Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Life's Toughest Questions: Is Faith in God Nonsense?

Here is something else I cut from this Sunday, that I think a few of you may find interesting. In the Matthew 12 passage starting in verse 43, Jesus talks about an evil spirit leaving a man and then coming back with seven other wicked spirits and leaving the man worse than he was before. This is the battle we all fight, and in a real way, this is the journey of the human spirit. We are spiritually permeable and this spiritual reality is real even thought we cannot perceive it with our senses.

Here is the passage:
When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, 'I will return to the house I left.' When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that man is worse than the first. That is how it will be with this wicked generation.

I left out this observation: I think this could be a biblical explanation of the view of reincarnation. There are people who have memories of past lives, and I believe they are real memories. The issue to me is who these memories belong to. I do not believe that people die and then come back as another creature, neither animal or human. You remain uniquely you in eternity and you live ONE life here on earth on this side of eternity.

How then do we explain memories of past lives? Well, it is not that these people have lived in a different time or place, but that these spirits have. These spirits carry with them the memory of history, of ancients and moderns.

We are spirit, this reality is inescapable. Could it be that our universe is more complex than we ever imagined? Is there more going on than we can see or sense?

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