Stephen
Terry, Director
Understanding
Human Nature
Commentary
for the October 15, 2022, Sabbath School Lesson
“So
Saul disguised himself, putting on other clothes, and at night he and two men
went to the woman. “Consult a spirit for me,” he said, “and bring up for me the
one I name.”
But the woman said to him, “Surely you know
what Saul has done. He has cut off the mediums and spiritists from the land.
Why have you set a trap for my life to bring about my death?”
Saul
swore to her by the Lord, “As surely as the Lord lives, you will not be
punished for this.”
Then
the woman asked, “Whom shall I bring up for you?”
“Bring
up Samuel,” he said.”
1
Samuel 28:8-11, NIV
As I write this commentary, we
are almost halfway through the month of October and thoughts of many are
focused on the Halloween holiday to come when the children go door to door and
ask for candy in a long-standing tradition of “Trick or Treat.” This was born
of the ancient idea of placating malicious spirits with a sacrifice of some
sort. In the distant past, that sacrifice was to slay something living with some
cultures even slaying their own children to appease a particularly blood-thirsty
god or spirit. Thankfully, the appeasement now can simply be a small size piece
of chocolate, and rather than appease some malevolent spirit, it is in lieu of
children playing a prank such as covering the landscape with toilet paper or
waxing windows. While derived from more nefarious practices in the past, most
feel the candy a small price to pay to avert the cleanup involved when “tricked.”
The children dress up in
costumes for this annual affair. While the evening’s activities were presumably
based on the activities of evil spirits of the dead cavorting on the eve of All
Saints’ Day, most of the children who appear at our door are dressed as cartoon
heroes, unicorns, princesses and other things that have little to do with the activities
of dead people. But as some people choose to be Goths despite what the rest of
the world may be doing, some are attracted to the opportunity to dress as the devilish
and demonic Halloween is a major marketing season for retailers who sell the
treat candy and the ready-made costumes, so they cater to all tastes in hopes
of a profitable season.
When I was a child long ago
(some might feel as though that was sometime during the Bronze Age), we didn’t
have all the ready-made costumes and treats. It was a time when most women wore
scarves, so their children would wear the scarves adjusted differently and
pretend they were pirates. Those who had old sheets would cut holes in those
and pretend to be ghosts. Preformed plastic masks of clowns, animals, and princesses
were options just becoming available, but due to the local police warning
parents about children being in danger of being hit by cars when the little
ones had their vision obstructed by an ill-fitting mask, most parents discouraged
their children from wearing masks at night.
Chocolate treats were not as common
as they are now. Instead, I remember receiving apples, popcorn balls, homemade
cookies, and Necco wafers. Hard candies, like Neccos, were more the rule if we
got candy at all. Things began to change when rumors started that evil people
were slipping pins, needles and razor blades into the treats. I never knew a
child who received anything like that. Nonetheless, people started buying
pre-packaged treats for giving out on Halloween lest they be thought of as the
kind of shady people that might do something like that. I missed the homemade
popcorn balls.
But how did the idea of
Halloween come to be associated with spirits of the dead? It comes from the
idea that when we die, we don’t really die. We simply leave our body behind,
becoming disembodied spirits. This idea comes not from the Bible but from Greek
mythology which taught the belief that when people died, their spirits went
either to join the deserving in the Elysian Fields or if undeserving to the torments
of Hades. This all comes from the idea that some part of our being is naturally
immortal. Surprisingly, that idea did originate in the Bible, but not from the
source we might think.
When God placed Adam and Eve in
the Garden of Eden, he told them don’t eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good
and Evil or you will die. But Satan as the serpent of Revelation, chapter 12
told them “You won’t die, you will be like gods!” Of course, after they partook,
they were not gods in any way except in the discovery of the existence of evil,
and death began to touch their bodies once they were denied access to the Tree
of Life.[i] Despite
this experience, many continue to believe the lie that they will not really die,
and out of this has grown several unbiblical ideas.
The one most familiar to Christians
is the idea that when we die, we go immediately to heaven or hell to continue a
spiritual existence there. An interesting side note to this idea is that I have
often heard preachers preach someone into heaven at their funeral, but I have
never heard anyone preached into hell. Therefore, it would seem heaven must be
heavily populated, and hell is mostly devoid of the dead. Our Catholic friends
have even sought to spare those who are so clearly evil they could not
justifiably preach them into heaven by creating Purgatory, a place where even
the lost may eventually find their way to heaven. Out of this belief that the
spirits of the lost are abandoned in purgatory comes the need to pray for the
dead and their salvation. Some faith traditions even practice baptism for the
dead for those who were unlucky enough to die without receiving that sacrament.
Naturally, it is only a step or
two from the idea of people continuing to exist as disembodied spirits to the
idea that we can communicate with them. If the dead live on with a knowledge of
what is happening in the lives of the living, that is more a torment than a
paradise to those who must witness the suffering and tragedies that happen to
those that go on living without them. This would seem to be a powerful motive
for those who are deceased to want to communicate with the living to warn them
of potential harm or simply to give some advice about life. Those who travel
that road tend to believe that the veil separating the dead from the living is
very thin and may be crossed under the right circumstances.
All of this describes the world
view of many who have accepted the idea of unconditional immortality of some conscious
spirit that exists within us. This may seem believable to some, even
philosophically logical, but what if none of it is true? We know that Satan
said we will not surely die, but what does the Bible say about the matter. IN
any court case, the judge and jury must listen to both sides of the case before
rendering judgment. They may sit for the trial with preconceived ideas, but the
attorneys screen them for such biases because they want a trial to be fair and
impartial. Are we able to do the same and set aside what we have assumed to be
the case to give fair hearing to what the Bible might say about the issue?
If we go back to the Creation
Story, we discover that when God formed man, he did so from the dust of the
earth. After giving him a body, he breathed life into the form and the breath
combined with the body became man. The King James Version of the Bible says
that man “became a living soul.” It does not say man possessed a soul but that
he was one. This is the same understanding as the old nursery rhyme that states
“Old King Cole was a merry old soul.” That rhyme also understood the soul to
include the body. It may come as a disappointment to some to understand that
the word “soul” does not automatically come coupled with the word “immortal.”
An argument might be made that
since God is immortal then the breath he gives man when he breathes life into
him is also immortal, but to what end? There is no indication that that breath
has discreet consciousness. We were made in God’s image. When we breathe out,
does our breath possess intelligence and the ability to communicate with us as
though it were its own being? Nonetheless, some would attribute that ability to
God’s breath, even referring to it as our personal soul. If that were the case,
one would think that this conscious entity would praise God, but the Bible
tells us that the dead do not praise God.[ii] In
fact, it tells us that their conscious thoughts cease. They are no longer
capable of planning anything.[iii]
This sounds grim on the surface
and seems to support the idea of getting all the enjoyment you can now for it
will all end in oblivion anyway. But that is also not the Bible’s story. The Apostle
Paul, writing to the Corinthian Church said that the dead will rise again. At
the last trumpet, when Jesus returns, everyone who has died will rise again to
life. To do that, they would have to be as though sleeping in their graves.
Some have tried to circumvent this by claiming that Jesus will bring their
souls back to reunite with their bodies when he comes, but I can find no
biblical support for that position.
Oddly enough, in some ways this
whole argument may be moot if we consider what happens to the passage of time when
we sleep. We go to bed and fall asleep. When we awake, we look at the clock and
discover that time has passed without our knowledge, and it seems as though we
went to bed and immediately woke back up. Our time spent without conscious
awareness in the grave will be the same. It will seem as though no time has
passed. When we awake to Jesus’ return, those that believe that they go
immediately to heaven will declare “We were right!” At the same time, those who
believe that they will sleep in the grave until Jesus’ return will see in the
clothing styles of the many who rise with them that time has indeed passed and
will also declare “We were right!”
If Jesus' return will eventually
render the theology unimportant in the face of the reality of his presence and
our resurrection, why does it matter now. It matters because what we believe happens
at death informs our praxis now. What we believe about the state of the dead
can either save us from Saul’s error with the Witch of Endor, or it can lead us
down a dark path. For King Saul and his son Jonathan, it led to his death in
battle on Gilboa. When we seek to speak with the dead, we may find their
invitation to join them in death too strong to resist. Let us not cast aside
the hope given us to entertain such beliefs.
You can read more about the dead
at the following link:
WHAT IS DEATH?