They have lost connection with the head …
Summary: History has many lessons for us. One of those lessons has to do with staying connected to your head, especially the one that you can’t see.
I’ve just finished reading a book on the history of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination.*
The last part of the story is about the manhunt for John Wilkes Booth that took place after Lincoln was shot. At the end of the hunt, Booth was caught hiding in a barn in Virginia. The soldiers that had hunted him down had surrounded the barn, and since Booth was shut inside and refused to surrender, they lit the barn on fire.
With flames crackling outside the building and smoke filling the inside, the door to the barn is opened, and Lieutenant Baker peers inside. Booth rises to aim his gun at the lieutenant, but before he can fire, Sergeant Corbett shoots a bullet into Booth’s neck.
The bullet that hits Booth severs his spinal cord just above the shoulder. Booth’s body immediately loses its connection with the head. He falls to the ground. Two hours later, he is dead.
Cutting the connection with the head is like cutting the strings on a puppet. The body might remain alive for a while, but the head can no longer communicate with it.
Is the Body of Christ similar?
As humans, we tend to find this question confusing. We are, after all, physical bodies. The idea of a “Body of Christ” doesn’t seem real. It sounds like a nice metaphor for trusting in Jesus, but for many, it doesn’t feel like a real thing.
When I think of the Body of Christ, my mind is drawn back to Genesis and the Garden of Eden. God tells Adam not to eat from the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil” (Genesis 2:16-17), because if you do, you will die.
The serpent, ever the deceiver, tells Eve, “You will not certainly die” (Genesis 3:4). He directly contradicts God. In fact, if we read the rest of the story, we discover that at the end of the chapter, Adam and Eve are still alive. Even after eating the forbidden fruit!
So what gives?
It turns out that there are two kinds of death. The obvious kind of death is what happened to Lincoln and Booth. In both cases, the body stopped working. But what about their spiritual selves?
President Lincoln was a man of deep faith. From what we know of his life, he was truly “born again” (John 3:3). The spirit of President Lincoln was connected to the head of the Body of Christ. Even though he was the president of a divided country, his words and deeds reflect the will of his God.
John Wilkes Booth, on the other hand, does not appear to be spiritually connected to the Lord Jesus. His spirit, too, survived the shot that severed his neck and ended his body’s life. Is it likely he is enjoying heaven, or more likely he is with the rich man who ended up in the lake of fire? (Luke 16: 19-31)
Application: Stay connected with the head, Jesus Christ.
Food for Thought: How do we know if we are connected to the head, Jesus Christ?
*O’Reilly, Bill. Killing Lincoln : the Shocking Assassination That Changed America Forever. New York :Henry Holt and Co., 2011.
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