On the existence or non of ghosts

If you want to drive a youth pastor crazy or stir up trouble in a college Christian fellowship, all it takes is one simple question: "Do you believe in ghosts?"

Ghosts don't fit in particularly well with mot Christian perspectives on the afterlife. Many believers would agree that when a person dies, they go either to heaven or to hell, so there's not much room for ghosts. As a consequence, many evangelicals and fundamentalists, faced with the thorny question, will insist that ghosts are simply demons impersonating a dead soul. Nice, neat solution.

The problem is that the Bible sometimes mentions ghosts, not to say that they exist, but to indicate that people in Bible times either held such superstitions or at least were aware of them. The gospel mentions that when the Apostles saw Jesus walking on water, they thought he was a ghost, for instance, Later, after the Resurrection, he urges them to touch his corporeal body, saying, "See, I am not a ghost."

And then there's the story of Saul and the witch of Endor.

At the end of 1 Samuel, King Saul goes to Endor to ask a medium to conjure the spirit of the prophet Samuel, so he can find out what will happen when he goes to fight the Philistines. The news isn't encouraging. "You and your sons will all die," Samuel's spirit says to him.

Now the Bible's pretty clear that this is the shade of Samuel rising from the ground, and judging from the text, it seems no one is happy about the situation. Samuel is angry that Saul has summoned his spirit, which the Levitical code expressly forbids, Saul is disheartened by the news, and the witch herself is freaked out. But the Bible is clear that this is Samuel, not something else pretending to be Samuel.

The ancient Hebrews believed the dead, whether good, bad or indifferent, went to Sheol, which is Hebrew for the grave (the Greek equivalent is Hades). This was more or less synonymous with the graves where dead bodies were interred, hence the phrase we see repeated in the Tanakh that so-and-so "died and was laid with his fathers" -- because so-and-so literally was laid with fathers.

The testimony that the witch of Endor summoned Samuel comes from the Tanakh itself, which says that Samuel's spirit rose from the ground. It doesn't say an unclean spirit, nor Sathanas, nor any other name -- just Samuel.

I don't have a firm stand on ghosts. There are people who swear up and down that they've had experiences they can't explain any way other than paranormally, but a lot of people are just nuts. People who believe in ghosts often just don't think through all the natural or even psychological possibilities that would explain the phenomena in question, if for no other reason than a paranormal one is more exciting.

But I won't rule out the possibility that ghosts exist. I don't like a world where everything is defined into neat little piles, because I don't believe God made the world to be like that. While most of us will fall asleep until the Last Day when we awaken to judgment, I won't rule out the possibility that there are some restless spirits that can't sleep, for whatever reason.

And that may be why I'm not a youth pastor.