Church Issues

Soul Man, Spirit Man – Part 1

Standard

Every once in a while, I encounter a post brewing inside me that I find intimidating because it’s more than I can handle. I’m not as clever, intelligent, or compelling in myself to make the words inside come out as I’d like.

This is one of those posts.

So if you find this to be rambling or nonsensical, it’s all my fault, not the Lord’s.

God’s been teaching me a very tough lesson in the last couple years. I’m not sure I grasp the depth of it, but I know I must if I’m to understand a desperate need within the Body of Christ. That lesson is the difference between the soul man and the spirit man.

One of the failings of Western thought is the weight we give dualism. The Greeks saddled us with a dualistic worldview that split our understanding of reality. It doesn’t matter the two lenses through which we view reality, we have an ideal ingrained in us that we can classify our interactions with reality through glasses that divide our sight along only two lines.

The major failing of our love for all things Greek in Western thought is that things that come in threes prove baffling. We can always use our dualistic glasses to see two of the three parts, but that third is either said to be nonexistent, invisible (and therefore untouchable), or just plain paradoxical.

One of the most obvious ways in which Westerners struggle with dualistic modes of thinking is our inability to grasp the tri-unity of God. '...three, it's a magic number...'Westerners don’t do well with this, whereas non-Westerners that are not burdened by Greek thought come at the Trinity more easily. We can picture God and Jesus, but the Holy Spirit is more nebulous to us. We don’t see Him or portray Him well in our theology. We have a hard time integrating Him. On the other hand, many non-Westerners assimilate understanding of the Holy Spirit more fully.

This also reflects in the reality that Western theologians, while able to at least wrestle with the tri-unity of God, are loathe to discuss the tri-unity of man. Even the best scholars in the West are more likely to see man as body + soul/spirit than as body + soul + spirit.

But the Scriptures seem plain that man was made in the image of God, who is triune. The Bible also speaks differently about the soul and spirit of man. While many of us will readily claim the spirit of man was deadened at the Fall, we’re not as capable of explaining what happens to that spirit at the new birth. We wind up treating soul and spirit as the same thing. We turn man into a dichotomous being rather than a trichotomous one.

The more I weigh this before the Lord, the more I believe our dichotomous view of man as being merely body + soul explains much of the deadness of the Western Church. In fact, I wonder if our spiritual glasses are so attuned to only seeing body + soul that we have been practicing a form of Christianity in the West that is not really Christianity at all.

The upshot? If we do not have a proper understanding of the trichotomous nature of man, then we are going to practice a form of godliness that has no power.

Consider these verses:

The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God….
—Romans 8:16

For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.
—Hebrews 4:12

These passages make a distinction between soul and spirit. That distinction is important because failing to split them results in a failure to know how Christians are to live by the Spirit.

When a person is born again, the Holy Spirit quickens the spirit of man. That spirit of man is the conduit by and through which the Holy Spirit operates. It’s our connection to the Lord. If you built a house with no means for connecting into the power grid, how would your run your appliances? The spirit of man connects with the Spirit of God, and that’s how the Christian is powered for service. It’s how we hear God and receive guidance, too.

Those who have not been born again are deadened in their spirits and cannot connect to God. Therefore, they cannot be led of God or discern spiritual things. The true spiritual man, then, is the one who operates out of this connection and allows this “inner redeemed man” to control the outer portions of his life, namely the soul and body.

The soul is a different entity altogether. The soul contains our emotions and thoughts. It’s the primary way we relate to the world and to others in common things. The true spiritual man allows his spirit to take precedent over the soul and guide it, the body, too. The soul, though, is eternal, while the body is not. The soul and body should be driven by the Spirit through the spirit of man.

At least that’s the idea.

But there’s a problem…

When I consider the state of the Western Church, I see the fruit of teaching that man is a two-part entity and not a three-part: people who have substituted the soul for the spirit and subsequently operate out of their souls instead of their spirits. I believe this explains the flailing we see in Western churches:

  • The inability to discern the leading/voice of the Spirit
  • Powerlessness
  • Attraction to dynamic personalities rather than to the spiritually mature
  • Fruitless ministries and programs
  • Rootless, fruitless, wandering Christians
  • The failure of much of our spiritual counseling
  • Evangelistic efforts that never catch on (or people who simply cannot evangelize)
  • Improper understanding of the Scriptures

In fact, I suspect that many of the failures within Western Christianity can be directly traced to our confusing the power of the soul for the power of the spirit.

  • It explains why charismatics get so pumped up by speakers and events that appeal to flash and emotionalism.
  • It explains why so many Christians get fired up by speakers who preach doctrinally-sound  messages that appeal to the intellect, yet never seem to bring about any real change in people’s lives.
  • It explains why so many Christians spend their whole lives trying to find yet another spiritual experience to keep them going from one day to the next.
  • It explains why we have millions of books on Christian topics, yet so little of it sinks in.
  • It explains why so many spiritual gifts that people clam to possess seem so meager or faulty.
  • It explains why so many Christians are silently wondering why things aren’t right in their spiritual lives.

We’re living out of our emotions and our intellect, out of our souls, but the inner man that God says is the true man is still wadded up deep inside of us, dying to get out and actually change our lives.

I’m beginning to wonder how pervasive this problem is. How many of us have spent our entire Christians lives living out of our souls, yet never really knowing what the life of God is because we’re not really channeling it?

The true tragedy here is that so many of us have convinced ourselves that we’re living a Spirit-led life, but we’re not allowing that life to shine through because we have no clue what it actually looks like. The pieces aren’t coming together, so we settle for a life that falls far short of what God desires for us.

In part two of this two-parter, I hope to explore this more. Your comments are greatly welcome.

Thoughts for a Rainy September Friday

Standard

It’s one of those soggy days in southern Ohio that presages autumn. It’s also one of those days where my mind reels from a whirlwind of small thoughts, many inspired by the political season now upon us. So consider today a showcase. Maybe one of these will grow up and become a bigger post someday.

  • I’ve been thinking a lot about silence. (I guess if you perceive silence as a friend, you HAVE the ability to think.) If “Be still and know that I am God” is one of the hallmark verses of the Old Testament, what does it say about our ability to know God that we fill our days with noise and a blur of activity? I find it strange that I know adults, not children, who confess that they can’t sit in silence for a half hour without squirming and whining about it.

  • One other verse that strikes me as unknown in America 2008 is “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” If we treat fellow Christians who disagree with us like the spawn of hell, how is it possible that any of us could muster even a mustard seed of love for our genuine enemies? And why is it that we are so quick to disagree angrily yet so slow to pray for opponents? Notice, too, that I use the word opponents. It’s a long road from opponents to enemies. Someone please invite me to the next prayer meeting wherein Christians spend an hour praying for their enemies. I sadly suspect I’ll need a very expensive plane ticket to get there.

  • If Jesus is the Prince of Peace, why is it that American Evangelicals seem to have no concept of what it means to practice peace or work as ambassadors on behalf of it? Time and again, it seems to me that Evangelicals who discuss political issues are quick to include that they are “for the war effort,” yet NEVER, EVER say they are “for the peace effort.” Does a peace effort even exist in American churches outside of dead, liberal mainline denominations and a handful of Quakers?

  • Every year, the comment that “America is a Christian nation” loses more of its cachet. Consider that four people out of five in this country self-label as Christians and then ask a critical question: What would our nation look and act like if those four out of five were replaced by Christians from Palestine circa 70 AD? Am I the only one believes the difference in practice and influence would be a startling one?

  • What is the goal of an education? For much of the history of our country it was to create adults with a high, lasting understanding of civic responsibility. In that, education was never viewed as self-serving, but as a necessary means to strengthen society and the body politic. Now it’s viewed as only a pathway to greater amounts of personal income. Is it any wonder then that our nation is in trouble economically, socially, morally, and spiritually? When George Barna polls Evangelicals and finds that a greater percentage are worried about getting their kids into a prestigious college than ensuring they know Christ, then the wheels have not only fallen off the last vestiges of Christian education in this country, but the entire vehicle has burst into hellish flames.

  • It’s bizarre to me that people seem to be baffled by the denominational affiliation of Sarah Palin. Since when were the Assemblies of God considered to be a fringe group? This is what happens when all your political pundits are lapsed Episcopalians or Presbyterians-in-name-only.

  • An independent is running in the 2nd Congressional District in Ohio, my district. This has long been considered one of the most Republican districts in the entire country. Republican candidates have in the past won this district with nearly 80 percent of the vote. This has not been the case recently as the GOP has consistently let conservative voters down. In fact, when a real alternative was offered to the GOP incumbent now in office, game-playing by party reptiles snuffed out his candidacy. This is just part of the reason why I will be voting for David Krikorian (I). I think many other people will be voting for him also. That an independent has received the endorsement of the Cincinnati Fraternal Order of Police is astonishing to me in these days of party politics. The irony is that the GOP alternative candidate who was torpedoed by the GOP bigwigs in town had consistently garnered the Cincy FOP’s endorsement in the past in the local offices he held.

  • More than anything else politically, I long to see genuine orators and statesmen return to lead our country in the days ahead. I believe they will not be these men and women of privilege, these millionaires we keep electing, but average Joes and Janes of principle and conviction. Those people are out there. We just need to stop voting for the ones who keep them down. I think that every Christian in America needs to stop supporting parties and start support worthy candidates. If that means abandoning long-held party affiliations, then we must. Character counts, and too many people in office today are sorely lacking it.

With the local forecast for the next five days filled with clouds and rain, I suspect that I’ll be doing more thinking in the days to come.

What are you thinking?

The “Please, Someone Notice Me!” Generation—More Thoughts

Standard

The comments on my previous post were so good that I decided to air a few more thoughts on the phenomenon of social networking Web sites and widgets. If you missed the previous post that featured my take on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, AIM, and their ilk, plus the more pressing issue they magnify, that of a desperate need for people today to be noticed, then you can read it here.

I found it strange that most people glossed over the greater statement in that post that ours is a voyeuristic/celebrity generation intent on, if not its 15 minutes of fame, avoiding anonymity on a larger scale. The Wall Street Journal ran an article a few months ago that explained the sudden rise in unusual names for children. Parents, not wishing their li’l darlings to suffer the damning fate of being invisible to search engines, are eschewing the common names of the past for ones easily Googled. Pity poor John Joseph Smith! All hail Aloysius Percival Smith!

Hollow on the insideIt’s a strange disconnect with the past and a harbinger of a global future. Our ancestors’ greatest aspirations lay in being a known entity in the local community. Competition for attention typically did not extend more than a dozen miles in any direction. Today, though, Thomas Friedman’s flattening necessitates, in some people’s minds, a sphere of influence no smaller than a continent, and, more optimally, the entirety of planet Earth. It’s not enough to be the town mayor. Unless one shoots for Emperor of the Universe, others might deem one’s aspirations a bit too meager.

So we’re thrust into this bizarre world of everyone scrambling for attention. The oddest part of the odyssey we’ve taken toward essential global recognition through our friend-laden Facebook page or Twitter-a-minute updates is that it began long before the Web took off.

I remember back to the Stone Age of 1992 when I was a senior in college. We had a special assembly that was supposed to promote diversity on campus.  One ethnic group of students after another would come on stage and tell why their group was worthy of attention and celebration. Afterwards, I ran into one of my friends on campus, also an older student, who happened to be of African ancestry. We both expressed the awful feeling we had on leaving the assembly. He said, “It’s as if each group got up there and yelled, ‘Don’t look at them! Look at us instead!.'” And you know, he nailed that observation. It was the first time in my life that I realized that everyone is dying to be center stage, even if it means trampling someone else to get there.

Internet-based social networking takes this to another level. Since there must be winners and losers in the push to be noticed, people have to stay current and hot. It’s now not enough that an actor must keep his or her face out there, even if it means slumming in C-Movie Land, your average Jane is compelled to keep her MySpace page up-to-the-minute or else face obscurity, buried under a hundred million other pages that are hipper and more relevant. To this generation, nothing could be more damning than to find no one cares that you think Timbaland is teh hot because they’ve moved on to someone else’s minty-fresh page.

Some may be laughing about this, but for too many people it’s a serious thing. The hit counter decelerates and depression sets in. The Internet, in many ways, amplifies the feeling that it’s a dog-eat-dog world and you might be a 2-pound Yorkie-poo.

For others, it may be the opposite problem. A little attention and up sprouts the deceptive kingdom of “I Am Somebody!” Suddenly, your Barbie Fashions Designed By Bobby Mackie page has a thousand subscribers who consider you the guru of Barbie fashions designed by Bobby Mackie. (Until they find someone else filled with more Barbie-fashions-designed-by-Bobby-Mackie goodness. See above.)

Whether on the way up to Internet fame or spiraling down into irrelevance, people have to get in on the game. To not play means an anonymous fate worse than death.

But what of the face-to-face encounter?

If my senior year in college was the Stone Age, then my sophomore year must’ve have been the Cambrian Era, when giant trilobites roamed vast continent-spanning oceans in search of some place to drop a quarter on Centipede, Qix, or Dig Dug. (Yeah, I managed to wedge in a decade between my sophomore and senior year.)

For the rehash of my point, I’ll dig into the guts from a past post (“Has the Christian Blogosphere Lost Its Collective Mind“):

When I was at Carnegie Mellon University studying artificial intelligence and robotics in the early 1980s, CMU was on the cutting edge of the pre-Internet world. Every dorm had networked computers, IBM was opening up a networking research center on campus, and there was so much stinking CPU horsepower at the school that they ran their HVAC systems through the mainframe cooling systems to heat the academic buildings. In short, only MIT was even close in computing power.

One of the cool things about the school was that it was on ARPANET. I could e-mail a friend at MIT. Back then that was something. We also had a college online community that existed only in cyberspace. We talked about every subject imaginable. Everyone had cool handles, so it was easy to hide behind our anonymity and be “free.”

I liked to hang out in an area discussing Christianity. Needless to say, it got contentious considering that the (self-identified) “heathen” to Christian ratio was about 500:1. One day a heathen posted something really sick, and the worst flame war I’ve ever seen in my life erupted. I tried with all my might to keep it civil, but things got out of control. I’ve never seen such hateful things said in my life from people with handles like Blasphemer, Bot, Mr. Wizard, and Grue.

Yet behind each of those handles was a person—someone I could be sitting next to in class and not even know it. So I proposed something radical: I asked that the most vocal people—about forty altogether—meet up at a local Italian restaurant for dinner. We could talk face-to-face, drop the anonymity, and be real people. Maybe then we could come to a better understanding. Everyone in the flame war agreed, all forty.

I reserved a room at the Italian place, set up carpools with the forty, arranged a rendezvous on campus so we could drive down in the carpools, and had the whole thing worked out. I was really looking forward to it.

The day comes, and my watch shows 4:30 PM. I’m in the meeting spot for the carpools and no one shows. Around 4:40, my laid-back, barefoot Christian buddy, Tom (aka “Captain Zodiac”), arrives and says, “Hey, where is everybody?” Tom and I sat there until 5:15 before we finally called the restaurant, canceled, and went upstairs to grab a burger in the lounge cafeteria.

Two days later, most everyone was at it again on the BBS system, flaming away. When I asked where everyone had been, there was a vast silence. I never got a response. As for me, I gradually bowed out of the “conversation” having learned a great lesson about human nature.

Nothing we do replaces the face-to-face. God wrapped so much of who we are in these flesh-and-bone bodies. He gave us intonations, facial expressions, and all other manner of communication that is lost through the Internet. Most of all, He gave us a soul. And no matter how eloquent we might be online, we can’t communicate that soul through our high-tech gadgets.

That distance so readily on display in the flame war above only illustrates the ultimate Achilles heel we build into every techno-whizbang toy we consider so vital to our personae. Yet how easily we lose ourselves in the the distant world of iPods, tweets, and Facebook pages.

This is not to say that high-tech social networking tools have no value, only that their value may be far more limited than we understand. The devil in this is that none of us is ubiquitous and neither is our time. Something MUST give. If the sociologists are to be believed, perhaps the give is our surrendering of the face-to-face for the security of a Twitter tweet.

One last illustration culled from a previous post (one that also looks at fractured community, “Radical Thoughts, Real Community“):

I remember many years ago how my old neighborhood experienced a power outage that blackened TVs, silenced video games (Atari 2600s back then), and quieted the bits and bytes of computers (Commodore 64 and Apple IIe). Right after supper, with the electronics stilled, the soft voice of that beautiful summer night called to people. The next thing I knew neighbors were chatting in each other’s yards, kids were playing impromptu games of Kick the Can and softball, and the neighborhood came alive. But when the power kicked on an hour or so later, the neighborhood took on the feel of a tomb. People had trudged back to their electronic distractions, each homeowner shutting the door on his or her personal fortress.

We’re still locked up today. Perhaps more so.

Bowling alone, anyone? On the Wii?

I don’t believe we have to live this way. I don’t believe the disconnected humanity depicted in Pixar’s Wall-E must be our future.

A couple readers asked for my take on solutions. As I’ve written on the subject of community extensively, I suggest selecting that blog category in the sidebar or clicking on this link and this one.

As for the irony of me discussing this through a blog, well, you’re right. Still, this is more about trying to make a difference than it is about getting someone to notice yours truly. And yes, if no one noticed, then nothing in this blog would make a difference. It’s not a perfect medium. God help me if it substitutes for my time in flesh-and-blood, face-to-face connection. May that never be the case.

Thanks for reading. The comments, as always, are open.