3 minute read
Shortly before dying of ALS my dad had a vision/dream of his father. Grandpa comforted him by saying it won’t be long now and everyone was awaiting their reunion. It brought needed peace. Shortly thereafter their pastor came by. He heard the story, dismissed the possibility of it being a genuine supernatural experience, and chalked it up to oxygen deprivation. While I’m not saying I believe grandpa’s spirit pierced the veil of the physical world to help his son, I’m also not saying it didn’t happen. Who knows? To my mind, it’s within the realm of reasonable possibility.1
I live in an unresolvable tension. On the one hand, my natural disposition toward critical thinking combined with a childhood surrounded by the excesses of Pentecostalism has made me inclined toward deep skepticism about claims of paranormal experiences. My instinct is to immediately look for alternative explanations or motivations. On the other hand, the Enlightenment’s purely naturalistic explanations don’t seem to adequately account for the strangeness of this world. Also, I value curiosity and don’t ever want to be the sorta guy who dismissively says, “It can’t happen.”
It still seems surreal, but there’s now an irrefutable body of empirical evidence for extraordinary experiences that sound like they’re straight out of the Fringe.2 One example is adults who survived near-death experiences and possess knowledge that would be impossible to have without their reported experience of a Dr. Strange astral form-type consciousness existing outside of their corporeal bodies.3 The implications of that hurt my brain. Whatever is going on, it leads me to believe the cosmos are a helluva lot weirder than a Western public education tends to imagine.
Of course, this may be unsurprising to more supernaturally-inclined Christians who’ve always denied a materialist understanding of reality and proclaimed the existence of angels and demons, resurrection, miracles, prophecy, and an afterlife. But even they shouldn’t get too comfortable. Much of this research doesn’t neatly fit within classically Christian doctrine such as the extensive documentation about small children with historically accurate memories from an apparent past life.4 Have fun squaring your Western soteriology with the prospect of Eastern reincarnation.
The original beatniks were open to all sorts of religious beliefs and magic, so nothing from their legacy presents a challenge for the “beatnik” side. It’s the “Christianity” side that would need some sorting out. Could there be things like apparitions with the bizarre incident in 1 Samuel 28? If so, maybe it’s something like Celtic thin places or perhaps it’s related to biblical portrayals of angels and demons.5 I have no idea. For now the refrain I’m gonna keep repeating is, “I’m not saying I believe in any of it. All I’m saying is I don’t know, but it’s within the realm of possibility.”6
Author
The world is a really weird place.↩
Check out the paranormal phenomena archives at the University of Virginia’s Division of Perceptual Studies.↩
Check out Bruce Greyson’s book After: A Doctor Explores What Near-Death Experiences Reveal About Life and Beyond.↩
Check out Jim Tucker’s book, Return to life: Extraordinary Cases of Children Who Remember Past Lives.↩
If we’re going down this rabbit hole, couldn’t it also be a weird space-time thing like how Matthew McConaughey’s character communicated with his daughter in Interstellar? Maybe it only seems spiritual or supernatural because our scientific understanding hasn’t advanced that far yet.↩
Three final thoughts. First, I’ve suspended all dogmatism about what happens after death. Second, I’m perfectly comfortable with the prospect that classical Christian doctrine doesn’t have all the answers and doesn’t provide an adequate framework for everything weird out there. Third, Dale C. Allison, Jr.’s book, Encountering Mystery: Religious Experience in a Secular Age, is also worth a read.↩
