In our families of origin, not only do each of us inherit a theological tradition (or lack thereof, which is of course its own kind of metaphysical tradition), but we also inherit specific familial narratives about those who have “passed on”- that inform, to one degree or another, our understanding of ultimate things. And while some families, especially in the West, might go through life doing their very darndest not to discuss - or even to interact with - the issue of death (which is a loosing battle it seems, if ever there was one!), most of us, I expect, have various “supernatural” stories roaming about the living rooms (or perhaps the attics?) of our family consciousness.

Tom Wright, Anglican Bishop of Durham, England and popular theolog regularly championed by the emerging church movement, recently chose the topic of these familial stories of life and death- and life after death, to touch on the Christian understanding of resurrection. Wright begins the discussion by writing,

All cultures, ancient as well as modern, have been more or less familiar with the fact (as I take it to be -- lots of empirical and cross-cultural evidence) that people we love who have died (sometimes when we don't even know yet that they have died) can and do appear to us.

C.S. Lewis, famously, appeared like that to J.B. Phillips. I have a friend whose daughter was murdered, and her fiancé a thousand miles away received a totally unexpected 'visit' from her before he'd heard the news. And so on.

In this piece titled, Whispers of Hope from the Dead, published in the Washington Post, Wright clarifies what he sees as the New Testament perspective:

Yes, of course I (too) believe in life after death, but the New Testament is much more interested in life AFTER 'life after death' -- i.e. bodily resurrection following a period of being bodily dead. For that to happen, as all C1 Jews and Christians knew, meant that between bodily death and bodily resurrection there would be a period of 'life after death' in a disembodied state, for which e.g. Wisdom 3 uses the language of 'soul'. John Polkinghorne, that great scientist-turned-theologian, says somewhere that God will download our software onto his hardware until he gives us new hardware to run the software again for ourselves.

Ironically, there are plenty of Christians, many of them evangelicals, who still seem to think that life after death means life in Heaven in some permanently disembodied state. Wright, who’s exhaustive and excellent, The Resurrection of the Son of God, is perhaps the encyclical on the topic, reminds us that the message of the NT is actually that God is going to ultimately regenerate the present world, universe, etc. And within this cosmic regeneration comes our own bodily resurrections. Yes, we get our old bodies back - after a defined period of “disembodiedness” - with some impressive improvements. Look at Jesus’ bodily capabilities post-resurrection to get a glimpse of what I’m talking about.

Speaking of life after death, not only do many evangelicals effectively miss the boat (pun intended!) on life after death, but they also often hold that “there is no such thing as ghosts”. The reason probably being a hyper Platonic, dualistic sense that there is life in this world, and life in the next, with no blending or interaction happening between the two. I don’t know about you, but in my early years as an evangelical I was told that ghost encounters were nothing more (or less) than demonic manifestations- no matter how apparently pleasant or begin they seemed.

Not only is this perspective on “ghosts” not really biblical-derived, but neither does it jive with many of these familial narratives we all inherit. If there is no interaction going on between these two spheres (life and the hereafter), then what are we to do with all these anecdotal life-after-death stories? Surely they’re not all hallucinations and fabrications, are they?

In my own family background we have some of these stories populating our shared consciousness. My father once told me, rather matter-of-factly, that once when he was a boy his grandmother appeared to him in his bedroom one evening to tell him that “everything was going to be alright”- or something similar. The very next day my Dad learned that his grandmother had “passed on” sometime the previous day. Her passing happened before she had appeared to my Dad, but clearly before he was aware of this fact. My grandmother was a key figure in my Dad’s life. And her telling him that it was going to be okay was probably paramount to him being capable of handling challenging events that came around in subsequent years.

Ever since that time my Dad, who is in other ways not a particularly “spiritual” person, has lived with this root understanding that this life is not all there is. After such an experience, life after death simply seems “common-sensical” to him. And you have to know that My Dad is certainly not one to fabricate, or even to embellish such a story. It just goes against who he is- at a core level.

I don’t think we can underestimate how powerful such anecdotal stories are. Not that they always work in one direction. I also have a grandfather (on my mother’s side) who is an avowed atheist. But that too is determined largely by anecdotal experience. As far as I know he didn’t have one of these ghostly experiences. But he did have a daughter (my Aunt) who was born with a severe heart defect. That was enough evidence (for him) to “prove” the non-existence of God.

By the way, as an aside, my Aunt is still living a strong and healthy life in her fifties. And this in itself defies the predictions that were offered my Grandpa when she was born. Not that this has done anything to affect my Grandpa’s understanding. Ah, what can you say- he is a stubborn man. These anecdotal experiences are significant, but the hard-hearted can still be left unswayed, as Jesus himself attested to: "'If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.' " --(Luke 16:31)

But getting back to the issue of “ghost encounters”, it’s obvious that these familial inheritances, while not the “be all, end all” of paradigm-formation, are extremely significant. And not only because they are “so close to home”, but also because they come from sources that are trusted and true. And in a world of perpetual-information-spin, this proves more valuable than ever- perhaps often essential.

In emergent/emerging circles we often talk about how important it is to establish character credibility with our non-Christian friends and colleagues, prior to bringing up issues of faith; especially when we’re talking about abstract representations of ultimate truth. But we would do well to remember that this is a postmodern world that, while (understandably) tired and suspicious of religion, is fascinated, intrigued, even intoxicated by “spirituality”. In other words, this is not your father’s culture of evangelism. Open doors exist. And in such an ethos we must remember that our spiritual experiences often prove much more trustworthy than, what our non-Christian friends probably perceive as, our religiously affiliated doctrine statements. I think Tom Wright gets it. That’s why he wrote his piece to begin with. I think we should follow his lead and do likewise.