The living and the dead

Contacting the dead—entertaining game, dangerous deception or forbidden magic? With his Bible open and his TV tuned to John Edward, Peter Bolt explores the abiding human interest in hearing from those who have ‘crossed over’. His conclusions may surprise you ...

The John Edward phenomenon is gaining momentum. His television show Crossing Over is a regular on cable and has caught the interest of the networks. As an indicator of his rising popularity, apparently Time will soon feature this modern day medium who receives messages from the dead on behalf of the living who happen to turn up in his audience. Although angels and demons always have been part of our repertoire, Christians haven't always been believers when it comes to departed spirits (ghosts). From at least the time of John Chrysostom (fourth century AD), ghosts have been declared to be a deception of the devil. Because the devil is the “father of lies” (Jn 8:44), Christians find it easy to agree with the various exposés of Edward. Official skeptic, M. Shermer (21.2.03, http://www.skeptic.com), identifies in Edward's consummate performance some of the tricks of modern entertainment. Beginning with ‘cold reading’—which, according to Shermer, he is not very good at—Edwards fires questions at his audience at an alarming rate (on one count, 23 in about 45 seconds). Only the ‘hits’ are noticed. He moves to ‘warm’ then ‘hot’ readings of his subject— which is really them ‘reading’ themselves as they fill in the blanks of a fairly vague suggestion (“I am getting a ‘b’ or ‘d’”; “My uncle's name was Bob”). Or he might operate on fairly well known generalisations, or phenomena associated with grieving people (“Do you have a piece of their jewellery, or something?”). In my own limited viewing of Crossing Over, Edward was impressive. If he was guessing, he did it pretty well. Several times he had an impression that he kept on pressing on the person being ‘read’, despite their initial protests, and, eventually they discovered something that really did fit with the spirit's message to them. But I only watched the televised version. Shermer also claims that ‘tampering’ takes place during the editing process and that there is about two hours in the studio under microphones, which gives plenty of time for Edward's helpers to gather useful intelligence, Steve Martin Leap of Faith-style. Apparently, probing journalists suspect Edward is avoiding them and no independent filming is allowed during the sessions. If this is fraud, then, as Shermer points out, it is fraud of the worst kind for it preys upon a most vulnerable part of people's lives. If fraud and deception are involved, it is most certainly an evil that should be exposed, spoken against, and stamped out. With their commitment to truth, Christians should certainly join forces with the skeptics in this endeavour. However, we should also pause for just a little longer before we rush out to campaign against the next Edward roadshow coming soon to a town near you. For we should ask, just how skeptical should we be?

What do we make of ghosts?

It seems strange to me that Christians readily believe in angels and demons, because they are in the Bible, and yet don't apply the same logic when it comes to ghosts. Why can't the living make contact with the dead? What about the story of King Saul who consulted (the dead) Samuel through the mediumship of the witch at Endor (1 Sam 28)? Sure, Chrysostom and his boys tried to say that this was simply an apparition conjured up by the devil—not really Samuel at all—but that does not seem to be the simplest reading of the text. Doesn't it sound exactly like the living consulting the dead? Doesn't it sound like Crossing Over without the cameras? Necromancy, that is, seeking to find out information by consulting the dead, was a feature of all ancient societies. There were even elaborate buildings constructed to facilitate this practice—nekromanteia. Yes, some of the practices could have been fraudulent, deliberately designed to deceive the client, but apparently most of the time necromancy was carried on ‘in good faith’ with the air of respectability that comes from being a mainstream activity. The Bible was well aware of such practices, for they were a part of the cultures amongst which Israel had to dwell (Deut 18:9-14). The Law forbade the Israelites from engaging in necromancy (Lev 19:31; 20:6, 27; Deut 18.9-14). It was one of Saul's more commendable actions that he attempted to remove the influence of the mediums from the land (1 Sam 28:9)—a pity about his own personal lapse later on, when it was a bit tricky to find a medium with her shingle still out! Consulting mediums was a sign of no positive leadership (cf. Zech 10:2), for the leaders, like Saul, should know the proper place to turn. Israel had no need to “consult the ghosts and the familiar spirits that chirp and mutter, the dead on behalf of the living” (Isa 8:19). God had given Israel something far better: “should not a people consult their God?” When necromancy was forbidden, immediately Moses spoke of the proper alternative: “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own brothers. You must listen to him.” (Deut 18:15).

The rise of Spiritualism

Recognizing that the ‘prophet-like-Moses’ has now come in the person of Jesus Christ, the early Christians were absolutely right to continue the Old Testament prohibitions. By the middle ages, necromancy had all but died out in the West and it was not until the nineteenth century that the newspapers reported that the dead were once again being contacted by the living. Modern necromancy began on 31 March 1848, when three teenage sisters Leah, Kate and Margaretta Fox claimed to have discovered an intelligent force behind a poltergeist troubling their family. Over time the girls were hailed as mediums. By 1852 the words ‘spiritualist’ and ‘spiritualism’ were in common use. At its height, Spiritualism had about 10 million followers, including the creator of Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle. More recently it has mutated into such things as ‘channelling’, advocated most famously by actress Shirley McLaine. Crossing Over seems to be the latest manifestation. Spiritualism was different to ancient necromancy in a number of ways, not the least of which was its gradual tendency towards the public and the showy. But whether necromancy is ancient or modern, performed in isolation or televised; whether for the desperate in search of answers, or for the bored in search of a new form of entertainment, Christians should be quite clearly against it. We should certainly be against any form of fraudulent activity, especially when people are preyed upon at a moment of great weakness. But even if John Edward is acting without guile, we must nevertheless be opposed. But not because it is impossible to contact the dead. Our Bible says that this is entirely possible—it is just forbidden. It is forbidden, because we have something far better. “Should not a people consult their God”? The alternative to necromancy is the prophet like Moses, who now has a name: Jesus Christ.

The failed Western project

What does Crossing Over show us about our society? Perhaps it suggests that materialism's denial of an afterlife has not prevailed. The desire to ‘unite’ families ‘here’ and ‘over there’ shows perhaps that Western individualism has not prevailed, and people are mourning over lost relationships—albeit it too late. But Crossing Over is part of a whole cluster of indicators that, at this present moment, Westerners are increasingly fascinated by the next realm. It is interesting to notice that, after interest in the afterlife had flourished in the High Middle Ages, it went into decline (hell in the seventeenth century and heaven in the eighteenth). But then, for a brief moment, Spiritualists managed to reinstate interest in the afterlife—at least an afterlife without the torments of hell or the notion of praising God in heaven. Isn't the rising profile of Crossing Over an indicator that people are once again hankering after the afterlife? Sounds like our viewers need some good news. They need to hear of the greatest ‘crossing over’: when God became flesh; when a man came back from the dead. Sounds like they need to hear that, because of Christ, we, too, can cross over—from death to eternal life (Jn 5:24). That's when the dead really begin living.

Further reading

Peter Bolt, “Jesus, the Daimons, and the Dead” in Anthony Lane (ed), The Unseen World: Christian Reflections on Angels, Demons and the Heavenly Realm, Tyndale House Studies, Baker, 1997.