Ghosts (10)

What more can be said about ghosts? 

Well, since every ghost story hints at a world of the living dead, I’m with those who regard such stories as intrinsically compelling or terrifyingly frightening – depending upon whether a post-mortem existence is desired or feared. 

Historically, it would seem true to life to say that Christianity (in each of its many forms) has used its ghost stories to sustain community movements.  Members meet at least once a week to encourage one another to be alert for ghostly supernatural events that may happen in their private lives – such as healing miracles, or hearing revelatory voices, or encounters with the Holy Ghost her/himself. 

Personal expectations of this kind are promoted at almost every community meeting by Christian preachers who read and interpret the ghost stories in the ‘gospels’ as having actually happened in and around Jerusalem, and so can be expected to actually happen again anywhere in the human world.  Christian preachers therefore have a vested interest in retailing supernatural events that have happened in their own lives, since witnessing such events enhances a preacher’s reputation. 

What strikes me now at the end of a long life is that ghostly supernatural stories about a God/man ghost walking on water, or turning water into wine, are not “true to life” stories as I recall my own life experiences. 

Likewise, no private miracle story about a Holy Ghost healing a sick member of the human family has been independently verified during my lifetime.  (And in writing that sentence, I’m using the word ‘healing’ to refer to an outcome that is above and beyond what might reasonably be expected from the ‘placebo effect’ or that is above and beyond what evolutionary nature sometimes has been observed to do.) 

In the place of unverified Holy Ghosts stories, I find it more natural and satisfying to believe in the mystery at the heart of creation. This mystery is not capable of being solved and understood by any member of the human family on account of the limitations of the human central nervous system (which includes the human brain).