LOOK UP HERE – I’M IN HEAVEN
The news of David Bowie dominates every newspaper headline. His face stares out from the front page of every national newspaper as they mark his death at the age of 69.
David Bowie was born in Brixton, South London, England, on January 8, 1947.
Out of fear of being confused with Davy Jones of the group called The Monkees, David changed his last name to Bowie, a name that was inspired by the knife developed by the 19th century American pioneer Jim Bowie.
David Robert Jones was born on 8th January 1947 and passed away on 10th January 2016. He was a singer, songwriter, actor and record producer and was a very popular figure for over five decades with record sales estimated at 140 million worldwide which made him one of the best-selling music artists in the world. His work in the 1970’s in particular brought him enormous fame and fortune with his reinvention and visual presentations. His music and stagecraft significantly influenced popular music across the globe.
Since his death, his lyrics have been used to accompany poster style front pages with tributes appearing in news pages, editorials and several special pull-out editions. Writers have focused not just on his music but the huge influence he has had on society. As the star’s biographer Dylan Jones puts it in the Sun: He didn’t just create a huge body of music, he didn’t just release a bunch of singles and albums which influenced people at formative stages of their lives, he also influenced how they looked, what they read and how they lived their lives.
He exited the music world for a brief period after recording an unsuccessful solo album and like so much in his life he experimented with many things, with religion being one of them. In 1967, he lived at a Buddhist monastery in Scotland for a period of time. By early 1969, he had returned to full-time music and released the single Space Oddity which was a rather confusing song about him sitting in a tin can, which presumably was his spaceship, talking to a ground controller as he floated far above the Moon and the Earth.
He claimed that the song came to him after seeing a film directed by Stanley Kubrick entitled: 2001 A Space Odyssey. Bowie stated that he went stoned out of his mind to see the movie and that it had freaked him out. It would appear this film had a dramatic influence on his life as it dealt with existentialism, human evolution, technology and artificial intelligence, amongst other things and if you are anything like me, when I read a word I don’t understand, I dive into the dictionary to find out its meaning. This time it was the word, Existentialism, which means:
A philosophical theory which emphasizes individual freedom and choice. It is a philosophy that views humans as defining the meaning of their own lives by acts of will, where they determine their own development and try to make rational decisions despite existing in an irrational universe.
I have always found it rather strange that Pop Stars find the need to explore these things and I find it interesting to read what they do when they are confronted by the reality of life. Like so many, David Bowie thought that he would find the meaning of life in philosophy, mind-bending drugs and visits to people of dubious learning, who also made use of hallucinogenic substances, in an effort to find out what he was supposed to be doing here on earth. We are told that he employed acts of his own will in an effort to find himself by determining his own growth and improvement.
If only he had turned to the Bible and read the most maligned story in the Scriptures, which describes what happened when Adam and Eve decided to define the meaning of their own lives and to exercise their own free will and disobey God. The entire downfall of mankind is there for all of us to read about. It is there for our learning. Sadly many refuse to believe it and rush head-long into their own downfall with disastrous consequences. The Bible teaches us that there are only two ways, two wills and two ends and every person has chosen one or the other. We are either with God or against Him. To be with God means the divine will is paramount. To be against God means that any other will takes precedence. Therefore we have before us:
- The broad way and the narrow way.
- The human will and the divine will.
- The results of philosophy and the results of faith.
Sadly we know which direction David Bowie chose.
Believing in evolution also has its pitfalls because those who do, have no right whatsoever to blame God for anything that happens in this world. Simply because evolutionists believe there is no God! And what’s more, there is no such thing as freewill! It does not exist! How could it? It is the survival of the fittest and it has nothing whatsoever to do with the niceties of determining our own development and discovering the meaning to life, and this is because evolution is a blind, pitiless black hole of a belief system devoid of consciousness and any meaning at all!
David Bowie went on to produce and release his final album called Blackstar on January 8th, 2016, his birthday. It was described as a very strange and daring work which encompassed a mood darkened by bitter awareness of mortality. He also released a video for a final song entitled Lazarus just three days before his death, which showed him trapped in a hospital bed, his frail body shaking beneath the covers with bandages covering his eyes, as he sang: Look up here, I’m in heaven, I’ve got scars that can’t be seen, I’ve got drama, can’t be stolen, everybody knows me now. It also included several references to death, crucifixes and burials.
I know many will not agree with me when I say that the life of David Bowie was wasted. He had opportunities to read and study the Scriptures, just like all of us, and yet he decided not to. He had chance after chance to find out the truth about his existence and what God intended for him during his years on earth, and yet he chose to waste them. A wonderfully talented man with God-given musical abilities that many can only dream of having, who decided, of his own free will, to ignore his Creator and the message of the Gospel. Sad, so sad!