Creative vs Generative — and a Word on the Em Dash

Last fall, we had a party for my son’s first birthday. Somewhere between cake and conversation, his godfather admitted he’d become self-conscious about how he texts. 

I immediately interjected — is it the em dash? 

“YES,” he said, eyes wide. 

We were both floored. We’ve used it for years, but now we avoid it because we don’t want people to think we’re using AI to write our words.

Small potatoes as it may seem, I’m genuinely sad about the em dash becoming this sort of distinct AI thing because it’s always been such a big part of how I think. I love the intentional pause — and the interruption — it makes. It creates a cadence, slows the reader, and gives an inkling that what comes after it deserves extra attention. 

And although the em dash has been co-opted by the generative machine that is AI, the reality remains that it can only ever be a generative echo — not a creative origin. 

Creative vs Generative 

Humans create, machines generate. So what’s the difference? 

Creativity flows from embodied experience. 

It is shaped by memory and suffering, by limitation and joy — by everything that accumulates in the body and heart of a human person over time. 

Creativity costs something. It requires choice, risk, and responsibility (as we explored in What Actually Makes a Custom Project Go Well). 

It bears the weight of glory (as C.S. Lewis calls it) because it’s born from a human person participating in God’s own act of creation. Creativity will always have a distinct origin that generativity does not — the Imago Dei itself. 

Man is made in His image. Machine is not. 

And if ever there is a day that machines come to take over the world and there lies receipt of this thought from me, I’m formally asking these future machines to remain logical and not hold this truth against me.

But if they do, I stand by it.

These generative systems, no matter how conversational we’ve programmed them to be, cannot feel. They have no intention. They do not suffer. They do not hope or repent or rejoice. They are predictive models. They are absolutely impressive tools, but they are not authors. 

Utility vs Gift

The bottom line is this: AI is valuable for its utility. Human creativity is valuable even when it’s not useful. 

When we create, it is rarely for functionality alone (ask any great architect). It’s beauty for its own sake. Creativity is all at once the origin, the means, and the output — it is the great giver and the gift. 

Can AI be misused? Of course. It’s already all over workplace emails and social media — people using it to do the thinking for them. And it shows. We all know that feeling when we’re reading something written by AI that doesn’t quite land; it technically works but oddly feels airless. 

Something like: “Creativity is a powerful force — one that allows us to explore ideas, connect concepts, and express ourselves in meaningful ways.”

It’s just abstract nouns stacked on abstract nouns. There’s no stake, no risk, no cost. There’s nothing beneath the words. 

After all this time, we’re spending all this money and effort to try to coax machines into being more human and humans into being more machine-like. How difficult it was to teach a machine to master the pincer grasp of the thumb and index finger — when an infant child can do so easily — or to replicate with lenses what the eye does so naturally. Conversely, we continue to attempt to automate man — to make him more efficient, forcing greater output, optimizing wherever possible. 

Systems Processing

In a way, though, there is one thing we have in common with our generative counterparts. We’re all always processing. Sure, the machines are just processing data and numbers, while we’re processing everything else (emotions, experiences, decisions), but it’s information all the same. 

Just as our tech counterparts process incredible amounts of data to generate predictions, humans process lived experience in order to create, interpret, and discern. 

A machine can process a thousand books in seconds. A human processes a single conversation for years.

However, machines generate because they are told to do so, humans create because we must. Our creativity flows firstly from the Creator and overflows out of us into the art we make. 

Within every human person is the desire to manifest some portion of our lived experience to the world. With millions of avenues, this creativity does not only take one form — it’s music and poetry, but it’s also architecture and infrastructure; it’s canvas and paint, but it’s also photoshop and photography; it’s literature and film, but it’s also the caring for and keeping of the home. 

A Place to Return

Time is a finite commodity, the ultimate currency of the human experience, so we know how valuable the minutes are that you spend here reading these words. We would never depreciate or dilute the intrinsic worth of your time by generating words through a machine. 

Everything you read here has been written by real people — and yes sometimes we use AI as a tool for research and insights, but we believe that’s how it’s most fruitfully intended to be used. We use AI tools to help us think more clearly, not to think for us. 

So whenever you see that sneaky little em dash — at least while you’re here — you can trust that there is a human on the other side of the screen, asking you to pause, asking you to consider, asking you to reflect on The Altar of the Ordinary.