Casper the friendly Jesus?

The following are six steps to make a successful cable television show.

            Step 1: Find some people with eccentric personalities.

            Step 2: Make sure they have no qualms with making themselves look like fools on national television.

            Step 3: Give them state-of-the-art lasers, microphones, television cameras, gizmos with acronyms, and computers.

            Then to really put it over the top…

            Step 4: Have them search for ghosts, spirits, Bigfoot, monsters, demons, or aliens.

            Step 5: Use the words “paranormal,” “ghost” or “spirit” at a minimum of every 17 seconds.

            Step 6: Call your show “Ghost Hunters,” “Ghost Lab,” “A Haunting,” “Psychic and Paranormal,” “Monster Quest” or a dozen other titles that give clear indication of your angle.

Proceed to rake in the viewers.

If you’ve ever watched Discovery Channel, History Channel, A&E, or even Animal Planet, not to mention the SciFy Channel—especially on Monday mornings when you have a Sabbath and would really like to enjoy something with a little bit of substance—you will inevitably find some show about spirits, mediums, ghosts, or some other form of the boogeyman. What gives?

We are fascinated by ghosts. Whether it’s Casper, that green blob from Ghostbusters or Nearly-Headless Nick, every generation has their pop culture phantoms and ghouls. So, we can hardly be surprised that when Jesus is raised from the dead the first thing everybody thinks is: “He’s a ghost!” This is why Luke has to go to such extreme lengths to demonstrate that—no—this is Jesus in the flesh. Look, he’s eating a fish. No, seriously, a fish that was just swimming in the sea and now Jesus is putting it in his mouth and chewing. Spirits don't do that; ipso facto, flesh not spirit.

People actually have little problem accepting a ghost. In spite of the sometimes ridiculous shows on television, we live in a world that very much accepts the reality of spirits, angels and—indeed—ghosts. It’s more than just Bill Murray in a ridiculous half-astronaut-looking suit, theme music blaring. We’re OK with ghosts. A recent CBS poll showed that over half of Americans believe in ghosts.

But here’s the thing: Jesus wasn’t OK with us believing him to be a ghost. For too long we’ve fed into this idea that what awaits us after our lives is some kind of spiritual resurrection. Whether ghosts or guardian angels, we have suggested to our children and to ourselves that after death we spend time hanging around this world or floating in heaven. We have suggested that we have an immortal soul that will separate from this junk of a body in death and proceed to everlasting life. Jesus should put us in our place.

This is a difficult subject to broach because the belief in the immortality of the soul is so widespread that I can hardly talk about it without rattling some people’s cages. But—here’s the important part as far as I’m concerned—the idea of ghosts and guardian angels is not in itself incorrect; it is simply looking at Christ’s resurrection from the wrong viewpoint. When we think of ghosts and guardian angels we assume that they have left behind this physical reality and entered into a spiritual realm, when in fact the promise we have is that when the last trumpet sounds and we put on our resurrection body we will enter a new creation that is physical in a way that our lives now can never be. Instead of becoming more spiritual, in death we become more physical. We enter a realm of the physical of which we experience only a shadow here.

This is the spirit world. This is the world that lives by false pretenses; a world limited by our inability to see things as they truly are. So, when Jesus appears in front of us we instinctively think, “Ghost! He’s a ghost!" And like the disciples on the boat when the storm was raging we become more fearful, but Jesus, being much more than a ghost, walks up to us, and you know what he does? He grabs a fish and starts munching on it, and in-so-doing he obliterates our misconceptions. Jesus is fully human—a fully physical being—and in his resurrection we are shown our own path.

We have fallen in love with ghosts for all the wrong reasons. We have fallen in love with the idea of beings that are not physical but ethereal; we have looked for spirits with Ouija boards, psychics and mediums. We have subverted the idea of a physical resurrection to an afterthought, concerned only with a spiritual regeneration and renewal that comes about after death.

We can see the reality of death; we can feel it, taste it, touch it. We can experience the hurt of being left behind in its wake. Each and every one of us knows what it’s like to lose something. We all search for the assurance that they are still with us, and in our haste we turn to the spiritual realm. It’s the most natural thing in the world. But Jesus has a promise for you that puts the ghosts in their place. He doesn’t tell us that ghosts and angels are not real. He doesn’t tell us that they can’t be with us as we go about our lives. Instead, Jesus comes to the disciples, grabs a fish and starts eating. That is what resurrection looks like—not a ghost, not a spirit, but flesh and blood.

So what are ghosts? What are guardian angels?

If I had to guess, nothing more or less than the resurrected versions of ourselves; physical creatures that we in this spiritual world experience as without form. If a shadow had a mind it would look at the person who made it and think that person was a strange being, so in this way we are shadows of the resurrection, people separated from our true selves awaiting us on the far side of death.

In this way, our fascination with ghosts has nothing to do spirits; in fact, it is quite the opposite. A resurrection worldview turns everything upside down. Christ didn’t become fully human in birth; he became fully human in death. And when on the third day he rose from the dead he demonstrated to us that nothing will separate us from the love of God. No spirit can stand in our way, because the spiritual and physical have become one in Christ.

 The promise we have—the only promise we can count on—is that at the end of this life we will walk the path that Christ walked. We will die and then, against everything we experience in this life, we will rise. Only then will we realize that our life down here is much more ghostly than anything after death. The real creation awaits us on the far side.