Braden Wehr is the Genesis Center Coordinator and an alumnus of FRCS.
If I asked you, “What does it mean to be made in the image of God?” what would your answer be? Often, answers sound something like “to be made like God” or “to act like God.” Sometimes they deal with the descriptors of what God looks like. I think we sometimes overlook a much simpler, yet much more important answer to this question.
On the first day of class I ask my students to ponder this question. Sometimes I allow them to discuss in groups, other times I let them think in silence. Usually, I hear answers that sound like the ones above. While these answers aren’t bad– and probably aren’t wrong either– I challenge my students to think about it differently.
I believe that being made in the image of God means that we are given the unique ability to create things. Genesis 2:7 says “the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” Out of nothing but dust, “God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them” (Genesis 1:27). Nowhere else on this planet do we see this ability to take some type of object or material and make it into something new. Like our Creator, we have been given this innate ability to transform things. We can turn old pieces of wood into beautiful projects, or spools of plastic into intricately designed 3D objects. But more important than this, we are asked to step out into the world and transform lives.
This idea has to be followed by another question. If we are designed to be creative, why are more people not? What kills creativity?
My answer to this question is the “fear of failure.” In order to be creative, we have to be willing to try something, knowing that failure is an option—maybe even a likely outcome. If we are afraid to fail, we will never take the necessary risks to create something beautiful.
Across the nation, our education system is what I would call a “creativity killer.” Kids arrive at school in kindergarten eager to learn and participate. But by high school, this desire to know more is often gone. While a number of factors play a role in this, I would argue that fear of failure is the number one contributing role. School can feel humiliating to students when they don’t get the grade that they want. There isn’t always an opportunity to learn from your mistakes on a test and grow from them. Fear of failure drives students away from yearning for more knowledge.
I don’t have all the answers, and I am certainly not going to solve this problem that plagues our education system, but I am here to tell you that I see it. In the Genesis Center students are encouraged to fail. To try something new and ruin their material completely, so that they can learn from it and persevere into creating something unique. My hope is that this idea carries over into their core classes—that they are willing to try a hard math problem on the white board, knowing they might fail in front of the class, and take that opportunity to grow in wisdom from failure.
Maybe one day, our nation’s educational structure will give more opportunity to learn from failure. But until then, at Front Range Christian School we will continue to give kids an opportunity to fail in harmless ways. To mess up a measurement and be forced to cut some wood again, or start a project over because they weren’t patient enough to sand it before painting it. Providing them these avenues to fail at both skills and virtues will help mold your students into human beings that go out into the world and change it with their innate creativity.
