Are you trapped by thoughts of suicide or confused about the real purpose of life? Greg's life story shows the powerful effect that music has and encourages you to seek answers wherever you are in your life.
Long hair ... rock music ... rebellion
I grew up in the sixties and seventies and this was a period of guys with long hair, the Beatles, rebellion, so-called 'free love', hippies and drug experimentation. I had long hair, wore satin shirts and beads, loved 'pop' music and listened to it for hours and hours. Bob Dylan was right when he said, "The times they are a'changin'"!
My father would say, "You are not an individual because you are doing the same thing as your friends. You are just copying them and the fashions of the day". Looking back on it, the reason this sort of talk irritated me was because it was true and I didn't want to acknowledge it!
I can't understand why my father never liked this outfit!
Basketball injury
Jesus: only a fairy tale ... a swear word
In my early years, I learnt little of the bible and I had the habit of disrupting my Religious Education teacher. The only time I used the words ‘Jesus’ or ‘Christ’ was when I kicked my foot on a rock or the cows would not go where I wanted them to.
Jesus was not a person to me but only a fairy tale ... a swear word. I wanted to live my own life and ‘do my own thing’ as the popular saying of the time went. I viewed a belief in God as a weakness and unscientific. I was a sceptic. Although I had never read the bible, I was quick to mock people who believed it to be true. A lack of knowledge never stopped me from opening my mouth!
Play time
On the family farm
Ready for tennis
A sceptic’s search to make sense of the world
I wondered about the state of the world and whether there were any absolute rights and wrongs.
“Is there a God?
Is there a controlling energy or not?
I'm trying really hard to untangle this knot
I want to know, I want to know”
I penned these words in 1979, as I was wondering if God existed. I couldn't see the world in black and white. There didn't seem to be a God, as the world appeared to be out of control. The six o’clock news was filled with war, violence and suffering. The world seemed to be dying and I felt I had lost my way in a world that had lost its way.
Unwanted suicidal thoughts ... an approaching darkness
I began to have destructive thoughts. Out of the blue, the thought of "Cut your wrists!" would be planted in my mind. I was amazed and scared by these thoughts as I wasn't depressed about anything at the time. In fact, I thought I had everything I needed to be happy. These thoughts came to me on about five occasions and on one of these, I actually visualised myself carrying it out. I finally blocked out these thoughts.
I discovered from these thoughts that there existed real but invisible forces outside myself. Nothing in my world of science and its controlled repeatable experiments could explain these evil forces. These invisible, articulate, intelligent, evil forces had an agenda of their own!
Unaware of 'death' brushing past me
Other events had also prompted me to ponder about life and death issues. One cold foggy night, without looking, I pulled out onto the road on my 500 cc motorbike and a car travelling around 100 km/h (60 m.p.h.) scrapped paint off my crash bars and panniers. At the time, I heard a noise but it was not until the next morning that I saw the scratches! It was only then that I realised how close I had come to serious injury or death. Was it just luck that I was alive or was there someone up there in heaven, looking after me? This was the closest I had ever come to thanking God for something.
The motorbike bike in question (minus panniers)
My friend had gone 'crazy'!
I visited my friend Dave. (Both Dave and I loved motorbikes!) In the past, he had mocked the bible as ‘unscientific’ and argued strongly for the truth of evolution. Dave had been raised in a religious family but in his early years had rejected the bible. He now told me that he believed in this person called Jesus and also that the scientific evidence didn’t back up the theory of evolution. This was all a major shock!
“Oh, no", I thought, "not a religious fanatic ... anything but that!" I was amazed that after a lifetime of putting Christianity down he was now encouraging me to read the bible! I wanted to argue but I knew virtually nothing about the bible. But I could sense that Dave's life had changed and much of his old restlessness was gone.
I thought it was time I studied the bible to see what it said. Dave was 'smarter' than me and would annoy me by consistently beating me at chess. "Right", I thought, "Give me a bible, I'll prove him wrong!"
The College Years
The stumbling block of evolution and the miracle of life
The theory of evolution was a stumbling for me in believing the bible because the bible says that God (not time, mutation and natural selection) was responsible for the universe and for life. I witnessed the miracle of the birth of both of my children. I was stunned by the complexity of the human body and the process from a single fertilised egg to a baby over 40 weeks. Could time and chance have been responsible for all of this as the theory of evolution told me? Not likely! In the past, I thought the bible was a fairy tale but now I was starting to think that the theory of evolution was the fairy tale!
I was starting to see that the origin of life required a miracle (a Creator) not blind random chance and mistakes (evolution). Dave had given me some information on the scientific aspects of evolution and as I looked at the evidence for evolution (really for the first time) I saw it was very weak and unconvincing. Up until then I was happy to believe in evolution (not because of the strong scientific evidence) but because it allowed me to take any moral stance I wanted to or in seventies jargon “do my own thing”. Around this time I studied a University course on the ‘evolution of man’ and watched the television series ‘The Making of Mankind” by Richard Leakey. Both of these were full of statements like “maybe this happened ... maybe it didn’t ... maybe this ... maybe that?” I was thinking; “maybe evolution hasn’t occurred at all!”
Music - my true addiction
Music had always played a very big part in my life. I played the guitar for hours on end. A conservative estimate showed me that I had listened to around 13,000 hours of music in my lifetime up to this point. I would be a brave person to say that music had not affected me at all!
The effect of music
Through this time, it became clear to me that the destructive themes in some of my music had contributed to my suicidal thoughts. I looked back over one of my cherished albums at a song about a guy who was in a mental asylum. One of the lines of the song went; ‘Just don't know why suicide appeals to me.” The lyrics and the music of the song welded together in a powerful way in my mind somehow making suicide appealing to me!
I hadn’t realised that when I played music I was actually inviting that artist into my home to evoke any emotions they want in me, allowing them to impress their philosophies on me over and over again.
What this man Jesus said was amazing!
As I read the bible, I found the things Jesus said amazing. He said, "Do not store up treasures for yourself on earth" (Matthew 6:19). Most people I knew were chasing money and had no interest in God. Jesus said, "He who is not with me is against me" (Matthew 12:30). Jesus also said: "Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the path that leads to destruction and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it" (Matthew 7:13-14). Jesus certainly didn't have the Australian attitude of: "She'll be right mate!"
One dark night, I was lying in bed thinking; "God, if you are so powerful that you made the universe by speaking then show me evidence of your existence.” I didn't expect anything to happen because there was no way God could show me anything as I lay in bed, or so I thought. By the way, I was not on drugs, I was not emotionally upset nor had I worked myself up into a state of panic. I was calmly lying in bed, placing a challenge before God that I thought He had no chance of responding to.
A visitor in the night – God is supernatural!
Suddenly, a man in white clothes appeared in the doorway of the room with his right hand outstretched like a policeman. Out of his hand came a beam of light that moved half way across the room. I cried out in my mind, "Stop, stop, I believe … I believe ... I've seen enough!" This did not stop what I was seeing as the beam of light continued across the room and through the glass into the black of the night where the light destroyed what I conceived as the evil in the world. I wanted to know that there was light somewhere in this dark world and God showed there was! My mind was reeling from the events that had just taken place!
The grace of God
The statements Jesus made were so clear-cut. I either had to wipe Jesus off as a lunatic or accept what he was saying was true. I came to see Jesus could be trusted and believing in Him had a powerful effect on my life, totally setting me free from the power behind the thoughts of self-destruction. Jesus allowed me to make sense of the world and have my sins washed away. After 20 years as a Christian, I still marvel at the blessings and grace that Jesus continues to shower into my life.
Things I had overlooked as a sceptic:
Jesus is a real historical person.
The bible is the world’s bestselling book.
The bible is historically reliable when tested using the standards tests of historical reliability.
Many of the greatest scientists (Lord Kelvin, Johannes Kepler, Joule, Linnaeus, Lister, Pasteur, Boyle, Newton, and Faraday) were Christians.
Many of the greatest composers (Handel, Bach, Haydn, Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Liszt) were Christians.
The evidence for the theory of evolution is very weak and unconvincing.
I was totally unaware of the miraculous changes experienced in the lives of people who come to believe in Jesus.
We have all gone astray
Jesus of Nazareth was the man in history that I had been looking for! The historical Jesus was innocent of any crime but was still crucified by the Romans. Jesus was punished for all the things I had done wrong. After three days, He rose from the dead proving that all the things He said about Himself were true including the fact that He was equal to God. So if you want to know about God look to Jesus. Because Jesus is alive today He can offer you real solutions. It was my pride that allowed me to think I did not need God. If only I had listened to my Religious Education teacher!
"Jesus himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed. For you were like sheep going astray, but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls" (1 Peter 2:24-25).
I wish you the best in your journey through life.
Wherever you are in your journey … Jesus is the key for you ... look to Him.
