The Everyday Club

8/25/10     Jose,         about 35
At the park today I began a conversation with a Latino man (Jose) by asking if he would help me practice my Spanish. He agreed and as it turned out he is taking English lessons and wanted to practice his English so we took turns in each language for an hour and a half. Jose had grown up in Mexico, and his Catholic catechism classes had met twice weekly for five years. He seemed enamored with the book of Revelation in the Bible but was familiar with little else. He believes in God but has doubts about heaven, choosing instead to believe that our spirits wander the earth after we die. He gave two reasons for this belief,, one being that his native American ancestors believe in much the same thing. The other reason was because he has had a series of four visions or experiences with a ghostly figure appearing to him, speaking and touching his head or tugging on his clothes. This happened during his teenage years and even involved his friends. At first he thought it was his deceased mother but later thought it was the spirit of a girl who had died in his house years before. He didn't know whether these experience were bad or good but as he told of them I could tell they dominate his thinking and beliefs about spiritual things. I told him about 2 Corinthians 11:14 which tells us that even the demons "masquerade as angels of light" The result of this unhealthy fascination with the spirit world is that it is causing much distraction from the true things of God, and that can't ever be good.