It Is Our Bodies Which Are Tenuous and Ghost-Like, Not God!
I'll preface this post by saying that this is not something I discovered during my Bible reading, rather it is an idea that I first saw put forward by C.S. Lewis. In his book 'Miracles', C.S. Lewis says that one problem we can run into when reading the Bible is the preconceived notion that because we can't physically grasp or touch spirituality, that all things spiritual can seem ghost-like to us. This is a grave error for us to make, because there is nothing in the Bible that would indicate God is ghost-like.
It is hard for us to remember that it is in fact our physical bodies which are tenuous, shadowy and ghost-like. We are here for such a short time relative to the timeframe of the universe. Our physical bodies of today are made of ashes and dust (atoms) and will return to the ground (atoms again) when we die. Of course, those who know Christ will get to have union with God after we die - but it's made clear in the Bible that this won't involve our bodies of today. It's God who is permanent and real.
A helpful tool for us is suggested by C.S. Lewis in his book 'Miracles' (1947), chapter 11: "If we must have a mental picture to symbolise Spirit, we should represent it as something heavier than matter."
So an exercise I found helpful was that every time I thought of God, to imagine Him indeed as heavier, realer, more solid than anything I could see around me, to help avoid falling into the trap of a 'ghost-like God'.
It is hard for us to remember that it is in fact our physical bodies which are tenuous, shadowy and ghost-like. We are here for such a short time relative to the timeframe of the universe. Our physical bodies of today are made of ashes and dust (atoms) and will return to the ground (atoms again) when we die. Of course, those who know Christ will get to have union with God after we die - but it's made clear in the Bible that this won't involve our bodies of today. It's God who is permanent and real.
A helpful tool for us is suggested by C.S. Lewis in his book 'Miracles' (1947), chapter 11: "If we must have a mental picture to symbolise Spirit, we should represent it as something heavier than matter."
So an exercise I found helpful was that every time I thought of God, to imagine Him indeed as heavier, realer, more solid than anything I could see around me, to help avoid falling into the trap of a 'ghost-like God'.
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