Faith,  O, Humanity!,  Reading,  The Bible

The Real YOU Abides

Our souls are the real, substantive part of who we are. Our bodies are the material manifestation.

I’m reading through my journal written ten years ago and came across the above statement I had written to summarize what I was learning. At the time, I was attending a Bible study in a friend’s home, a study that referenced George MacDonald’s writing.

Both C.S. Lewis and Oswald Chambers had been greatly influenced by George MacDonald, a writer in the late nineteenth through early twentieth century. Lewis called him his “master” and wrote an anthology for 365 days composed of MacDonald’s writings.

At the time, I was preparing to teach at a retreat and came across a quote by C.S. Lewis, “You don’t have a soul. You are a soul.”

This convergence led me to the ideas George MacDonald had written about the soul.

” . . . let me remark upon the great mistake or teaching children they have souls. The consequence is that they think of their souls as something which is not themselves. For what a man has cannot be himself.

Hence, when they are told their souls go to heaven, they think of their selves lying in the grave. They ought to be taught that they have bodies; and that their bodies die, while they themselves live on. Then they will not think … that they will be laid in the grave. It is making altogether too much of the body and is indicative of an evil tendency to materialism that we talk as if we possessed souls, instead of being souls. We should teach our children to think no more of their bodies when dead than they do of their hair when it is cut off or of their old clothes when they have done with them.”

George MacDonald, Annuls of a Quiet Neighborhood 1

The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever. Isaiah 40:8

The gears started moving as I connected these thoughts to Scripture. The distinction between body and soul is scriptural.

Paul prayed that your whole spirit, soul, and body be sanctified, describing three aspects of a person.2

The apostle Paul wrote that while the outward man perishes, the inner man is renewed day by day. He refers to the renewal work of the Holy Spirit within, a work that makes a believer’s soul flourish despite whatever the outward appearance of his body might suggest.

The body is temporary (an “earth suit,” as I once heard it described) for survival in earth’s environment. When humans depart, the body no longer needed, the soul continues to exist.

“Then sings my soul … How Great Thou Art …”

“Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the LORD my soul to keep.”

The Bible describes people and situations and experiences so that as readers we can interact with and inhabit their stories, identify with their struggles, so that our own soul’s capacity to learn and grow enlarges.

Feed and Nurture the Soul

Reading the Bible helps us appreciate life in all its intricacies.

Great literature also feeds the soul through vicarious experience, offering readers a measure of understanding to the complex issues and questions of being human.

When we focus primarily on the body, we often neglect the soul’s needs. Of course, we must think of our bodies while we live. We have to keep feeding them. And Paul concedes in 1 Timothy 4:8 that bodily exercise profits a little, but godliness profits now and later.3

The outward man shows the signs of aging while inside, his soul feels distinct from physical age.

Back to what George MacDonald wrote, he said “I am getting old––faster and faster. I cannot help the gray hairs, nor the wrinkles that gather so slowly yet ruthlessly … But I have not got used to age yet. I do not FEEL one atom older than I did at three-and-twenty. Nay, to tell all the truth, I feel a good deal younger.”

I’m guessing that he feels younger because his soul has grown wiser with age while his body continues to decline. The body is temporary. The soul lives forever.

The real you abides.

1 This book available online as part of the Gutenberg Project and no longer subject to US copyright restrictions.

2 May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 1 Thessalonians 5:23

3 2 Corinthians 4:16

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