In this regular column, Michael Vinson, a master’s graduate of the Divinity School of the University of Cambridge and a frequent devotional speaker at Sunstone symposiums, delves into personal and scholarly aspects of scripture.

For ye are like unto whited sepulchers, which indeed appear beautiful outward but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness.   —Matthew 23:27

This year the Church reading plan for Sunday School is the New Testament, but instead I have been wondering more about our current cultural zeitgeist that is fascinated with zombies, vampires, and the undead. This enthrallment is reflected in bestselling books such as Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Abraham Lincoln—Vampire Hunter, the Twilight series, of course, and even a spoof of a children’s reader, Dick and Jane and Vampires. “The new man is not a friend. Run, Dick! Run, Jane!”

Perhaps you have also wondered why, in the past few years, the popular media has been obsessed with zombies and the undead. Is it just a temporary fad, or does it reflect something deeper about our culture? If you think about it, the undead and zombies, are by definition, consumers of the living. They take your life, soul or blood, leaving you an empty shell.

Perhaps the reason we are obsessed with the eaters of the living is because so many of us are leading soulless lives. Perhaps something about having our life—our purpose—sucked from us resonates with us on a cultural level. So what does a soulless life look like?

I imagine that for each person, the soulless life would be somewhat different, but it might have in common some of the following: a lack of purpose; an inability to self-direct our lives; a vague feeling of not being satisfied; and a feeling of incompleteness.There are probably many more I am not listing.

While popular media portrayals of the undead might be a current cultural reflection, the lack of soul in our lives—the emptiness that we feel—is actually something that some intellectual historians have written about. T.J. Jackson Lears, a professor at Rutgers, has written in his book, No Place of Grace, about the worries that beset turn-of-the-twentieth-century Americans: “Late Victorians felt hemmed in by busyness, clutter, propriety; they were beset by religious anxieties and by debilitating worries about financial security.” How familiar do these words seem to Mormons today? Part of Lears’s thesis is that Americans turned to consumption—material consumerism—to try to satisfy an inner, spiritual hunger. It proved to be a vain effort—or given the current vampire vogue, should we say “vein” effort?

At first there doesn’t seem to be much to relate Zombies to the New Testament, though perhaps there is a future bestseller lurking there—Peter and Paul and the Undead? But Jesus may have spoken more directly about zombies—the undead—than we realize.

Consider what Jesus might be referring to when he speaks about “whited sepulchers.” Some New Testament scholars think he is referring to the practice of erecting monuments over tombs—in effect, dressing the dead, for whom no dress is now needed. Jesus’ phrase might apply to the vanity with which we dress ourselves, diet ourselves, exercise ourselves, outfit ourselves with new cars and homes— all to appear beautiful to others, but all the while living empty—even dead—lives.

What does the “whited sepulchers” analogy mean for Mormons today? Could our inner spiritual life be empty, even though to outward appearances, our life appears complete?

Let me start by clarifying that by “spiritual,” I do not necessarily mean religious or Church practice, which is largely composed of activities easily seen by others. For example, we may have ward callings, attend church and the temple, do our home or visiting teaching and yet still might feel we have fairly empty spiritual lives. Can Church activities become just another form of “consumerism” that can be used to adorn and fill up (but not truly “fill”) our lives?

What is the answer? Jesus does not list the solutions to the problems of soullessness in this verse in Matthew; he is identifying the problem so that his audience can completely understand. He is also giving them a bit of a double entendre in this analogy—not only are their spiritual lives as empty as tombs, but they are also as unclean as a tomb would be to a Jew (because of their beliefs about corpse impurity).

I wish I had an application or answer that you could plug into your life, but your solution will ultimately be unique to your circumstances and individual temperament. Yet what your unique answer to an empty life will have in common with others will be an inner feeling of completeness, of following your destiny, of directing your own life.

Instead of an answer, I have a question that might help motivate us all to find our inner life and meaning. Is Jesus suggesting in the analogy of the dead and impure tomb that an empty life is also a sinful one?

Michael Vinson

Star Valley, Wyoming