HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, August 16, 2025 – There’s a conundrum that we born-again believers must contend with every day. Better said, there’s a spiritual fact that we need to accept as our indisputable reality: In their soul, which is the seat of their will, humans have a measure either of God’s Spirit (which is holy) or of the world’s spirit (which is demonic). There is no third option, no “vacant” or “neutral” humans, no mix-and-match co-habitational arrangement where God’s Spirit shares a soul with demons. You either have God’s Holy Spirit in you, or you have unholy spirits. It’s either one or the other.

No third option.

As a born-again believer, I find this spiritual fact disturbing. I don’t think about it very often, and when I do, I don’t linger on the details. It’s enough for me to know that it’s a fact and to accept it as such.

Scripture tells us that at spiritual rebirth, we pass from death to life. We know this is true not just because scripture tells us it’s true, but because we’ve experienced it ourselves first-hand. It’s our lived reality. When God’s Spirit entered into us, we were alive for the first time in our lives. It’s a funny thing to say “we were alive for the first time in our lives”, because weren’t we alive all along, from the instant of our conception?

Physically, yes, we were alive, but spiritually, no. Other than for Jesus, we’re all born spiritually dead. We don’t come into the world spiritually innocent; we come burdened with Adam’s sin. It was Adam’s sin that brought death to the world – spiritual death, which is far worse than physical death. People who are not born-again and who are afraid to die don’t realize they’re already dead in the only way that matters.

When Jesus instructed one of his followers to “let the dead bury the dead”, he was letting us know the distinction between believers and unbelievers. Believers are spiritually alive, and unbelievers are spiritually dead. Believers belong to God (the living God), whereas unbelievers belong to Satan (lord of the dead). At the same time, unbelievers are plagued to varying degrees by demonic spirits, who also belong to and get their directives from Satan; no unbeliever is free of the demon plague. This is the source of all their emotional and mental illnesses, as well as the cause of most of their physical ailments.

As I mentioned at the outset, I don’t think about the spiritual state of humanity very often because the collective prognosis is so bleak. We’re surrounded by dead people, most of whom don’t even know they’re dead. They were born in their sins and will die in their sins, and that’s how they want it to be. They don’t want to hear about sin. They don’t want to hear about God and Jesus. Even as they rush to undergo every conceivable test and pretest to detect even the faintest presence of this or that disease, they deny their essential spirituality and the reality of their spiritually dead state.

What are we, as born-again believers, to do about these spiritual corpses? Recall that Jesus said: “Let the dead bury the dead” and to let “the blind lead the blind”. He didn’t tell us to run after them and ply them with scriptural passages or try to force-feed them the Gospel. He said to let them be. He called them dead and blind, and he said to let them be, to leave them to each other.

This is another disturbing spiritual reality that I don’t think about very often or when I do, for very long. Here in Canada, a self-described former Christian nation, we’ve reached near Sodom-levels of dead souls. Sure, “spirituality” is widely embraced and promoted, but not God and Jesus. (Don’t you dare mention God and Jesus!) Every other home has a “dreamcatcher” or a buddhist garden statue. Every other family has a pagan or a practicing witch. Whenever there’s a disaster, “thoughts” can be offered “in solidarity” with those who are suffering, but not prayers. (Don’t you dare mention prayers!) The most powerful force in the universe is not welcome here.

The spiritually dead state of unbelievers is not a figure of speech but a hardcore spiritual truth. We are surrounded by demon-infested spiritually dead people who are either unaware of their condition or, if they are aware, don’t care or have embraced it. Some have even free-willingly made a contract with Satan. You are either born-again and spiritually alive or not born-again and spiritually dead. There’s no third option. Being spiritually dead leads to eternal death, just as being spiritually alive leads to eternal life. You can’t be spiritually dead and end up in Heaven. That’s a spiritual impossibility. The only destination for spiritually dead souls is the lake of fire.

Which is why I don’t think about this spiritual conundrum very often. I’m confronted with it every day, but I don’t let myself dwell on it. It’s enough to know that this is our reality, that this is the world we live in for whatever time God allots us here. Rather than dwell on the spiritually dead, I choose instead to think about God and Jesus, about Heaven, and about feeding those sheep who do want to live. This is our mission, to feed those sheep as God gives us guidance.

We can’t help the dead who want to remain dead. They are not our mission. But we can help the sheep who choose life. That’s what Jesus did in his ministry, so that’s what we’re to do in ours.