Tuesday, October 25, 2011

making sense of ideas?

This was recently said about Steve Jobs


"I think he better than anyone understood that while ideas ultimately can be so powerful, they begin as fragile, barely formed thoughts, so easily missed, so easily compromised, so easily just squished."




Have you ever wondered where ideas come from? Scholars who study CREATIVITY believe that they are formed in our subconscious where divergent thinking can flourish, then converge and "come out" when we are able to be quiet and reflect. During these times our subconscious can inform our conscious and an idea emerges to us for use in our thinking. This may explain why we can wake up at 3 or 4am with a thought that is our best thought of the day. Through sleeping, our conscious mind quietens and thoughts that were generated in our subconscious "seep out". This particularly happens for me when I have an "active mind", that is I am working on a complex problem, research paper, or anxious about the coming day.


However, where does the subconscious get its "material" for ideas? No one really knows this. The carnal mind would probably say that one person is more "gifted" in creativity than another and it is just a human ability. This may be so, but it still does not explain the creation of a thought - something coming from nothing.

The Kingdom mind tells us that God is the Creator. He is the only One with the ability to produce something from nothing. He is the source of life. Ideas are life and have power. So when I get an idea, maybe through this subconscious-conscious linkage, I smile and say "Thank You God." When I get a thought, I do not assume I did it, but that God gave it to me. I believe this is one form of His Grace.

When asked about God, Steve Jobs said (and I am paraphrasing) - I think about Him some, more after I got sick. I think there is 50-50 chance there is a God. I would like to think there is something after this life, but life could be like an on-off switch. I don't like the idea of on-off switches so i don't put them on my computers.

Even if S Jobs and many others like him do not have a good IDEA about God, somehow it got squished along the way, God's common Grace provided him with ability and the ideas that blessed him and the world in many, many ways. 

Why didn't God give Jobs a better idea about Himself (God)? Why are the ideas about God transforming and powerful for some and not others?  
GOD ONLY KNOWS!!!

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