Zombies in the Bible

Driving through a nearby town's square yesterday I noticed that various businesses were putting up scarecrows dedicated to advertising their particular businesses.  My hometown does this also, in the Fall, and even has an event called ZombieFest, or some such name.

I've never gone.  The purpose of this post is not to view condescendingly those who do.
But, the whole zombie mania has just never appealed to me.  Zombies remind me of the truth of the world in which I live.  I don't like the reminder.

That being said, the Bible is full of stories about zombies.
I ran across a key verse this morning, as I breakfasted on Proverbs 9.  The verse is 9:18.  Here it is in the English Standard Version (ESV):

But he does not know that the dead are there,

that her guests are in the depths of Sheol.

What is a zombie, after all?
The classic definition the world gives is "a human body that appears to be living, although it is thoroughly dead", or "a re-animated corpse".1

Take a look at the latter half of Proverbs 9.  The entire chapter is a contrast of two life choices.

In the latter verses, the zombie life, the choice of death, is described.
I'm referring to being spiritually dead, of course.

You see, all humans are born spiritually dead, because of the curse of Adam.  The Old Testament prophet and king, David, gave voice to this biblical truth when he exclaimed:

Look, I was guilty of sin from birth, a sinner the moment my mother conceived me. 

Psalm 51:5 (NET)

Some of you "theologians" out there will want to wrestle with me over this teaching of "original sin", the Adamic Inheritance, but that is for another day.  Even if you don't subscribe to that biblical truth, anyone old enough to comprehend this blog post has sinned, at least once, which means that, spiritually, you are spiritually dead.

Sin kills.  It separates the human soul from the 100%, high-octane holy, God who made it.  As humans we have two choices and only two, once we realize that we are dead souls inhabiting living human bodies.  And, those two choices are portrayed in Proverbs 9.

Those who choose idolatry, the "folly" described in Prov. 9:13-18 are often blind to that fact.  As verse 18 says, (Gena's paraphrase), "they don't know they are zombies, partying with zombies, or that Folly's former guests are in the depths of Sheol (the realm of the ungodly physically dead).

Living in ZombieLand, you know, most of us Christians choose to ignore that fact.  We have, after all, escaped from that eternal fate by putting our trust in the only way to eternal salvation, Jesus Christ, and the deadness around us is so pervasive that we become numb to it.  Many of us are content to let people all around us follow their folly all the way to eternal damnation with scarcely one thought as to their fate.

At this point some of you are really mad at me.  "People have to make their own decisions about Jesus."  Well, of course they do.  But, (once again for emphasis) when you examine verse 18 closely, it is clear that the lost zombies there described do not realize that they are dead souls, surrounded by dead souls, and on their way to the eternal destination of dead souls.

It is up to us to tell them.  The question I must ask myself as a Truth-Bearer, as part of The Light of the World (Matthew 5:14) is, "Am I willing to do that?"

Source:

1     https://www.google.com/search?q=define%3A+zombie&oq=define&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j35i39j0j35i39j0l2.4126j0j1&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8