How stitious are you?

Season 4, Episode 1. Michael hits Meredith with his car, and he concludes that the office is cursed. Wanting to take responsibility he says, “It’s up to me to get rid of the curse that hit Meredith with my car. I’m not superstitious but I am a little stitious.”

So… how stitious are you? As we approach Halloween; spider webs, bats, pumpkins, and ghosts abound. My daughter spent the week colouring in Halloween decorations at her local kindergarten. It’s all a bit of fun for the Halloween disco they were to have at the end of the week. And the kind teacher assured her, “We don’t need to be afraid of ghosts, because they don’t exist.”

I think, up until a few weeks ago, I would have said much the same thing. I was educated, for the most part, by scientific rationalists. Anything that cannot be verified by the natural sciences ought not to be taken seriously. Having been brought up on the bible as well, I always considered God and angels and demons to be exceptions to this. Science is just not equipped to measure things in the spiritual realm. Still, for some reason, I never thought this biblical re-education should shake my fairly dismissive attitude towards ghosts. Until I read Peter Bolt’s book, Living with the Underworld. He opened my eyes to a few things I hadn’t considered before.

For instance, I had previously thought that demons were somehow ‘fallen angels’ like the Devil. Bolt explains, “…it comes as a surprise to most English-speakers that the Greek word daimon was regularly and frequently used to refer to the spirits of the dead. That’s right: daimon was just another word for ghost.”[1] So, whenever the New Testament mentions demons, evil spirits, or unclean spirits, we should be thinking of ghosts.

This answered a question I have had for a long-time. Where do the spirits of dead people go when they die? I know that Christians go to be with the Lord (Phil. 1:23, 2 Cor. 5:8), but where do the spirits of non-Christians go? Bolt explains that non-Christian spirits inhabit various spaces in the underworld.

Moreover, in the ancient world people believed (I should say, understood) that restless spirits often haunted and invaded the upper world. Especially, if someone died a particularly gruesome death – like they were beheaded or crucified – it was thought that they might come back to frighten and harm the living. Their spirits might invade and inhabit certain places or even people.

This seems to be what Herod concluded when he heard about Jesus’ mighty works,

At that time Herod the tetrarch heard about the fame of Jesus, and he said to his servants, “This is John the Baptist. He has been raised from the dead; that is why these miraculous powers are at work in him…” (Matt. 14:1-2)

In other words, what Herod thought is that somehow, because of John’s untimely, gruesome death, instead of resting in the underworld, John had come back and was now working in and through this man Jesus. Perhaps Jesus was a magician, using the dark arts to harness the power of John’s restless spirit. Of course, that’s not what was happening, but that’s what Herod believed. This was all part of the culture of the first century,

“Ancient magic operated by harnessing the power of these restless spirits. People in the modern world can’t really understand the grip in which magic held people of the ancient world. Pliny, an intellectual from the middle of the first century… reckoned that he couldn’t find anybody who wasn’t afraid of being under the spell of ‘curse tablets’. These were typically sheets of lead, thrown into graves, and wells—places close to the underworld spaces—after being inscribed with curses directed at rivals in business, love, sport or whatever. The ghosts of the underworld were meant to fulfil the directions of the curse, which usually entailed inflicting all kinds of harm upon the victim’s body and upon his or her family members… But it was not only the external attacks from underworld beings that could evoke fear. It was also the contamination brought by their very presence. Ghosts came from the filthy, smelly, foul world of rottenness… The rottenness of death was all over them. No wonder the Gospels’ preferred term for them is ‘unclean spirit’. The Greeks spoke of the ‘miasma’, the contamination of the underworld, and with ghosts around, the fear of contamination was strong. What if they invaded and befouled our space, our home, our city? In ancient Rome and Athens, there were annual festivals which sought to drive the ghosts out of the city… Ghosts were thought capable of invading bodies as well.” [2]

Likewise, in Acts 19:11-20, having seen the extraordinary (and seemingly magical) power of the apostle Paul, as he did miracles in the name of the crucified-but-resurrected Lord Jesus, a group of Jewish exorcists wanted to get in on the action. It was all about trying “to gain control of a higher, more forceful power, in order to threaten and therefore control a lesser underworld power. It all depended upon having the names of the spirits and the magical words of command.” [3] Of course, this little attempt to control Jesus was not successful because Jesus is not some underworld spirit to be manipulated. The name of Jesus cannot be wielded like a magic charm or an incantation. What Paul was preaching was something, or rather someone, far more powerful than magic. When Jesus rose from the dead he did not come back as a ghost. Remember what he told his disciples,

… they were startled and frightened and thought they saw a spirit. And he said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me, and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” (Lk. 24:37-39)

In the west, many people have long-since given up on all this nonsense, dismissing it as superstition. This was in large part thanks to the spread of Christianity. In Acts 19, many of the believers in Ephesus gave up their magic practices and burned their books. This is a wonderful testimony to the power of Jesus and his gospel. Christians no longer need to be afraid of the devil, the flesh, the world, or the underworld. But it’s not because these things don’t exist. Rather, it is because Jesus has conquered them! And he has poured out his Holy Ghost upon us to protect us from anything that might want to do us harm while we wait for the day when at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth! (Phil. 2:10)

[1] Peter Bolt. Living With The Underworld (Kindle Locations 587-589). Matthias Media. Kindle Edition.

[2] Ibid. (Kindle Locations 502-533).

[3] Ibid. (Kindle Locations 557-562).