A person’s soul was saved when he/she confessed that Jesus was Savior and Lord. I made my confession of faith in Jesus, and knew my soul was saved.
I took Jesus very seriously and have never turned aside from my commitment to follow and serve the wandering teacher from Nazareth.
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In my perception it was not an appropriate question, after all, everyone around me seemed to know. Was I the only one asking the question? Was this the piece of me that went on living after my body dies? How attached is my soul to my body? When a person dies, his/her body is dead, dead, dead. It goes into the ground and disintegrates, or possibly is turned into ashes in a very hot furnace. The body turns out to be a few ashes in a small expensive jar.
What happens to the soul, whatever it is? The church’s earliest theologian, Paul from Tarsus, developed a theology of a risen body that was not flesh and blood, but rather a spiritual body, whatever that might be. Can God work with a jar of ashes? When I ponder Paul’s explanations, they do not make sense to me.
The subject of soul is very old. Since written language developed in the ancient Mesopotamian Valley, people have written about this non-material part of human existence. I suspect the arrival of soul in human thinking is tied to the apparent finality of the death of the human body. People want to live longer than the body allows.
My own ponderings about the soul are not about how my life will be extended following the death of my body. My ponderings ask questions about the non-material part of my life.
Simply stated, I cannot sufficiently explain my experience of life in terms of my physical body interacting with a physical world. I enjoy the good food that I eat each day, but eating is not what my life is about.
I try to explain this non-physical side of my life and the only word in my vocabulary that comes to mind is soul.
I turn to what Jesus taught about life and about soul in particular. He does recognize the phenomenon of soul. When he repeated the greatest of all commandments he made reference to soul.
“You shall love the Lord your God with mind, heart and soul.”
The first two of the trilogy I understand. We are to love God by a clear choice of mind.
Then we are to add an emotional element to loving God. That is what the heart is all about. But then he includes the elusive soul. Mind is associated with my brain. Heart is associated with our deepest emotions. Soul is not associated with any part or organ of the body. Yet without exercising it, life is not complete and a person is not truly whole.
The only other references that Jesus made to the soul are found in two of his stories. They are stories about losing one’s soul in the amassing of wealth. One is his story about the man who kept building bigger barns, and the other is about the man who pursued wealth and ended up in hell begging for a drink of water. Neither story helps us grasp what soul is all about. The real point of both of these stories is that the accumulation of wealth never leads to the fulfilled life. Jesus made no attempt to tell us what a soul might be.
I have concluded that souls do not exist. Yet the soul is very real and is a key to the fulfilled life.
To broaden my understanding, I Googled the word soul.
There was an abundance of information about soul. It is obvious that a lot of people have opinions and definitions of soul. None of the information was for me coherent or convincing. I laughed at myself that I would dare attempt to write a column about soul. Yet here I am.
I suspect this experience of soul is very near universal. I further suspect that soul is the reason people are incurably religious. Our universal cry is, “We are more than flesh and blood.”
“We are more than rational thought and emotion.” We are soul.
Can a soul be lost? Can a soul be twisted and injured? Can a soul be destructive? Can a soul be redirected? Can a soul be saved?
In my ponderings, I have concluded that we all need healthy minds, healthy emotions and healthy souls. Without a healthy soul we can never know the fulfilled life.
So here I am back to embracing the idea that souls need to be saved. Our attention needs to focus on that which does not exist.
It is the only way that life can be whole. I still do not know how to define it.
The Rev. Howard Bess is a retired American Baptist minister who lives in Palmer. His email address is hdbss@mtaonline.net.
Comments
6 comment(s)Jaime Rodriguez wrote on Nov 2, 2009 1:28 PM:
Satonsson wrote on Nov 1, 2009 11:44 AM:
I am so sick of you faith based people that have no bases in fact but rely on your parents parents parents beliefs to hold your conviction.
GET A LIFE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And truely investigate for yourself. "
Art Carney wrote on Oct 31, 2009 8:59 AM:
THE WISDOM OF CONFUCIUS, 1943, Random House. Translated by Lin Yutang.
Thanks again, A.C. "
Heavy Heart wrote on Oct 30, 2009 9:30 PM:
Blessings "
Angela wrote on Oct 30, 2009 8:46 PM:
Art Carney wrote on Oct 30, 2009 3:38 PM:
Nobody really knows about the soul, but that doesn't stop me from having an opinion about them, which satisfies my ponderings--that is probably the best I can do. A.C. "