Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Afraid of Ghosts?


October is just around the corner and it seems that Halloween will be just as big this year if not bigger than last. I have been thinking a lot of what we fear in preparation for a new message series to begin in October called fearless. I have found that the greatest source of horror film fodder centers on two close, but vastly different things. The first is ghosts or spirits without bodies as in the movies ala Sixth Sense and Poltergeist, and secondly the opposite, namely of bodies without spirits such as Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and Frankenstein.

Now track with me here as I go deep theological on you. What is horrific to us as humans is the separation of the natural body and spirit combo. For those of us living on this earth, we fear the separation of the body from the spirit and therefore fear either one without the other. This is born out of a world view that is based on the natural world as we know it. Philosophers may refer to it as existentialism or to a lesser extent humanism. I am not by any means saying that to fear ghosts or zombies is in some way a conscious philosophical decision, but I am saying that our fear of them is the natural result of our world view.

As Ricky Ricardo would say "Let me splain." If I choose the world view that this life is all that there is, that we all evolved in the past in order to dissolve in the future then I have nothing greater to fear than the evidence of that dissolution - ghosts and zombies. On the contrary, if I believe that there is a Creator God who is spirit in form and dwells in heavenly places. And I believe that our physical bodies are just the temporary shell until our spirit is released to be with Him for eternity, then I do not fear the separation of the the spirit and the body. In fact, I embrace it.

So what should we fear? As people who have accepted Jesus Christ and His world view as put forth in the Bible, we do not have to fear death. For those who have not accepted Christ they must fear death because death is the eternal separation of body and spirit. However, Jesus kicks it up a notch in the book of Matthew chapter 10 when he says...

Matt. 10:28 (NKJV) And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. But rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.

Unbelievers also have God to fear because God is able to kill the spirit for eternity in hell.

Today I pray that you will overcome your fear. That God will help you to accept His world view. And that as a result you will be able to be fearless.