GHOSTS AND A CHRISTIAN WORLDVIEW

This is an odd topic for Epiphany, but C. Michael Patton is treading where few dare to go. He asks, "Do you believe in Ghosts?" I'm so glad for his honest question.

I’ve often wondered at how strongly those in the tradition of my childhood affirm that Ghosts can not exist! It was also a surprise to find how distinctively Evangelical such a commitment seems to be.

It seems to me that the few affirmations of scripture regarding the intermediate state leave a lot of room for further activity. Surely to be present with the Lord doesn’t necessarily imply that we are inactive, sedate or unconcerned with this world. The whole of classical Christianity seems to think otherwise.

Might our Lord have work for us to do in the mean time? Might there be something to learn? My Anglican tradition affirms that believers who have passed continue to exist somewhere, and so we pray that they continue to grow in love, grace and knowledge. And what does any of this have to do with those who die apart from our Lord’s covenantal claim. We believe they suffer somewhere; do we know for sure this has no manifestation in the realm of our sense?

How do we know?

That’s the point of wonder for me: we act so sure about that which we know very little- especially when we have the testimony of so many people and cultures. Do we know from the paltry number of verses available that the thousands of experiences of honest people must be wrong?

The whole question of "Are there ghosts here?" also seems to be built on a two-storied view of creation- earth is here, heaven and hell are way over there, and never the twain shall meet. But if heaven and earth are further dimensions of reality so that we are constantly surrounded by an unseen reality, might the question of whether those who died in the Lord are still “here” be a moot one? Wouldn’t the answer be “Of Course! And sometimes they step out and say hello.” Likewise, should we be surprised if we wander into a part of the landscape where those who died lost (and so continue to be so) congregate.

Perhaps Heaven is up, but not North; Hell is down, but not South.

HEAVEN'S NOT MY HOME

I grew up singing “This world is not my home. I’m just a passin’ through.”

I shouldn’t have. Sung it, I mean.

Turns out that I had it exactly backwards.

I believed heaven was a place “somewhere else – over there.” I believed that the phrase The Kingdom of Heaven referred to that specific piece of “somewhere else." I also thought that Jesus, therefore, went around talking to people about how to arrive at that “somewhere else” and that he died on the cross to "save souls"- as opposed to bodies because only souls can make the trip; and so finally, I knew the gospel was about “going to heaven when you die.”

Simple. Popular. Self-evident, really.

And underlying the whole thing was that powerful ditty “This world is not my home. I’m just a passin’ through”

Backwards. All of it.

Remove the ditty and the whole landscape turns on its head.

Let me show you-

1. Heaven is that part of this creation where God is especially present. Sometimes he pulls back the veil to let us see what’s already here. Its just that sort of thing that happened to Elisha and his servant in 2 Kings 6:15-19. When heaven opens (as in Rev. 4:1), we’re not taken away from here, rather we are able to see all of here.

2. When Jesus or his cousin John wandered into a village telling people that the Kingdom of God was at hand, what did the villagers hear?

Come on, now. We have the entire Old Testament from which to answer. Did they hear “this is how you can go to heaven when you die?" Why would they have heard that? People coming out of a Twentieth Century Ole’ Time Revival tent meeting might have heard that, but a second century Jewish potter? I can’t find that sort of thing in the Old Testament at all.

No, the kingdom of God wasn’t a place. The gospel wasn’t a map. Jesus wasn’t saying he’d discovered a new route to a special destination. Rather, the Kingdom of God was a fact. The gospel was a proclamation.

It wasn’t that a new territory had been found; it was that God’s kingship had been asserted and established over this world. God had returned to Israel to set everything right. The kingdom was at hand because the king was present. God was in town.

3. We affirm every Sunday (because Holy Scripture most assuredly teaches it) that God created every visible thing. Stuff was God’s idea. Specifically, these Heavens and this Earth were the handiwork of God, and he took great joy in them. We have scriptural authority on that.

Was it all a mistake? Was Adam’s fall God’s big chance to get out of the whole “stuff” business?

The entire redemption story says otherwise; Romans 8 makes the point explicitly. God is saving all of creation. All of this creation.

There’s no better guarantee of this than the verity of Christ’s resurrection on Easter morning. While Good Friday was God’s “No!” to the fallen state of things in his world, Easter was his great "Yes!” to the goodness of Creation. Good Friday might have been followed by something else. If God had changed his mind, this was the time and place to show it.

“All of this is cursed” the cross declared, “and now….we’re going to do this instead.”

But that’s not what happened. Christ’s death was followed by a bodily resurrection. He put this world on in his incarnation; and he refused to take it off again- even after his death. Weeks later, on a Thursday, he took that same flesh back into the very life of the Trinity. Heaven and Earth met in that individual; because of him Revelation 21 promises the same for this world.

God isn’t in the business of saving bodiless souls. God has saved, is saving, and will save this world of men and women. He does so without destroying their humanity. Could salvation work in any other way?

This, then, is the great Christian hope. We do not look forward to “going to heaven when we die," rather we look forward to “the resurrection of the dead” and the New Heavens and New Earth that will be transformed along with our risen bodies- as was our Lord’s.

If my family were to travel to Disney World, we might stop for the night in Valdosta. Motel stays are a rarity for us; so no doubt, we’d have a good time, but in the morning we’d be off- because our destination is Disney World, not Motel 6. Heaven considered as a separate realm of this creation is not my home. It may be the case that after my death, God will preserve me there for awhile, but that’s not where I’m going. I shouldn’t confuse the two.

No doubt Christ has those who have fallen asleep before the final renewal of all things well in hand. Though questions of post mortem existence are important, they are insignificant when compared with the rest of the story- simply because they are a mere hiatus along the way.

This is tremendously practical. This life, this world, this enfleshed human person is the point of God’s activity. As someone else has suggested, the proper question for evangelism isn’t “If you were die tonight where would you spend eternity?," but rather “If you were to live for another 1000 years, what kind of person would you be?”

Salvation's not about life after death, but rather about life after life after death. Perhaps the best introduction to this historic understanding is N.T. Wright’s inexpensive booklet New Heavens, New Earth: The Biblical Picture of the Christian Hope. It’s available here from Grove Books.