In 1998, I knew there was something different about CeCe Winans’ Everlasting Love album. I’d never been a fan of gospel but, that album arrested me with its musical excellence.

Today, I finally read the album credits. When I saw writing and production credits for Lauryn Hill, Tommy Sims, Keith Crouch and Tony Rich among others, I understood. I’ve always maintained that religion kills creativity. It took the unreligious, to produce the brilliance that arrested the non-religious me, in 1998.

I dislike a lot of gospel music because, it is my opinion that the genre is not best-in-class and I dislike mediocrity, as a rule. We celebrate Hillsong for doing what mainstream rock bands have accomplished for decades, without anointing.

I don’t think the devil needs to be a stumbling block to Christians. Religion, it seems has already neutralised us. It has killed our brains, our liberty, our innovation and our cultural exposure. Surely, the world can’t be run by many of the mindless and personality stripped souls around who bear the name Christian.

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It’s amazing to me how successful cross over artists are the ones the “church” freely condemns. Kirk Franklin, Toby Mac, Amy Grant. People who spoke to the world and convicted them of God’s love. Our breakthrough literary writers are also unconventional – Francine Rivers who was previously a secular romance writer, Ted Dekker who grew up in a Jungle, and peculiar souls like W.M Paul Young.

The “Apostle Peters” of Christianity will insist on tradition. It takes rebels like “Apostle Paul” to shatter tables and break walls.

For more of my random thoughts about life, you should get my new book, UNSCRIPTED.