Zombies have been a category within horror, science fiction, fantasy, and thriller genres for as long as I can remember. I can recall being terrified by these creatures that looked like people but had dark eyes and walked around stiffly with their arms stretched out in front of them. I always wondered how they could walk so slowly but always catch up to their victims, who were running away as fast as they could. There's a comedic edge to such zombie movies, but also a form of forbidding fatalism.

Some zombie movies have become cult classics. Who could forget '28 Days Later', 'Shaun of the Dead', 'Zombieland', 'Dawn of the Dead', or the all time number one 'Night of the Living Dead'.

One reviewer said of the 'Dawn of the Dead': "I think it's because Romero manages so well to convey the sense of apocalypse that his movies have such an impact. There is a desperation underlying everything that does not let up…"

Some people really get into pretending to be zombies, especially for parties or Halloween. My daughter, all grown up now, is preparing a Lady Gaga costume for some event, and I was thinking that that would be a kind of zombie attire. I think for true zombies, though, there is nothing funny nor entertaining about their desperation.

For those who do not know (does anyone not know what a zombie is?), the dictionary says that a zombie was originally thought to be a snake-deity from West Africa and Haiti, but it has become best known as a soulless corpse revived by witchcraft, especially in certain African and Caribbean religions. It can also point to a person who is lifeless, apathetic, or completely unresponsive to their surroundings.

I think I saw a zombie on my way to work today. He was like a wretched apparition, a reminder of the end of all things we each face and also of the overwhelming futility that saving this world has become.

I was driving down Middle Road when he came into view. He was standing on the sidewalk, swaying a bit as if off balance and intoxicated. He was turning his head slowly this way and that, gazing at and talking to something not immediately apparent. He had lost almost all his teeth except for one very long and corroded looking tooth that stuck out, and his hair was a matted mix of dreads, bleached by the sun. His clothes were dirty and disheveled. Some would say that he was a long-time drug addict and street person, but it seemed more to me that he was one of the living dead.

Even that would be a misnomer, a simple oxymoron that does not capture the nature of what is going on. In order to be truly living a person needs to have more than simple animation of the body. We know this from folks who are kept 'alive' by technology so that machines breathe for them. Their brains are dead, but their bodies have a measure of animation.

Just so, someone can appear to be animated, especially if under the influence of a drug, but in reality they are likely just on life support. True deadheads. They are not really living. They can walk around. They can look at you and make sounds as if they were living. They can even claim to be alive and put on the clothing of someone who is really having a successful life, but they are either dead already or on the way to becoming a zombie.

The obvious zombies are the ones whose teeth have fallen out, who look stunned and numbed and can't put words together to make sense. They obviously cannot be relied upon. However, other people are less obvious, but we might as well face it – they are walking around making sounds as if they were alive, but they are really dead. They don't pay the bills. They don't visit and spend time with their spouses and children. They make promises they do not keep – because they are dead and cannot respond. They are zombies.

There are also spiritual zombies. These are people who put on the robes of religion, but they might as well be wearing the smelly rags of hell. They speak words that sound like words of life, but they are actually dead. They go to church. They know some Bible verses. They might even be church leaders, what Jesus in his day called whitewashed sepulchers. On the outside they look splendid, but inside they are corrupt and corrupting.

If you were a child, and you lived in a house filled with your favourite foods, including sweet chocolate, and in which spectacularly shiny and lustrous toys were made available, and in which infinitely loving parents provided undivided attention, affection-people who protected and nurtured your quest to explore, discover, play, and grow-you would expect that you would thrive. That you would live.

How is it that we can live in this world that God has created, that we can have the presence of God through the Holy Spirit, and that we can have the revelation of His nature and programme for history, but neglect it all to walk around with darkened eyes and our arms outstretched as if reaching for something else we think is more valuable? Many of us are zombies. We are animated, but we are dead inside. When someone told Jesus he would follow him but he first wanted to go and bury his father, Jesus responded, "Let the dead bury the dead." There were zombies then just as there are zombies now.

You can be a zombie if you kill your spirit while still walking around in a body that is on figural life support. How long can a person get away with such a thing before everyone figures it out? How long before what is dead on the inside catches up fully with what is animated on the outside? What kind of life is life support anyway? Jesus said that He came that we might have life and that we might have it more abundantly; unless we have that life, we are zombies, living out our own version of 'The Night of the Living Dead'.