Should Christians Believe in Ghosts?

Should Christians Believe in Ghosts?

Many, many people do believe in “ghosts,” more an visions or apparitions of the “spirits” of people who are deceased. Ontologically real beings who are dead and appear to people.

Should Christians believe in these? Many do.

I have always been curious about ghosts. One story I was told growing up was that, when I was about three, I “saw” my dead mother. She died when I was two. One day, people tell me, some who were present, I was looking out a picture window in the foster home when I suddenly pointed out the window and yelled “Mommy! There’s mommy!” People rushed to the window and looked out. Nothing. No one. I insisted I saw here.

Why do ghosts wear clothes?

Scripture gives us a story about two ghosts—Moses and Elijah, the “Mount of Transfiguration” narrative. The disciples witnessed the patriarch and the prophet long after they died. In the book of Acts of the Apostles a girl believed she saw Peter’s “ghost.” Later, of course, she realized he wasn’t even dead. But belief in ghosts was not unheard of among early Christians.

Nothing in scripture explicitly forbids belief in ghosts. Nor does it promote looking for ghosts. Is this purely a matter of “adiaphora,” “things indifferent?”

I read a book by one of my favorite religion writers, Marcus Bach, founder of The School of Religion at the University of Iowa. The book contained a chapter about “Spiritualism” and mediumship, seances. Bach was a skeptic, but he attended many seances. All but one were phony, so he reported. At one seance, at a leading Spiritualist “camp,” his dead sister appeared and answered questions he put to her that only she could answer, about their childhood together. He was convinced it was his sister.

One story that has convinced many Christians to believe in ghosts was told by J. B. Phillips, British minister and translator of the Bible. He was “stuck” in his project of writing “The Phillips Translation” and became depressed. One night,  he reported, as he said alone in his living room, C. S. Lewis appeared to him, sitting in a chair and talking to him. Lewis’s words were just what he needed to hear to lift him out of his depression and continue his work.

Belief in ghosts is made trivial and silly by shows such as “Ghosts.” Popular culture is filled with books, movies, television shows, about ghosts. Some “reality TV shows” such as “Unsolved Mysteries” have reported about ghostly appearances.

Should Christians believe in ghosts? Well, yes, in at least one case—the appearances of Moses and Elijah on the Mount of Transfiguration. Somehow, though, for some reason, they are not usually called “ghosts” by Christians. But if they were not ghosts, what were they?

No, Christians should not become obsessed with ghosts or go to seances.

Yes, it is okay for Christians to believe that God can send someone back to them for their edification, such as happened with Phillips and Lewis.

But I still wonder why ghosts wear clothes?

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