Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Christian Believing Strange Things

One of my friends believes in ghosts. He claims to have seen things like doors closing unexpectedly, etc. I’ve seen things like that too, but I’ve never attributed it to a ghost. I figure there was enough of a change in the airflow to cause the door to close. It really don’t take much with some doors. What would be interesting is to see a locked door come unbolted and open all by itself. I still wouldn’t attribute that to a ghost, but it would be interesting.

The sad thing is that this friend of mine is a church member and he’s ready to attribute a door closing to the working of some undeparted dead person. There is no logical reason to believe that. The Bible does say that spirits exist, but it makes it clear that when we die we go to one of two places—heaven or hell. There aren’t human beings waiting around because they have unfinished business. If there are spirits haunting a house, those spirits would have to be from among the angelic beings—either those who follow God or those who follow Satan. But can a spirit cause a door to move? Apparently not. When he rose from the dead, one of the ways he proved he was not a spirit was that he ate with them. Although, I don’t know that it really matters.

It fascinates me that so many Christians are quick to believe the absurd. It’s almost like they turn off the absurdity filter in their mind. Atheists would tell us that we’ve all done that, but there’s a big difference in believing in Jesus, for whom there is a ton of evidence, and believing in the Locke Ness monster, for whom there are some pictures of a stick. It is almost as if people think one belief is as good as another. That is why it is so important that we do more than ask people to believe in Jesus just because we say they should, but to point them to the evidence. Encourage them to be skeptical and then overcome the skepticism with the evidence.