Evil spirits.

It’s odd: Lots of people believe in spirits. Christians do too, ’cause God’s a spirit, Jn 4.24 and angels are spirits. He 1.14 We also figure the spirits of dead loved ones exist in the afterlife—or heaven, as many people imagine.

Yet many of these very same people refuse to believe in evil spirits.

I used to say this mindset comes from Platonism. Plato of Athens taught if we could only escape this world of matter and decay, and just become pure spirit, all our self-centered impulses, greed, materialism, lusts, and so forth would simply cease to exist. We wouldn’t have ’em anymore; they were embedded in our flesh, but without that flesh we’d be nothing but good. Plato’s not the first to believe this junk; plenty of other cultures teach the same thing. Present-day folks who believe it, don’t necessarily believe it ’cause of Plato’s reasoning—heck, they don’t have any reasoning behind it. They simply believe all spirits are good… because it never occurred to them spirits might be bad.

Yep. Even though mythology, fairy tales, and horror movies are loaded with evil spirits. Monsters, boogeymen, fairies, ghosts, demons, elder gods which wanna destroy everything once they’re awakened. But for whatever reason, people imagine real-life spirits aren’t evil, and are nothing but benevolent. They’re on a higher plane than we are, and in getting there all the evil got purged from them.

To some degree this is because too many people have overdone their emphasis on evil spirits. Christians in particular. Wasn’t so long ago that everyone assumed every psychological disorder in the DSM-5 was the product of evil spirits. Years ago I had a roommate suffering from depression, but he was convinced he was demonized. Fortunately one of my pastors was a psychologist, and could diagnose him properly. But you’re gonna find very few pastors (even though they do a whole lot of counseling!) have had proper psychological training of any sort. In fact some of ’em claim psychology is devilish. And therefore people with psychological disorders are demoniac, and instead of meds they need an exorcism.

You’re gonna find a lot of dark Christians with this mindset. They insist evil spirits are absolutely everywhere. Everywhere. Pick a problem and there’s a demon behind it—a sinister intelligence using that problem to trick us into losing our salvation and going to hell. I’ve visited “deliverance ministries” which insist every temptation, no matter how minor, has a devil behind it. The leaders demonstrate how to cast out these devils, claiming everyone’s infested with at least one or two of ’em, like bedbugs in an old mattress. Christians included!—they claim we can’t be possessed by evil spirits (since we’re indwelt by the Holy Spirit), but the critters can certainly latch onto us like leeches, and tempt us whenever we’re weak.

Okay: If devils could infest absolutely everyone in this way, don’t you think they would? Our entire planet would be hopelessly demonized. But it’s not. It is full of selfish people, who’ll act more evil than Satan itself. But that’s way different than people puppeteered, or at least heavily steered, by evil spirits. Humans are plenty capable of inventing our own evil. Few of us need any devil’s help in being evil.

Let’s not go overboard when it comes to evil spirits. Nor underboard. Two things we need to bear in mind about evil spirits, as indicated in the scriptures:

• God made us humans able to resist and defeat them. The devil itself flees when resisted. Jm 4.7 So do its allies.
• They’re greatly outnumbered by God-following humans and spirits, and of course God can defeat them all by himself. So they’re only a threat when we’re ignorant of them, and dismiss what they’re up to.

This being the case, let’s not be ignorant of them!

Spirits.

SPIRIT 'spɪ.rɪt noun. A non-physical being; a supernatural being.

2. A person’s non-physical parts (such as emotions or character), which are considered a person’s true self, survives physical death, and possibly manifests as a ghost.

3. [capitalized] The Holy Spirit.

4. Qualities, characteristics, or emotions of a person or thing, which are considered their defining attributes, like “the spirit of the plan.”

5. Emotion or mood, usually positive, as in “This’ll lift your spirits.”

6. True intentions or attitude, as in “the spirit of the law, not the letter.”

7. Liquor or another volatile liquid.

8. [verb] Taken quickly and secretly.

The bible regularly refers to non-physical beings. We call ’em spirits. Our English word comes from the Latin spirare/“breathe,” and the Hebrew and Greek words for spirit ( ‏רוּחַ/ruákh, πνεῦμα/pnéfma) likewise literally mean “breath” or “wind”—in general, air molecules pushed by an outside force.

No, the bible’s authors didn’t call ’em breath and wind because they literally believed spirit is made of wind or air. (In fact if you look at various ancient and medieval sources, a lot of ’em thought spirit is made of fire.) They figured spirit is invisible, yet we can see how things are affected by it. You know, like wind.

Of course if we wanna get scientific, the simile falls apart. Wind is made of air, which is made of atoms, and therefore is matter. In a gaseous state, and we can freeze it till it’s in a solid state, ’cause it’s a material substance. Whereas spirit is not material. Not that we know what spirit’s made of; we just know it’s not matter. Nor energy.

Therefore we can’t measure spirit with machinery, no matter what certain paranormalists might claim. There’s no way to gauge them scientifically. Science can’t speak about spirits, and spiritual things, at all. Social scientists might talk about the effects of spirits—what people claim they’ve done—and certainly an individual scientist can give you their opinion about what spirits are and what they do. But those opinions aren’t gonna be based on science. They’ll be based on personal belief—either for it, or against.

And if you wanna know what spirit is made of, you won’t find answers in the bible either. The bible’s about God’s relationship with us, not biology. Nor spirit biology.

Thing is, we live in a scientific age. (Or we’d like to imagine we do.) If we can’t study it with science, plenty of people presume it doesn’t exist at all. Nontheists like to argue if spirits can’t be measured, quantified, examined, dissected… well, they’re not real. No more real than elves and sprites.

It may surprise you to know a lot of Christians think just the same: They don’t believe in spirits either. They might believe in God—and maybe the human spirit, if they hope to survive death—and maybe angels and devils. But they refuse to go any further than that. Sometimes they dismiss angels and devils too, like the Sadducees did. Like nontheists, they figure spirits are superstition, or the fakery of false religions.

But the bible refers to all sorts of spirits. Some appear to be good. Some benign, or they have duties which have nothing to do with us. Some are unclean, the sort Jesus threw out of people. Some are evil, like the devil.

If spirits exist in the bible, stands to reason they still exist. We may not be aware of them, nor can we detect them scientifically. We may find it irritating when certain individuals and other religions emphasize them so much, and not just ’cause we think those religions are wrong. But we need to understand what Christianity teaches about spirits, and stay consistent with the scriptures.

Angels.

I get asked about angels a lot. A lot. Probably too much. People have a great interest in ’em. Sometimes it’s unhealthy; namely when they’re far more interested in angelology than in Jesus.

But to a point it’s understandable. I mean, here are these spirit beings, and—from what we’ve been told about ’em—they’re around us all the time. People figure we have guardian angels, who are watching us constantly… and shaking their heads in disapproval every time we sin. Others imagine they have a shoulder angel, who’s constantly whispering correction in their ear (and no, that’s the Holy Spirit, and he’s not on your shoulder either).

Far too commonly, they think angels are dead people. Yep. Ghosts. Usually dead family members; usually beloved dead family members, ’cause they certainly don’t wanna imagine their creepy uncle has become an angel and can now watch ’em shower. Ghosts, but not ghosts; they’ve had an upgrade, and popular art imagines ’em with wings and halo and a bright nightgown, even though we usually figure yeah, they don’t really look like that. But we imagine they look down on us, approvingly or not; and come down to intervene from time to time.

Despite what the Mormons tell you, angels are not dead humans. They were never human. Whole different species. In fact, from the scriptures, there appear to be several species of angel. Medieval Catholics referred to these differences by the Latin word chorus, “character”—which evolved into their word choir, and left most westerners with the false idea angels are bunched into different singing groups. Kinda like the various a capella groups at an Ivy League school. But yeah, that’s why various music pastors insist angels are primarily interested in singing. No; that’s them projecting their favorite form of worship upon angels. Some angels sing. Some don’t.

Our word angel comes from the Greek >ἄγγελος/ánghelos, “agent” or “messenger.” It translates the Hebrew מַלְאָךְ/malákh, which also means “agent” or “messenger.” In the Old Testament, God uses both humans and spirits to share his messages. We tend to call the humans prophets, and we just assume all angels prophesy. ’Cause whenever they appear to us, that’s typically what they do.

There are angels in the bible, and because the bible’s about the LORD and his relationship with humans, it doesn’t go into any detail about what an angel is, how it works, how many eyes it has (for some of them, lots), how many wings it has (if any!), and what they do for fun. Because the bible’s not about angels. They exist, so they’re in there, but most of the “information” humanity has about angels comes from personal experience, if they’ve had any; or fiction. Arguably more Americans “know” about angels from the old TV shows Touched by an Angel or Supernatural than from scripture—and those shows, regardless of how much data they tried to pull from bible (and Supernatural didn’t even try), are fiction.

Ghosts: The human spirit.

Technically “ghost“ means the very same thing as “spirit.” It’s why “Holy Spirit” and “Holy Ghost” refer to the very same person.

But over the last century English-speakers have grown to think of “ghosts” as the spirits of the dead. Humans usually. Sometimes animals. Whereas “spirit” can refer to an incorporeal being of any sort. But it wasn’t so long ago the words were fully interchangeable—as y’might notice in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. The “ghosts” of Christmas Past, Christmas Present, and Christmas Yet to Come, were not dead humans; the ghost of Jacob Marley was, though.

So. Since everybody nowadays equates “ghost” with dead humans, in this article so do I.

Humans are part spirit. In our makeup, we have a spirit; a non-material, incorporeal part of ourselves. When we die, the soul ceases to exist, but this spirit continues on. When we get resurrected, it goes back into our new body, and we once again become a living soul. This spirit is what I mean when I say “ghost.”

Yeah, there are Christians who squirm at this word: “I’m a Christian. We don’t believe in ghosts.” Yeah we do. They’re in the bible.

John 19.30 KJV

When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost.

Seems Jesus had a ghost, and when he died it left his body. And when he appeared alive to his students the next week, he wanted it to be clear he wasn’t still a ghost.

Luke 24.36-43 KWL

36 As the students said this, Jesus stood in their midst and told them, “Peace to you.” 37 The students were freaked out and frightened, thinking they were seeing a ghost. 38 Jesus told the students, “Why are you agitated, and why do disputes arise in your minds? 39 See my hands and my feet!—for I am him. Touch me and see!—for a ghost doesn’t have a body and bones like you see I have.” 40 Saying this, Jesus showed the students his hands and feet. 41 Yet in the students’ joy and wonder they still distrusted him. Jesus told them, “Does anyone here have food?” 42 They gave Jesus a piece of roast fish, 43 and Jesus took and ate it before the students.

Ghosts, said Jesus, don‘t have a body. Don’t have bones. Don’t eat. He wasn’t just accommodating their myths; he’d just been dead, and knew what dead people are and aren’t, can and can’t do. Whereas Jesus can do what ghosts can’t, ’cause he’s alive.

Of course the ability to appear and disappear makes people wonder about Jesus. But Philip did that later in Acts, Ac 8.39 so it’s not wholly outside the realm of God-empowered ability. Getting resurrected didn’t necessarily grant Jesus superpowers. But that’s a pretty big digression, so let’s go back to ghosts.