However, is it really so bad to create for others? If our motive is first to please God and then to encourage others to please him as well? Since God is triune, part of the image we bear is a desire for community. So part of the pleasure for me in making a delicious breakfast is to delight my husband and children – not so they will like me, but so that they (and I ) will like this good life that God gave us. Part of the pleasure in drawing a beautiful picture is seeing the joy and creativity it inspires in another.

God is the only one whose creation points back only to himself, for the rest of us our creations ought to point back to him. As Augustine said, some things are to be used and some are to be enjoyed for their own sake. God is the only good to be enjoyed for his own sake – all else is to be used to enjoy him.

Like the anonymous artists of the middle ages – all work is for God alone – and yet thanks to their work we can all share a vision of God’s grandeur together.

I don’t even think it’s possible to create entirely for yourself. What you’re often doing is pleasing what you have been told by others is valuable. Sure you may delight and emote upon creating but that is linked into the purpose of the act where you must have some standard which cannot be entirely set from within.

I never limited the audience to Man and was implying that the audience that matters is God.

I think for those who pursue creativity this is a huge thing that we don’t ponder enough. When we grab out tool of choice and set out to make something, who are we trying to delight? Sometimes it’s quite specific but I’d say it’s often an invisible unknown audience composed of the soundbytes of those who influence us (big or small, good or bad) yet is it a Creator who delights in creating and who accepts us wholly into relationship on the grounds of His own work. Thus the only thing that we can give of value to Him is worship. Where we are acknowledging His person(s) and character and creating in honour of that.

On the other issue of identity being from without. I was trying to say that we’re meaningless on our own. We are not only compositions of other human people and their thoughts (so we have little claim to being intrinsically unique and having complete self direction) but we are also created by God as unique (thus our uniqueness is the result of the person of God not our self) and without on going relationship with Him we are nothing. Even if you never acknowledge God, he’s always been sustaining you by first imbuing you with his identity (imago dei) and then continuing to provide grace for you. Thus you are in constant reliance upon him for your existence, to be given meaning. In and of itself everything is meaningless but because of God everything has meaning.

Humor aside, you seem to state a belief in God but yet to define us humans as merely deriving our being “from without” and totally dependent on each other “to imbue our lives with meaning.” If you are indeed a believer, this seems contradictory at best. But I digress…

If you truly believe that you cannot speak, cannot be, cannot communicate a message, cannot create, without an audience, and that this audience can only be human, then does it not follow that you must also be constantly looking for the appropriate audience? And that in so doing, disappointment will just about always be your companion? Many search long for just the right group that will listen to what they have to say, just hear them, just see what they have created, just look at what they have done…all in vain.

I choose to believe that we are given the urge, voice, word, the creativity in whatever form it comes, by the Creator. The Audience, if you will, is built in. Sometimes, if we are blessed, those other people notice.

Listen or not, retweet or don’t … I don’t care.

Good word, my friend.

I can understand how one may delight in making something purely for their own pleasure in the process and achievement yet I’m confused how one can create anything with a message or say a word unless it’s meant to be responded to.
—Casper

I mostly write to articulate a thought. I write more in private than I do in public. The fact that other people read some of those articulated thoughts in a public forum and occasionally respond to them is enjoyable, but that’s not my motivation for doing it. Writing helps me process, and without the act of forming words and sentences and paragraphs, I’m often left with vagaries and half-formed approaches to topics rattling around in my head. If I can’t explain something in a form that makes sense (even to myself), then how can I truly say I understand it?

I would argue that you can’t speak without an intended audience or something to happen as a result.

Obviously, I disagree with your first assessment. As for results, there are still results if you’re not completely focused on audience and discovery, but those results might not be responsive or involve other people. My motivations are no less valid because they don’t involve audience, they’re just different motives.

I just don’t understand what you’re suggesting as the reason for speaking and creation is if there is no audience.

I can understand how one may delight in making something purely for their own pleasure in the process and achievement yet I’m confused how one can create anything with a message or say a word unless it’s meant to be responded to. If you’re just talking to yourself then there’s places for people like that…

I know we can’t quite compare ourselves to God who is perfect and happy in his triune relationship where everything that is said is received and responded to perfectly. Also God’s word creates and by it the world is sustained.

As humanity our words are often fallen, they lack any link to Meaning and seek to destroy it, they are mumbled, distorted, misheard & misinterpreted. As a humanity our locus of meaning is from without and not within, so we need to be in constant contact to imbue our lives with meaning.

I would argue that you can’t speak without an intended audience or something to happen as a result. Really what matters is who is the audience. Who are you talking to and what is the motivation in the performance of that.