God-centered resources from the ministry of John Piper

(This post is reason #6 in the series, “9 Reasons I’m a Photographer.”)

(Reflections in Sawbill, Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, Northern Minnesota, USA)

Culture that glorifies God is a foretaste of what we will experience in the new heavens and new earth.

Randy Alcorn writes in his book 50 Days of Heaven,

Art, music, literature, crafts, technology, clothing, jewelry, education, food preparation—all are part of society or culture, the creative accomplishments of God’s image-bearers. Human creations are an extension of God’s own creative works, because he created us to reflect him by being creators.

As humans, we glorify God by taking what he created from nothing and shaping it into things for our own good and for his glory. The entire universe—including angels and living creatures in Heaven—should look at our creative ingenuity, our artistic accomplishments, and see God in us, his image-bearers. If that’s true now, how much more will it be true when there’s nothing in us to dishonor him?

We should expect the social dynamics from Earth to carry over to the New Earth, except when they’re a product of our fallenness or when God reveals otherwise.

God created his image-bearers to glorify him in creative accomplishments, and he’s pleased by them. God is pro-culture; he is the creative artist behind and over human culture.

Arthur Roberts writes,

The rise of human civilization hints at a coming splendor…How much more will civilization flourish when freed from the curse of sin! Already, we are probing galaxies. Already, we have catalogued the human genome. When the curse of sin is forever removed, surely human beings in Heaven will become active stewards in completing or extending the universe of things and ideas. The whole creation groans, awaiting human redemption. Civilization is not old; it has barely begun! (225-229)

(Young dancers, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA)