God Creates Out of Love

I encounter thoughtful questions about the Creation account more than any other part of the Bible. One of the questions I hear the most is: “If God is so great, why does He need people?” Put another way, “Doesn’t God creating humans imply that He has some weaknesses and needs that they’d need to fulfill?” 

I’ve watched churchfolk bristle, assuming the question is combative, but I think it’s a valid thing to ask! Because in our own lives, creativity often begins in need. We make because we are restless or bored; we make relationships because we are lonely or insecure; we make to secure some kind of legacy, to prove our own worth, to figure things out… All sorts of reasons! And need or weakness are often at the heart of them. 

But God is not like us, and this question actually highlights something interesting: how is God not lonely? Which brings us to the fellowship God has with Himself in the Trinity. In fact, it contextualizes the Trinity.

If God is Trinity, then God creates not out of need or loneliness, but out of an overflow of love and communion that already exists within God’s own life.

This is actually something we recognize easily in the natural world. When people fall in love, that love is often generative—sometimes literally, through childbirth, but also through sudden bursts of energy, imagination, and creativity. Love is a point of inspiration; love songs play on every radio station, and love poems are a cliché precisely because they’ve happened so often, for so long.

Genesis 1, in its original Hebrew form, is actually structured as a poem. Might it be a kind of love poem as well? 

The passage begins with language that already resists our simplest understanding of it. The word used for God—Elohim—is actually plural. That’s why later, we hear God say, “Let us make humankind in our image;” the translator is trying to capture the plurality, the relationship, at the heart of what’s going on.

But it’s not just that it’s plural, it’s the “in our image” part. This language suggests an intimate, relational act of creation—frankly, one that might make us uncomfortable. After all, it echoes the same fruitful, multiplying language used in the chapter for animals and birds reproducing. To borrow from a very modern love song, it’s a bit like Taylor Swift singing to her fiancé: “I just want you. Have a couple kids, got the whole block looking like you.” 

Such a line reveals that God’s delight in Himself—His communion with Himself—sparks a longing to see more of the divine image in new creations.

I’ll go a step further: we couldn’t know love if this wasn’t true. It says that we were created in the image of God, and while surely there are differences between us and God, many of those seem to be rooted in our weaknesses. But the longings of our heart, for justice or goodness or love, seem to stem from the very characteristics of God himself. We were designed to seek these things because we were designed to seek Him. If God didn’t have a fullness of love, complete in Himself, I don’t think His creation would have a concept of love at all.

1 John makes this explicit. Love in the world exists because love is foundational to our Creator: “God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them… We love, because He first loved us.”

This has real implications for how we understand creative work.

Most creatives carry a genuine desire to love people through what they make. When they talk about the moments that matter most, they often describe the times their art reached someone else—humor that brought joy to someone who was suffering, or a story that helped someone feel seen.

And yet, in our current creative culture, this desire is so often divorced from our actual creative lives. At best, love becomes a byproduct. And when it does become a motivating force, it is often driven by lack—a restless sense of wanting to do something meaningful—rather than by overflow.

So how might we create the way God does? From delight, rather than desperation. From connection, rather than urgency. Letting love spark longing to make more.

One place this breaks down is in how creatives treat the love they already have in their lives. We bond for the sake of the show, with romantic or platonic showmances that dwindle and disappear after the final curtain. We accept gigs that take us out of community without counting the cost. We wring our hands over whether our work will be seen by enough people. We cancel meet-ups to “lock in,” and refuse to commit to communities in case we get chosen by strangers in our career.  Going a step deeper, it often feels like a real choice between spending daily time in Scripture and prayer versus carving out space for writing or music or pursuing our passions at all.

When rooted in lack, creative work becomes exhausting. It asks art to do what it was never meant to do: prove our worth, justify our existence, heal our wounds.

But if we are filled with love first—then creative work can begin somewhere else entirely. Not in fear, but in rest. Not in urgency, but in delight.

In fact elsewhere, Scripture even goes so far as to describe us as God’s poemia—His masterpieces (Ephesians 2:10) To what end? To do good works. 

This means our creativity isn’t incidental. It’s responsive. We are not creating from scratch; we are answering a love poem with one of our own. So it can be counterintuitive, but perhaps instead of looking to art, we can create the best art by devoting time and energy in love instead.

In my experience, if you grow and tend the love in your life, you don’t become less creative—you become more creative. 

I literally create so much every year that my friends make fun of me for it. Full screenplays. Full plays. Full novel drafts. Songs. Short stories.

But I think I do so out of love for my friends and neighbors. I wrote Lobe Yourself because I loved my friends and wanted to show off their talents. I wrote Motherland because I loved my Chinese church community and was inspired by how people fought to stay connected during COVID. Just last month, I wrote a short film about New York City windows because I love my neighbors and the glimpses of kindness and connection I see through my own window every day.

So this month, instead of focusing on what you lack, what would it look like to tune yourself again to the love already present in your life? 

So… how do we do that? What is love, actually, before it gets into the work of making or doing or healing or proving? 

Love is attentive. It delights in the object of its affection. It is hungry and curious and probes deeper. It is vulnerable, allowing yourself to be seen for who you really are. It is mutual—a genuine relationship. 

Are these not the very qualities that make for great art? Attention. Honesty. Dialogue.

If we are to create the way God does, we must first seek to love with fullness and intimacy. Such love is irrepressibly generative.