Ghosts
There is nothing like ghosts.Ok, there are actually ghosts - but not in the
widely accepted sense or its dictionary definition.
(Bible - God gave them up to their lusts/sins)
The Bible says that God keeps track/record of all our doings.
There is a much lesser force that does the same thing too - the devil and his
fallen comrades. There is a whole set of "learned" daemons humans are
keeping busy in the devil's archives.
The devil is about one business only (going to and fro) - seeking to destroy as
many people as possible. You see, the devil knows that man's sinful nature,
among other things, seeks self-gratification. Man is basically a selfish being.
This selfishness varies with the nature of relationships. As a popular Arab
saying goes: "Me against my brothers; me and my brothers against my
cousins, me, my brothers and cousins against the world".
The devil knows what we want to hear and he is more than willing to tell us.
When rather than believe in the bible which says nay to contacts with
ghosts, spirits etc, a human being seeks communication with the spirit of some
departed soul, all the devil needs do is pull the departed soul's history from
his archive, study it, and respond based on that person's psycho-profile to any
questions posed by the living. there cant be a more convenient way than this to
take people off the true path - some facts mixed with a little supernatural
manifestation and he has got people eating out of his hands. Sometimes, this
power of suggestion is all it takes for the devil to make people even doubt the
existence of God!
It is this susceptibility to hints of the supernatural; of dead people haunting
their old haunts that the devil is exploiting in various ways. Sometimes,
the devil doesn't have to lie outrightly - a little "passive" lie
is all it takes. for example, say a young maiden falls to her death in tragic
circumstances off a high tower or cliff. All the devil needs to do is get a
demon to play some "lets pretend". The demon appears at various times
in the shape of the dead girl, flits about a little, let a few people see it,
and disappears. Has the demon actually done anything wrong? Not really; the same
way kids play cops and robbers, the demon may claim to be playing "pretend
to be". We don't automatically assume that kids dressed as robbers and cops
are truly robbers and cops, do we? So why should we assume that the apparition
we see, though it looks like someone we know or who died sometime ago is
actually that person?
Power of suggestion
I have always wanted to do something which I am almost sure will work, even
though I haven't got round to actually carrying it out:
Say, just for my own fancy, I completely shave my head such that it is as shiny
as a silver coin. I then look in the mirror and decide that a plaster slanted
across one side of my head will give me a macho/rugged look - so I put a plaster
on my head. Does that make me a liar - lying about an "injury" which I
don't have?
Next day, I go to the office and the first person that sees me acts all
concerned and asks what happened to me. I then pause, look serious and say
"it was during the weekend . . . I don't feel like talking about it"
and I walk away to my desk.
For "personal" reasons, I stay aloof and quiet for the rest of the
day. I repeat the same line above to everyone that asks about my
"head". I assure you that by the end of the day, a story about me
having had some sort of accident requiring that my head be shaved would have
started making the rounds. Some might even go as far as to spice/spruce up the
story by suggesting that it was a motorcycle accident, given the fact that I
usually use that mode of transport - he fell off a bike, hit his head and had to
have a couple of stitches put in and his head shaved.
Note that I never said I had an accident; all I said was that "it"
happened during the weekend. What is the "it" that happened? I decided
to shave my head was what happened, but because people love a good story they interpret
the presence of the plaster as being the result of an injury to my head.
Admittedly, it is not usual for someone to stick a piece of plaster to his head,
but it is within an individual's right to dress as he sees fit - as long as he
is not offensive.
So have I actually lied? I did what I felt like doing - which is perfectly
within my rights as the owner of my heads. That is the power of suggestions!
So the devil too is quite able to exploit this idea. Humans love stories about
the supernatural. Humans want to hear complicated explanations of occurrences
they do not understand because is it not logical that if it is uncomplicated
they would understand it in the first place? It may be logical, but who says
there must be a logical explanation for everything?
The scientist will say that if logic does not hold (at all times), then what we
will have is total chaos. They may be right if there is no such thing as God and
more important to this analysis, faith in the existence of God. Faith is that
element that allows us to have things and occurrences which do not obey the laws
of logic while at the same time preventing the occurrence of total chaos.
Logic + Unexplainable + Faith = Life
rearranging the equation a little, we have:
Logic + Unexplainable = Life + Faith
Thus faith allows us to live a life that to a large extent believes the logical
but accepts the unexplainable with the believe that God (the Ultimate being) is
in control and because of that, there will never be total chaos (unless He wills
it of course!)
So the devil knows what we want to hear and see - and he obliges us.
Man is by nature inquisitive, and there is nothing like a good story to prick
his interest and get his pulse racing.
So, yes there are ghosts. But the ones we should take seriously are the ones
mentioned by God as "good" ghosts.
Sunday 05-September-2004
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