Interested in the PaRaNoRmAl?? Part 3

So, we’ve come so far in our quest. Our quest, that is, to debunk the paranormal, the occult, or whatever else it may be. I’ll start with a real earth shaker in this part. My view, and it may seem narrow minded, is that all mystery outside of God, be it ghosts, UFOs, yetis, unfeasible monsters in strange places, mysteries that defy any rational explanation, and indeed anything that is weird and, well, paranormal, is illusion. Or delusion, if you like.

‘12 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.’  (Ephesians 6:12)

Now, in some senses, the dark world and spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms almost sounds exciting, interesting and mysterious even. But if God warns us about this struggle against unseen foes, there is a reason. He is not doing it for His benefit, He is very much doing it for our benefit. What I can say as well, is that occasionally I read atmospheric ghost stories, not really bloody or extremely scary horror, just things that fire up my imagination, in the same way that someone might read Lord of the Rings, or Sherlock Holmes, knowing it is merely well written fiction. I can also say that I am a thoughtful and enquiring person, in fact I was extremely precocious as a kid in that respect, quite bright and I read a lot, too. Not bragging here, it was just the way it was. I had a lot of curiosity, in fact I still do. Now, I’m curious about nature, the universe, life, the nature of being and many many other things, but most of all I am curious about God. He created everything, so He has all the answers. He may not see fit to tell me everything I want to know, but when He reveals something to me, whether it is about the situation I might be going through, whether it is about human nature, just about me or just something in general, I know it is truth, plain and simple, or sometimes an amazing truth I could not have anticipated in a million years without His guidance.

So, I went, quite slowly and over some time, from being interested in the paranormal and wanting to mine the depths of all these mysterious, but ultimately unsatisfying and empty experiences, to turning my full focus and attention on to God. I ditched the interest in the paranormal many years ago. It was a good thing that I did. I have heard too many weird stories about all kinds of mystical experiences, and read many stories too, that just made me feel cold. I admit, I am biased, I am a Christian and I wish to serve God and seek His will and Him now before any other thing. I see this as being tribal, like many things. If you support a football team, you support them and want them to win and play well all the time. I’m on God’s team, He picked me, and I am going to spend the rest of my life playing as good as I can for Him. Above and beyond the football analogy, God is all about love, true relationships of all kind between all kinds of human beings, and there is nothing in Him that is false, or empty or weird. Oh, there’s plenty of mystery with God, a universe load in fact, but as He reveals His nature and who He is to us, we move towards truth and the true nature of who we are and to our true destiny, and not in to more empty mysteries that lead down rabbit holes of delusion.

 

If you are caught up in the paranormal, the occult, or something supernatural outside of God and His Kingdom, then however new you are to it or even if you have gone very far into it, get out. There is a way out. Get on your knees and start to pray to Jesus, the man who literally came down to earth to be a close and intimate friend, a mate in the British sense, to all who call on Him and will walk with Him. God will fulfil all your yearnings to understand the things you can’t understand, and as with me, He will surprise you with things you wouldn’t have dreamed of.

 

I now see the paranormal in this simple way: It’s like peeling an onion, very carefully and very precisely and very delicately, expecting to find something underneath your first perception of its mystery, or UFOs, ghosts, whatever, only to find another skin underneath which needs similar time and effort to peel. At the end, when the onion is peeled, there is nothing left but air and the sense that all that effort has been wasted and all you’re left with is a vain attempt to grasp air. Very frustrating and a complete waste of time, in essence.

 

There is truth in God. There is only unfulfilled mystery and delusion in the paranormal. I know, I’ve been there. I experienced enough of it to know it is empty. I’ve experienced enough of God to know He has set me on a straight course and is saving me for better things. I seek God and I find Him every day. I have no time or inclination to follow delusion anymore. Through Jesus, I know and I am known.

‘21 Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, "This is the way; walk in it." 22 Then you will defile your idols overlaid with silver and your images covered with gold; you will throw them away like a menstrual cloth and say to them, "Away with you!"’  (Isaiah 30:21-22)

Interested in the PaRaNoRmAl?? Part 2

I can remember way back in my late teens and possibly through to my mid 20s staying awake throughout the night reading stories about ghostly encounters in Britain’s very colourful past. I enjoyed it, to be honest. Some of the stories were very atmospheric, whilst others were quite scary and yet others were more like local legends, many quite interesting. I filled my head with a lot of these stories, fairly harmless as they went. But with this, I kind of developed a superficial interest in demonology too, and tarot cards and really was not living as a Christian at all. I wasn’t practising anything too weird, just reading stuff and messing about with the tarot cards without really knowing anything about them. Perhaps I let something in I didn’t want, but who can really say? I have suffered depression, mood swings, social awkwardness, bizarre dreams, chronic fatigue, bad relationships, bad friendships, heavy drinking and the pursuit of a futile lifestyle that brought me nothing but pain, emptiness and ephemeral friendships and relationships. I had turned my back on God, quite simply. The journey back to God is and has been slow and painful, but slow progress is better than no progress. I am progressing. That is something. As far as East is from West God puts our sins. I see sin as going in one direction, and heading towards God going in the other. If we put God first in our lives, we have less and less time for sin and even the contemplation of sin. I wish to explore the mystery and wonder of God and not the dubious mysteries and wanderings of the paranormal.

 

There is in all people, or most people, a sense of dissatisfaction in their lives. It may not be overwhelming, but it is there. It can come out in many ways I suppose. Boredom, a search for adventure, drinking alcohol, taking illegal drugs of some kind, wanting to do something exciting. It can sometimes be a negative quest or sometimes even a positive quest. But many of us embark on some search for something more, or something that will make our lives make more sense. We read books, we might search through religions, we might ask clever or learned people deep questions, but even then something might gnaw away at us. This is how I was during my early and later teens. For other people it may start later, for some much later. We experience things we can’t comprehend, we may ask why this person died and why someone else lived, we may just start to want to make sense of it all, because quite frankly a lot in the world just doesn’t seem to make sense and on top of all this, when we start to look back at our own lives, we try to make sense of it, and wonder if there was any sense to it or whether it was just a collection of random events. Looking back on our own history we might then start looking back on history in general. Maybe even the origins of humankind and the universe and everything. I am very interested in the study of human origins, and although of course I read the Bible to try and glean history from Genesis, I also like to read (hopefully) unbiased scientific accounts of the first civilisations and how those first cities and urban centres started to develop, and how and why they developed.

 

The paranormal can seem to fulfil our desire to look into what appear to be fathomless things, and to interest ourselves not only in understanding who we are and where we come from, but also spiritual mysteries, and mysteries of all kinds that seem lost in the mists of time. Some of those mysteries are ones that have been mulled over for centuries like Atlantis, and the mystery of the Sphinx and many other things that may be more local or even more universal. But we want answers, and we go looking for them.

 

My interests encompassed particularly ghosts, UFOs, strange tales from England’s and Britain’s past, mysterious occurrences of all kinds and many other things that could be said to be filed under mysterious or unexplained and then I suppose the paranormal. I would also say that the terms occult and paranormal are synonymous and actually mean the same thing. I think occult sounds vaguely sinister, whereas paranormal almost sounds respectable. But I actually wish to debunk that. It isn’t even that we shouldn’t speculate on mysteries and things we can’t really understand or comprehend, it’s that we shouldn’t seek out the wrong sources to find answers. That’s the crux of the matter for me. If you were thirsty, would you rather drink from a fresh clear running stream from the mountains, or a stagnant dirty little pool that looked, and smelt, like something had died in it? To me, that’s the difference between looking for answers from God, and trying to find answers in the paranormal, which often doesn’t make sense when looked at straight on. I’m someone, who at least in this case, knows what I am talking about.

 

The more I sought answers in the paranormal, or the more interested I became in the whole shebang, the more it confused me. It seemed contradictory, and a lot of it, particularly the very deep, philosophical and intellectual stuff that seemed to answer something deep within me, at the same time made me feel empty or even more confused than I was before.

‘19 Everyone has heard about your obedience, so I am full of joy over you; but I want you to be wise about what is good, and innocent about what is evil.’  (Romans 16:19)

Interested in the PaRaNoRmAl?? Part 1

I was very interested in mysteries at one time. I think it was because I was earnestly looking for answers to deep questions I had. That’s probably it really. I was just earnestly looking for answers that made sense to the many questions I had and the mysteries that seemed all around and everywhere, but somehow always just out of reach. Recently, I have started developing an academic interest in the paranormal again, not in an unhealthy way but just by reading about it online and from a book in a Christian cafe I go to in my hometown.

When I was a kid, and had just become a teenager I knew that God existed, and I started praying to Him and walking with Him. Side by side this, I was also very interested in witches, but not necessarily practising witchcraft, ghosts, UFOs, yetis and all those other kind of mysteries that in many ways always seem to be at the edge of our human consciousness, our human reality and also often in geographically distant and even romantic places like Everest or the vastness of the American wilderness or some castle ruin in the midst of Wales somewhere, or strange lights in the sky when someone is fishing on a lonely lake at night, and so on. These obviously stoke many people’s imaginations and sense of romance and mystery, and they certainly stoked mine. That in itself isn’t just a deep interest in mysteries and the paranormal, it’s also an interest in places off the beaten track and unpopulated places of beauty that many people are interested in. But it does seem to be that ghosts, UFOs, strange beasts and the like always appear in lonely places to a few people or to some lone individual here and there. I’ve heard so many stories of strange encounters that deeply interested me, fascinated me and some of them even scared me and made me feel a little shiver down my spine. I’ve even seen a ghost, and fairly recently experienced some kind of poltergeist activity in my house which wasn’t very nice at all. Not sure what that was all about but I can say with certainty that there is a paranormal realm. Only thing is now I don’t have a big interest in it, only in the context of writing about it in regards to my Christian faith and walk with God.

I have at many times in my life struggled with very strange dreams, and recently have had quite disturbing ones. Not so much horrific, just dreams that have unsettled me. I have also had a lot of very deep dreams and dreams that have made me question reality, but not in a really healthy way at all. I can say that I feel many of these dreams are delusion and obviously have no basis in any kind of reality. I suppose this is why I dismiss them. If a dream was from God, I would know it. But these dreams are definitely not from God. There is no confusion from God, and no weirdness or nastiness either. I see no reason why God would send me weird dreams about UFOs, being in my house and fearing being watched and dreams about my dad who died over ten years ago arguing with me in an extreme fashion. They are most certainly not from God, because they either upset me, stress me out or confuse me, or a mixture of all the above. God does not sow dissension. I have also suffered with physical and mental illness for many years. A friend of mine in my church suggested that it may have been my messing around with tarot cards that let something in that could be affecting me spiritually and emotionally and physically. Sounds weird? It does. But is it possible, even probable? Possibly.

Recently I have started to make friends with a number of very nice Christians in a cafe I go to. One of the people who works there has told me her testimony, and has repeated it again for other people when asked. She spoke about how her mother was heavily into tarot cards, and the strange things that went on in her house that seemed normal to her when she was a kid, including objects moving by themselves in the house and seeing apparitions of children running around the house, and other weird things. She was also into a lot of new age beliefs, too, and very anti Christian. Then, to cut a long story short, she felt Jesus was talking to her, not a voice but something inside. And her conversion was that quick and that simple. She never looked back.

But there is, I have to stress, a very serious message here. As I could tell you myself, and as many people who to whatever degree have had brushes, dalliances or have even been completely immersed in the Paranormal, or as it could also be called the Occult, there is something sinister about it all. It can be very subtle, twisting its way around you seductively and enticingly, or it can be very ‘in yer face’ and overwhelming and frightening. It can also be interesting and mysterious, as well as plausible and matter of fact. Some people see it as a load of old nonsense, and many others see it as something to be studied earnestly and with scientific methods and often great seriousness. Witness how so many people and scientific expeditions go to Loch Ness to find Nessie! To me, it stands to reason that if the Loch Ness Monster, or Nessie as she is often called, was a dinosaur, there are so many reasons why it can’t be there, but does that stop well funded scientific groups going there? No, not really. Good for the tourism, though. But, I came to the conclusion that such quests often involved people ultimately chasing their own tail, and not a great deal more. The Paranormal seems to be like delicately and intricately peeling a large onion, only to find another skin underneath.