A lot of people don’t believe in spirits. We live in a scientific, rational age. (Or we’d like to think we do.) If we can’t study it with science, functionally it doesn’t exist—and a lot of people assume “functionally” is just as good as “literally.” So spirits are out.
A lot of Christians are among them. They don’t believe in spirits. Well, except for God. And maybe the human spirit, which survives death. And maybe angels and devils. But if they go that far, it’s as far as they’ll go: Anything else is superstition or the fakery of false religions.
But the bible refers to all sorts of spirits. Some appear to be good. Some appear evil. Some neither—they’re benign, or they have duties which have nothing to do with us. Some are unclean, the sort Jesus threw out of people. Others are clean.
If spirits exist in the bible, stands to reason they still exist. We may not be aware of them. We may not be able to detect them scientifically. We may find it irritating when other religions emphasize them so much: We’re pretty sure they’re wrong. But we need to understand what Christianity teaches about spirits, and get it right.
Spirits, angels, and devils.
We humans, and everything we can detect in the universe, are material: We are made of matter and energy. Matter is made up of atoms. Energy consists of universal forces working on or within those atoms. Matter can be converted into energy, and vice-versa, because both atoms and energy are made of the same thing, which theorists call strings. But since this is not a science blog, I won’t get into this further.
The writers of the bible gave us no clear definition of spirit except to say that it’s not material. It’s not made of matter and energy. It‘s not made of strings. The Hebrew word for spirit, ruákh, also means “wind”—and yes, wind is energy pushing the air molecules, but the ancients didn’t know that. The point was to describe it with something invisible and non-material. Like wind. You can’t see it. You can only see its effects: Trees move, clouds move, flags wave, kites fly. And with enough of it, a building falls over.
So a spirit is a non-physical being. A bird is made of atoms and energy; a spirit is made of neither. What is it made of? We can’t say. Science doesn’t extend into spiritual things. Theology does—but all we know is what we’re told, and we weren’t told what spirit is made of. Perhaps, like a quantum string (as far as we currently know about strings, anyway), it has no parts—it doesn’t come apart, and is a basic unit.
While science can’t detect spirits, humans can. That’s because humans are part spirit. We have a spirit—although it’s more commonly called a ghost—which will survive when our bodies die, which will return to our new bodies when we’re resurrected. The heart of this spirit is the heart we Christians refer to when we talk about talking to God, or hearing God, with our hearts. And we can discern whether other spirits—good or evil—are interacting with us, because we can detect them with our hearts.
Christians tend to oversimplify spirits by dividing them into two camps: Good and evil. They call all the good spirits “angels,” and all the bad “devils” or “demons.” As I said, that’s an oversimplification. Christian mythology teaches Satan, the head devil, used to be an angel, or even a head angel—putting him in the same species as Michael, the only head angel referred to in the bible, (Ju 9) although there are others. (Dn 10.13) Since it appears devils are angels gone bad, (Rv 12.9) saying they’re different is like saying a law-abiding citizen and a criminal are two different species. They’re not. Their only difference is in the choices they make.
Spiritualists and psychics.
Various pagans claim they’re in tune with the “spirit world” or “spirit realm” or whatever parallel universe they believe spirits exist in. They say they know quite a lot about how that universe works. They offer to share their knowledge with us. (But it might cost us a bit of money.)
Certainly a lot of these people are outright frauds, as Harry Houdini, James Randi, and other skeptics have demonstrated. It’s not all that hard to combine smart guesses, deductive reasoning, and a little showmanship, and make people think you’re a psychic. I’ve been accused of being a psychic myself—but all I did was make educated guesses and happen to be right. So few people bother to practice practical deductive reasoning anymore, that anyone who does practice it, can look “psychic” to those who don’t.
And yet. I’ve known people who experienced what they were convinced were real encounters with real spirits—with angels who told them what God wanted of them, or with dead relatives who told them what the Great Beyond is like. My grandfather used to dabble in that stuff. There are people who have made contact with spirits. Like I said, we’re part spirit. Even pagans are part spirit. So spirits will sometimes talk to humans.
But when they don’t draw us to Jesus, it’s obvious they’re not working with him. They’re working for themselves. Or with the devil.
Beloved: Don’t trust every spirit! Instead, put the spirits to the test to see if they’re from God. Many fake prophets, you see, are out there in the world. You recognize a spirit from God like this: Every spirit who agrees that Messiah Jesus has a physical body is from God. Every spirit who disagrees Jesus is from God, isn’t. It’s from the antichrist, whom you’ve heard is coming, and is already in the world now.
Children, you belong to God. You’ve conquered them because the Great One inside you is greater than anything in the world. Those things are in the world, and speak into the world, and the world listens to them. We belong to God, and those who know God listen to us. Those who don’t know God don’t listen to us. That’s how we know the true spirit from the misleading spirit.
—John, 1 John 4.1-6 KWL
I’ve stunned people by simply asking them, “How do you know whether that spirit was telling you the truth?” Many pagans never consider the idea a spirit would be evil. They assume—as pagans have believed ever since Plato taught matter is bad but spirit is good—that spirits don’t lie. They believe if you’ve died, you gave up such things as lying and cheating and self-interest, because those were carnal things, but you’re not carnal anymore. They assume angels are always good and never deceive. But as I said, the only difference between angels and demons are their choices.
We humans get awfully naïve when it comes to spirits. You know—likely because your parents taught you so—that you can’t trust just any human you meet. Some people are kindly and friendly. Others aren’t, and will use you in any way they please to get what they want. Appearance might give you a hint as to whether they’re safe or dangerous—but evil people often make a point of looking pleasant, the better to fool everyone. And it’s precisely the same with spirits. You’ll notice the first thing that comes out of most angels’ mouths when they appear to humans is, “Don’t fear!” (Lk 2.10) —because some spirits, when prophets are allowed to see them, are really freaky-looking. Yet the devil likes to play an angel of light, (2Co 11.14) or, more often, God.
So when I meet pagans who are into spiritual things, I ask them, simply, whether they know they’re to test the spirits. Whether they’ve considered that spirits might be just as self-motivated, self-interested, or selfish, as humans. By and large, they never have. And almost universally, almost immediately, they realize how naïve they’ve been—they just swallowed everything a psychic or spirit told them, no questions asked. Which is exactly the response I want: Now they’ll ask questions. And, with the Holy Spirit’s prodding, they’ll get to the right questions—and the correct answers.
How far we’re to interact with them.
There are Christians who dabble with psychics, astrologers, spiritualists, mediums, and so forth. They believe the spirit world is God’s world, and it’s normal and okay for them to interact with it. Problem is, their spiritual guides—those psychics, astrologers, and so forth—aren’t Christians. They might claim to be Christian—they “talk to Jesus” all the time, although they don’t realize how often the devil plays Jesus—but like 1 John has it, they think Jesus is a spirit, not a living man in a resurrected human body. They don’t really know him, and any Christians who follow them are being led far, far away from him.
God banned this behavior in the Law. He wants his people to consult prophets, not psychics. (Dt 18.9-14) He doesn’t want us consulting some freelance angel who doesn’t work for him; he doesn’t want us calling up dead ancestors and asking their opinion. The dead don’t know anything. (Ec 9.5) Yes, there’s a story in the bible where Saul had a medium call up Samuel, who correctly predicted Saul and his sons would die in their next battle. (1Sa 28.7-19) Theologians are split over whether this was a special circumstance—for once it really was Samuel, because God wanted Saul to see how depraved he had become—or whether this was fakery, because God would never disturb his faithful prophet this way, and the medium just happened to guess right about Saul’s eventual defeat. But where we are agreed is this performance shouldn’t be repeated. Stay away from mediums.
I’ve discussed exorcism elsewhere, and remind you it’s nothing to dabble in or play with. It’s serious business. Those who think spirits are harmless or largely powerless are in for a rude awakening when they have to throw one out of a person.
I’ve been asked, by well-meaning Christians, “Do you talk to your angels?” By this, they mean I should make requests of any spirits God has sent to watch out for me—ask them for help, for insight, and for revelation. I’m not sure that’s a legitimate thing to ask them. In the scriptures we see people ask God for help or revelation, and in response he either answers them personally, or he sends prophets, or angels. In some organizations, you don’t talk to the servants directly: You make your requests and inquiries through the manager, and that person delegates jobs as appropriate. God appears to work the same way. Talk to God, not the subordinates—until he sends you subordinates to talk to.
But if an angel or prophet appears to you, don’t respond, “Sorry, I didn’t request you.” Listen to them. Ask appropriate questions. Keep an open mind. Ask God to confirm it. Test spirits, remember?
Other Christians ask, “Why should I talk to an angel when I can just talk to God?” I dunno. Why couldn’t the Holy Spirit have given John the grand tour through the End Times, in Revelation, instead of having a dozen different angels and elders usher him about? Why does God occasionally have his prophets tell me things when he can do it himself? The only reasonable answer I have is the same as when it comes to evangelism: God can do it all himself. Of course he can. But he doesn’t want to. He wants relationship. He wants to work with people. And it would seem, since we read about ministering spirits in the bible, that the “people” God wants to work with are not limited to humans. God wants a relationship, not just with us humans who have chosen to follow him, but with those spirits who have likewise chosen to follow him. God has not limited himself to just our species. He’s the God and Savior of every species. And if they’re willing to work with him to bring about the Kingdom, he’ll put them to work. Same as us.
Finally, there’s the rather controversial issue of praying with saints, which I suppose needs its own article, so I’ll get to it next week.