The oxford dictionary defines inspiration as “The process of being mentally stimulated to do or feel something, especially something creative.” The synonyms offered with the definition are fascinating. Creativity, originality, insight, genius, and inspiration are interchangeable words.  According to Google inspiration comes from each other, the beauty of nature or simple experiences.

I have a friend who likes a Christian band that changes the words in secular songs to reflect Christian ideas.

Back to the USSR by the Beatles became Back in the New Testament

Walk this Way by Areosmith became Walk His Way

Every Rose Has Its Thorn by Poison became Every Crown Has It’s Thorn

 More than a Feeling by Boston became More Than a Healing

Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin became Narrow Way to Heaven

The Parody of these songs fits within the secular idea of inspiration, one person inspiring another. In this case one musician inspired another musician.  The parodies are witty and humorous.

There is a measure of creativity in their parody of secular songs but where is the originality? Is that the best a Christian can do? Use music and words written by musicians, some of those musicians’ drug addicts who wrote their music when they were high, and change their words to communicate Christian ideas?

You might admire a writer that inspires you to be a better writer or to be like that writer, but will that give you originality and insight? Can nature and simple experiences give you genius? 

The difference between secular ideas about inspiration and God given inspiration is original thought.  The Bible presented to humanity thoughts about God that we could not have conceived on our own.

When we look at the Pagan gods created by human imagination like Zeus, the supreme god, we see a god with the moral character of a man. How is Zeus a god if he has the same human flaws as his worshipers? Zeus cheated on his wife Hera with twenty different women and one man, most without their consent. Humanity never rose to the level of conceiving a loving God who sacrificed to benefit his worshippers and give them a light burden and easy yoke.

The Bible is complete with a beginning, middle, and end. We are warned not to add to the Bible and not to take away from it. But does that mean God stopped giving inspiration when the Bible was complete?

Is it too hard for God to inspire us with insight into creative original thought and maybe even a touch of genius?  You do not need a high IQ to be a genius if a genius speaks his thoughts to your heart.  

“For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God, which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words”—1 Corinthians 2:11-13

God gave us his Spirit so we can know his thoughts. In context, Paul was talking about things God has prepared for us that we cannot imagine unless God himself gives us his thoughts. Paul also said spiritual thoughts become spiritual words.

Words are important to God. Jesus is called the word. John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God (NIV). God’s preferred method of communicating with us is the spiritual thoughts he gave that became spiritual words his presence rest upon written on paper for all to read.

God still gives his people inspiration to write words that can change lives for the better. When I started writing, I could not find a Christian writing group in the city, so I attended a secular writing group for many years. We were an eclectic group that included a Lutheran housewife who wrote humor, an agnostic attorney writing an epic, an atheist taxi driver working on his first novel, a witch who worshiped Isis writing historical fiction, public school teacher who wrote horror and me writing Bible studies. We handed out printed copies of what we wanted critiqued to each member of the group. The members wrote comments and made proofreading corrections. The following week, we held a group discussion about each submission and returned it to the author.

At one meeting the agnostic returned my submission with an apology. “I am sorry about the crayon all over your paper, I caught my son coloring on it.” 

“That’s okay, no problem,” I replied.

He looked at me intently and said, “When I took your paper away from him, he told me the paper was about Jesus. How did he know that?”

“He probably saw the word Jesus when he was coloring.”

“NO,” he said, “you don’t understand. My son is four years old. He doesn’t know how to read. How did he know this paper was about Jesus?”

That was a good question that I did not know how to answer. Today, I would have told him when God inspires a person to write something, his presence rest upon it. My agnostic friend later told me that he returned to church.