not evidence against you. It is evidence that you pay attention and remember where things came from, which is a virtue that has been quietly convicting you for years.

You are not disqualified by knowing where things came from, and Ecclesiastes 1:9 rules out the new thing for the whole world rather than for you alone. The Holy Spirit is the one who turns a locked door into a doorway.

And what happens between the source and the finished thing is the part that never gets counted. A picture got seen and a thing got made that is not that picture. Your aunt did a version and yours came out different because your hands are different hands. That gap, between what you took and what came out, is the entire territory.

And this: whether an idea started with you is not a measure of you. Nothing in the sight of God attaches to who thought of it first.

You are not disqualified by knowing where it came from, and heaven has never once required a work to be unprecedented. Ecclesiastes 1:9 rules out the new thing entirely and the book keeps telling people to work with their hands, and the Spirit of God is the one who holds both of those together.

And do not try to have an original idea tonight to test the theory. That is the definition getting one more turn.

You have permission to use somebody else's idea on purpose, and this is yours: the originality was never the requirement. It is written in Ecclesiastes 1:9 that there is no new thing under the sun, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that a doorway rather than a wall.

Twenty minutes, and make it borrowed

So here is the ask, and the constraint is deliberately the opposite of what you would choose.

Tonight, make something that is entirely somebody else's idea.

Copy a thing. Follow a version from somewhere else. Do the one your aunt used to do. On purpose, openly, with no attempt to change anything or make it your own.

That is the exercise. Not to sneak a bit of originality in so it can be defended. Take the idea whole and use it.

You are working under a sun where nothing was ever new, and Ecclesiastes 1:9 settles that about the whole world rather than about you. The Holy Spirit is the one who turns a settled fact into a doorway instead of a wall.

And here is what will happen, and it is the point. It will still come out as yours. It will be different from the source in ways you did not intend and cannot help, because a pair of hands cannot copy anything exactly, and the differences will be the most interesting part of it.

It will also be poor. Leave it poor, do not adjust it toward the original, and do not put it away.

You are covered while you make something borrowed on purpose, and Ecclesiastes 1:9 is the ground under that. The written word settles that nothing is new and then sends people back to their work, and the Spirit of God is present at a table where somebody is copying without apologizing.