In an old post entitled Mea Culpa, I shared my personal preference on avoiding the use of Grammarly. If you’re really curious as to why, you’d need to go to that post.
Ghostwriting was the farthest thing on my mind until it was brought to my attention when someone who does it for a living recently subscribed to my blog. While I had an inkling of what ghostwriting is about, I decided to look up more information and what I found honestly horrified me.
This post is not meant to demonize those who do this for a living. However, I’m led to two questions,
- Can a Christian do this for a living?
- Is it moral for someone who professes to be a Christian claim authorship of a book/blog post they didn’t even write?
I understand people need to make a living, but to be a ghostwriter, a person would have to be complicit in pushing out something that is not truthful. For one, they know the person who paid them is claiming to be something they are really not. It would be horrific for the person who claims to be a Christian since they are pushing out lie after lie, multiplied by the number of clients and the frequency of articles being published.
Is it moral for someone who professes to be a Christian claim authorship of a book/blog post they paid someone to write with details that has nothing to do with them? What would spur someone to pull this phoney baloney?
Two verses come to mind:
“And I saw that all toil and all achievement spring from one person’s envy of another. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.”
Ecclesiastes 4:4
“For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice.”
James 3:16
The spiritual implication of this is that someone who has possibly no idea about sound doctrine can be hired by the professing Christian to write their book or their blog post. While the ghostwriter does the research on the subject and topic their client has given them, the professing Christian peddles the written material and takes credit for something that might be rife with feel-good and high-sounding heresies (Colossians 2:8). Chances are, the professing Christian who does this is clearly not bothered in keeping up the charade which signifies they are devoid of the Holy Spirit! (2 Timothy 3:5-9)
This boils down to an integrity issue especially for the professing Christian.
Are you who you really claim you are when you think no one is looking? God is always watching. It would be most horrific for the one who claims to be His ambassador and have the appearance of success only to be met with His wrath. This world is quickly fading away and dishonest gains will be of no value on the day of reckoning.
“But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow wickedness, there will be wrath and anger.”
Romans 2:8
“Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. 8 Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.”
Galatians 6:7-8
If you are a Christian and this applies to you, REPENT.
As for this post’s title, I believe it is more fitting to call ghostwriting as silhouette writing because that’s exactly what it is. The author’s true identity is incognito.
Related read: Cosmos