“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”
- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

These were the words of a Jesuit who was one of the original connecting forces between the Catholic Church and the Theory of Evolution. But now these words are spewed by yogis and New Age gurus, Christian Spiritualists -- and basically, it is the foundation for the first lie ever told (at least in a Biblical sense). God told Adam and Eve that if they ate from the fruit of one restricted tree in the Garden of Eden, that they would die. They would be subject to death. In short, they would not be immortal.

The serpent came back with the knowledgeable answer: "Ye shall not surely die." Why shouldn't you cry, because you won't die! And why won't you die?

Because you are a spiritual being having a physical experience.

Why I even bring this up is because a guy who seriously considers himself to be a Christian, actually said this to me. He told me his pastor said it in a sermon, that we think we are physical beings having a spiritual experience, but in reality we are spiritual beings having a physical experience. The "reality" of us is a spirit, a ghost, a wisp of vapor, and we are tucked into a fleshpot, a body, a human being.

The concept is another spin on "immortal soul" or "eternal soul," that God took this being with thoughts and ideas and a life all on its own, and stuffed it down into a puppet (someone like you or me). The puppet then goes on to live a "physical life," part of its eternal journey (and in pop New Age culture, as well as an emerging New Age Christian culture, the puppet often catches flashes from its preexisting life "in heaven" and often produces spiritual insights that puppets don't usually produce. Pop goes the puppet.)

He, my friend, said: "You agree, don't you?"

I immediately returned: "No, I don't agree."

I then related to him that in the Garden of Eden God breathed on the clay and it was at that moment that Adam became alive -- the Bible says that he "became a living soul." The Bible never said: "You just got a soul" or that "there is a soul ball bouncing around in you."

You ARE a soul. You don't have a soul. God breathed (spirit) on the earth (body) and man became a soul.

My friend then produced the typical "Christian" reaction: "Huh? What's that supposed to mean? That's in the Bible?"

The tricky thing is, you can't KNOW the Bible unless you have READ the Bible (but modern Spiritualistic Christians hear so much ABOUT the Bible that they feel they KNOW the Bible, much in the same way that they hear so much about God that they feel they know Him, whereas just as with the Bible, you don't know God until you have truly met Him).

What is the difference between Spiritualism, and Modern Christianity? The truth is, not a very big difference, not such a very much.

There is a Biblical explanation for SOUL, just as there is for DEATH, and "Christians" just try to wing it, they try to fake it, that they know what the Bible says, what it teaches, but sadly, they have only been told what the Bible says, and just the fact that a "good pastor" would claim that we are "spirit beings having a physical experience" sadly proves that what "Christianity" considers to be a "good pastor" is very much akin to the sheep gathering about that odd sheep, the one with a wolf's head poking out of all that lumpy wool, and calling him a "good shepherd." The same sad result is in progress.

when papa was a little boy

www.DouglasChristianLarsen.com