What Did God Write?

The Devil’s handiwork is everywhere. Look around the world at the music, the films, and the literature, and you will see a world which appears to be obsessed with the devil. Look into the biographies of musicians, writers, and actors and you will see that for some the occult or literally making  a pact with the devil were part of their lives. 

I watched an interesting conversation yesterday about actors who described their performances as being like a form of channelling, of emptying themselves out and becoming someone else. Some actors said it felt like they were channelling dead movie stars. Others went into a trance to write scripts where the words just flowed out. 

When I first heard a Christian a few years back sound alarmed at the idea of a piece of creative art being ‘channelled’ I was doubtful. The creative act does feel like ideas just popping into your head, as if not from the self, as if from somewhere else. I can remember reading Tori Amos’s biography years ago and how she shared "I think music comes through dimensions, it’s arrogant to think you can create music on your own, there’s a co-creation going on. I don’t know with whom, but there is this well that we all tap into."It resonated a lot with me, and my own creative process. 

Now, as I’m wondering about my days, I sometimes get Tori Amos lyrics coming back to me, ‘Father Lucifer, you’ never looked so sane,’ ‘I think the good book is missing some pages.’ Amos once said, "I wanted to marry Lucifer... I don't consider Lucifer an evil force...I feel his presence with his music. I feel like he comes and sits on my piano.’’

Perhaps some might be reading this thinking it’s all just imagination, playing with myths and stories of our culture, trying to make sense of a spiritual realm we can’t understand. However one of the testimonies that made it so clear to me, is that of Joe Schimmel. When Schimmel was a teenager, he wrote songs about how he loved rock n’ roll so much he would sell his family to the devil. He was also experimenting with spiritual practises like astral projection. 

One day he suddenly found himself in a state of sleep paralysis and terrified he called out to God. The paralysis stopped instantly. Schimmel became a Christian and is now the Pastor of a church. Looking back he reflected that he felt the songs he was writing were lyrically beyond his capacity as a teenager. He felt that the songs had been channelled by the devil. 

This has been a common speculation throughout history, that by making a pact with the devil, an artist can be given extraordinary talent, along with riches and fame. For example Paganini was known as ‘the devil’s violinist’ because it was believed his skills came from the devil. Robert Johnson was a blues musician who was reportedly terrible at the guitar, but he disappeared for a year and came back an amazing guitarist. Many people believed he’d made a pact with the devil. There are many more modern examples of musicians, who feel that there is some kind of channelling going on in their creativity or performance. 

In literature there are examples such as Yeats who was a member of The Hermetic Order of The Golden Dawn along with Aleistair Crowley. Ted Hughes and Syliva Plath regularly used a Ouija board. It didn’t end too well with Hughes losing two wives to suicide. William Burroughs, reportedly murdered his wife because a demon told him too. Were they also channelling the devil’s words? 

The main reason I wanted to write this post, is not to draw attention to all this per se, but to make this point. What the devil is able to do, is always a mere counterfeit to what God can do. What did God write? We see the devil everywhere, so where is God’s word in all of this? Can God speak through non-believers? The Bible says that ‘God works all things together for good.’ Where is his voice? Is creativity always channelling darkness? Can it be a mixture of dark and light? This is all speculation to me at this point and I don’t know the answer. 

But I do know this. That supernatural inspiration is real.  A lot of people will claim that the Bible is a bunch of writings by different men all put together in one book. It’s ‘man-made.’ But the devil makes things. He’s incredibly busy in the realm of art, literature, music and theatre. He’s working overtime. 

The Bible is the only book I’ve been able to read and reread over and over again as an adult. While I’m only at the beginning of my journey from what I’ve heard from genuine Christians it is a book that it never gets boring. It is ‘like a river again, broad and deep, shallow enough here for the lamb to go wading, but deep enough there for the elephant to swim.’ - Gregory The Great. The Bible says that ‘all scripture is God-breathed,’ and it took reading the whole thing for me to believe that. But now I believe that just like a writer can go into a trance, and channel a demonically inspired book, God too could give his carefully chosen words to his people. And that is why I believe 100% that is a supernatural book.

One thing I’ve been speculating on is that actually reading the Bible with an open-mind can be the beginning of being filled with the Holy Spirit. It also makes me wonder if reading, listening to and consuming demonically inspired music might do the same for the demonic realm. We need to be careful what we expose ourselves to. Many artists may not even know what they have opened themselves up to, through spiritual practises, and channelling a muse that comes from the dark side.

All in all this is one of the many reasons why I read the Bible every day, because it is supernatural, is does bring me closer to God, and it is a form of protection in a world where people unwittingly worship ‘the prince and the power of the air,’ while not even believing in his existence. Once you have eyes to see Satan may appear to be everywhere, but in reality it is nothing but a cheap tacky counterfeit, nothing compared to the real thing.