Creativity is all the rage these days: what it is, how you develop it, the various ways in which you express it. A slew of bestselling books, including my favorite Imagine: How Creativity Works by Jonah Lehrer, offers insight into the nature, origin and application of our fundamental, foundational, and phenomenal ability to engage in creative acts. While the approaches and analyses differ somewhat at various points, one of the major points of convergence revolves around destroying the myth of the “solitary genius.” Creativity doesn’t, in other words, happen in a vacuum – creative ideas are always inspired, nurtured, cajoled, and...

I’ve been reading a fascinating book of late by just this title: How Much is Enough?: Money and the Good Life by Robert and Edward Skidelsky. This team of a father who is a political economist and son who is a philosopher has shed some very helpful light on my questions about money, happiness, and the Christian life. While I’m only about a third of the way through the book, one very interesting discovery for me has been to learn that the first proponents of capitalism actually viewed it not as the salvation of humankind but as a necessary evil to be endured until humanity evolved. I found this incredibly interesting, particularly given...