Have We Ghosted the Holy Spirit?

Why don’t Christians talk about the Holy Spirit more often? Have we quietly replaced dependence on God’s Spirit with confidence in our own smarts and systems? What starts as a kid’s Halloween question about the “Holy Ghost” quickly turns into a bigger conversation about why the church is so divided, whether we’d even notice if the Spirit disappeared from our theology, and how we might learn to let God surprise us again. After all, the Holy Ghost isn’t here to haunt us, but to make us alive.

0:00 - Theme Song

0:19 - Sponsor - Dwell - Listen to scripture throughout your day. Go to https://www.dwellbible.com/CK for 25% off!

3:03 - Is the Holy Ghost Real?

6:33 - What Even is the Holy Ghost?

11:18 - How the Holy Ghost Helps Us

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18:18 - Sponsor - Hello! My Name is Emmanuel - A Heartwarming children's book about a Haitian child learning to trust God by Emmanuel Jean Russell  https://a.co/d/8fPoRCL

19:15 - But why a "ghost?"

26:30 - What's the Takeaway?

33:21 - End Credits

Clip Transcript: Have We Ghosted the Holy Spirit?

Mike: I am convicted of, like, oh, if I took the Spirit out of my theology of the Trinity, would it actually make much of a difference in my day-to-day Christian life? I'm not sure that it would. That’s probably a problem. Any thoughts on that?

Kaitlyn: Yeah, I mean, this goes back to something that we talked about a few episodes ago. We are too capable now. Or we’re convinced we’re really capable—our illusion of power and control. And not just our particular power and control, but Christianity’s general dominance puts us in a position where we don’t really feel like we need to be dependent on the Holy Spirit. Even going back to what I said before about the Bible versus the Spirit—sometimes I think the people who think that we’re “Bible people” and not “Holy Spirit people” tend to be people who want things to be mastered and controlled. The text is something that I can learn: the Greek and Hebrew, the theology—I can master that. But the Holy Spirit feels unwieldy and unpredictable. And I think for those of us who grew up in a tradition that was a little more hesitant about the Spirit, this language about “Holy Ghost” actually could be really helpfully provocative.

I think this is such a good example of a kid question that initially sounds really silly. Like, “Okay, easy answer here, Kaitlyn—it’s not Holy Ghost, it’s Holy Spirit.” It seems like just a funny etymology question that’s not really important. But actually, I think it can be deeply theologically significant. These older English Bibles use the term “Holy Ghost” because it’s a word that means breath, spirit, vitality. And maybe we need to hear “Holy Ghost” to kind of provoke us into realizing the really amazing gift that the Holy Spirit is to us—that in our discomfort, we’ve missed out entirely. We’ve missed the gift of the Holy Spirit.

If we believe what Jesus said is true—that it is better for him to go away because we are being sent the Holy Spirit—maybe we need to return to what that gift actually is to us. If it’s so great and we’re not experiencing it as great, maybe we’re not really fully experiencing it. Maybe we’ve become so accustomed to the idea that the Holy Spirit is given to us—to dwell in us, to enliven us, to convict and comfort us—that we forget that that’s actually really amazing. Jesus was ascended to be at the right hand of the Father in order to give us a presence of God so intimately with us that we have God close enough to say, “Actually, that thing right in front of you? Don’t do that.” Or, “See that person right in front of you? Love and serve them.”

We get caught up, as we said before, in all these really important but sometimes convoluted questions about how to interpret Scripture, and we miss the fact that the real challenging question in front of us is not just, “How do you interpret this one verse in Romans?” but, “How do you live right now with the people in front of you, with the needs around you?” And the answer to that is not always a hermeneutical question. Sometimes it is, but for the most part it’s going to be: Are you relying upon the Holy Spirit to guide you, to convict you, to direct you? Are you dependent enough upon the Holy Spirit that you’re willing to be convicted—that you’re willing to say, “The path I’ve set out for my life might get totally disrupted,” like a ghost that pops in unannounced and is kind of spooky and scary?

Are we willing to say, “I’m living my life in enough dependence upon the Holy Spirit that I might have a five-year plan or a ten-year plan that gets totally disrupted because I am convicted, comforted, or directed to serve my neighbors in ways that I didn’t anticipate”? And I think maybe the language of “Holy Ghost” can help us realize that we’ve disregarded the Holy Spirit, and also that we might need to not only be more dependent upon the Spirit but willing to be surprised by God—willing to be convicted in ways that are not the ways we’ve planned out in advance.

Mike: Oh my gosh. So helpful. Thank you. And I’m so glad that on this week of Halloween—when I’m seeing all of these decorations for ghosts—that we were able to get to this question.

Kaitlyn: Yeah.

Mike: And it is funny, because when I think about ghosts, I kind of think about death and scary, spooky things.

Kaitlyn: Yeah.

Mike: I don’t know—anything as we wrap up today? Any final thoughts for us?

Kaitlyn: Yeah. Well, it’s funny—I was trying to think of comparisons between the Holy Spirit and ghosts, and one of them was along the lines of what you just said: ghosts surprise us; the Holy Spirit should surprise us. Ghosts pop out of nowhere, and the Holy Spirit kind of pops in out of nowhere. But then I was thinking along the lines of what you were saying as well: we see ghosts—even the fun ghosts, like not the totally spooky, creepy ones but the fun Casper-type ghosts—as a way for us to think about death. They’re supposed to be people who have died who come back—friendly or unfriendly—and we’re reminded of our mortality.

One of the things I love about Halloween—hot take from a Christian—is that we get to think about evil and injustice, and we’re also faced with our mortality. But this is where the ghosts we encounter at Halloween are so counter to the Holy Ghost—the Holy Spirit that indwells us. Whereas ghosts make us think about death, the Holy Ghost gives us life. And not just the life that the Spirit gives in Genesis to all creation—all living creatures, human and non-human—but a gift that’s greater than that. It’s not just life that gets you to move and eat and interact with people; it’s abundant, full life. And I think this connects to when Jesus says, “It is better for me to go away because I will send the Spirit.” Jesus talked about wanting us to have life to the full, abundant life. And the gift that Jesus gives us when he ascends to the Father is the Spirit that gives us access to that kind of abundant life here and now.

We are still waiting—we’re waiting for Christ’s return to make all things new in this creation. And yet one of the gifts that is supposed to be our great witness to the world is that we can face death—we can face the ghosts and ghouls around Halloween—because the Holy Spirit gives us not just life, but life abundant: the kind of life that can face death and suffering with joy because we know that’s not the end of the story.