The Soul.

 " ' For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.' " - Galatians 2: 19 - 20

Many of those people who profess a new life of faith in Jesus Christ claim that not only has their soul been saved, but they are also fully healed physically and mentally. We have a hard time believing them.

How can we believe them when their attitudes towards their fellow man haven't changed? Nor do we sense from them they actually believe their condition in life has changed; neither do we get from them a feeling of hope. This is difficult for some of us to understand because we know that in accepting Christ's offer, and his coming into our lives, we have invited the greatest of healers to come and share our body and soul with us. Is this not reason for happiness? Why then, explain if you will, are so many Christians so unhappy outwardly, and inwardly so afraid and insecure? I will tell you why; it is because they have not truly entered the Kingdom of God with Jesus - or more succinctly - secretly they do not believe they have, and where there is no faith there will be no reality. Perhaps the Buddhists say it best: What you see around you is an illusion. It is temporal, changing every moment. It will pass, but your soul is permanent, as it is a part of the Great Self, or as we would say, God. When our soul enters the Kingdom of God, that is true reality.

 The Kingdom of God is more fully explained here. It is that place where the soul of mankind surrenders itself to Christ and works in harmony with God who made it. It is reconciliation, and this reconciliation was brought about by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, who took upon himself the sins of man from the past, and those sins of the future, and made atonement for us so that we could finally be brought back into that true pure, sinless essence which is God.

The disciple of Christ will, without a doubt, come into contact with an emotional or physically-ill person who publicly reaches out for help, but secretly does not want to accept it. I feel this happens to most of us at some time. Many of these people claim to be Christians; some are not, but what they are really looking for is someone to share in their misery, someone who can be brought in close and ensnared with pleas of helplessness and dread of the unknown. Many a disciple has been tied down by what I call the 'emotional vampire'. The theologian, Paul Tillich commented in his book, The New Being: "The average length of our lives has been stretched beyond any former expectation (he's referring to modern medicine here). But many in our nation cannot stand this health. They want sickness as a refuge into which they can escape from the harshness of an insecure life. And since medical care has made it more difficult to escape into bodily illness, they choose mental illness. But does not everybody dislike sickness, the pain, the discomfort and the danger connected with it?

"Of course, we dislike our sickness with some parts of our souls; but we like it with some other parts, mostly unconsciously, sometimes even consciously. But nobody can be healed especially of mental disorders and diseases who does not want it with his or her whole heart. And that is why they have become almost an epidemic in this country.

"People are fleeing into a situation where others must take care of them, where they exercise power through weakness or where they create an imaginary world in which it is nice to live as long as real life does not touch them. Don't underestimate this temptation." In short what Tillich is saying is these people are afraid to live on their own. They are mortified to live in a world that just may not like them for what they are, and they run and hide from it. They're afraid to live! And ofttimes, they hide in religions and in our churches, drawing down the resources of the pastors, and the church body as a whole.

Note though, if you will, what Tillich said about the soul: "... we dislike our sickness with some parts of our souls... we like it with some other parts...." This is unfamiliar to most Christians, that is to have the soul referred to as such. 'Parts of our soul'? Let's take the time to examine the soul closer.

There are quite a few people who do not believe the soul to exist. They know the body to exist - an encounter with pain breaks through all fantasies, doubts and illusions. And thanks to Hollywood and authors such as Stephen King, they suspect there is something of a spirit world, but the soul? Prove it! is the usual rejoinder. If we believe the words of Jesus as chronicled in the Greek New Testament, then we find in Matthew 26: 38 where it notes: "Then he said to them, 'My soul (psuchae - yuch) is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death.' " Therefore, we disciples of Christ, because of his words take it that the soul exists. But what is the soul?

The soul is the transitioning bridge between the physical body and the Spirit of God. Some may call it the cognitive faculty of the human being; some may call it the conscience; others may call it our individual spirit. Let's go a bit farther and say that the Spirit is the heavenly, graced element which remains eternally bonded to the soul for the righteous, but stripped away from sinners who do not repent of their sins, i.e., the damned. The soul is the vital middle between matter and spirit; it is not just a literal bridge, but is the residing place of what has been called 'Free Will'; the soul can make decisions. Some believe that the soul chooses whether it is to manifest as either spirit or flesh. This line of thinking draws very near to the idea of the Buddhist-Hindu concept of karma and nirvana. That being, the person who leaves mortal life with their soul in the state of goodness has achieved nirvana and as such has the option of remaining in heaven, or choosing to return to earth in human form usually in the role of a good servant, or as it's known: a Bodhisattva.

It is the soul that has the free will option to choose between good and evil. Not just deeds, but the choice between God or Evil. It is the soul that experiences the temptations of lust; the ecstasy of pure love; the rage of anger; the urge to kill and the loftiness of heroism, and the overwhelming pull of the fascination of one's self-importance. The soul is the engine of greed, craving, insatiable desire and the hot bed of self-centeredness. The soul is the font of altruism and great courage, but can also become the swamp of narcissism and the promoter of lies, anger and murder.

It is the soul which can be swayed by the pleasures of the flesh, or corrected by the Spirit of God. In righteous people, the soul and God's Spirit are in close harmony with each other; not perfect harmony, but close. Those who are evil, their souls are distanced from God's Spirit and love, and unless they repent of their evil ways, these people are doomed to hell.

As good as a person may be, if they have not accepted Jesus Christ as their Savior, they will not enter the Kingdom of God. It was Christ's sacrifice on Golgotha that did away with the separation caused by sin and reconciled the soul to the Spirit of God. Good deeds and charity stacked as high as a mountain will not suffice to bring a person's soul into the essence of God. Much more is required. It takes Jesus Christ to bring humankind's souls back to their pure point of creation where they can be rejoined with their Creator. We Christian disciples understand this. We know what took place at Calvary, and what takes place today in the soul of every believer. Trouble is, too many 'Christians' really don't believe it, or understand it. Better stated, they don't really have faith in what took place. That is why many are self-driven to still 'work their way' into Heaven with good deeds and acts of charity. They lack confidence in Jesus' act and God's promise of redemption and salvation; which brings us back to the emotional vampire.

Jesus' ministry on earth provided evidence of two levels of salvation for our souls and body. The soul is reconciled to God by belief in his Son, but let us not dismiss the miracles Jesus performed. The miracles were indicative of the healing power of the soul and the soul's desire to not only be itself healed, but its power of healing the host body. The body for the soul is but a material vessel which will eventually die. The soul, being God's direct property, never dies and is His to do with as He desires. For those who do not repent of their evil ways, the fact that the soul never dies can be most disconcerting when spoken of in the same sentence as the word 'hell'. As Jesus tells us in Matthew 13: 36 - 43 "Then he left the crowds and went into the house. And his disciples approached him, saying, 'Explain to us the parable of the weeds of the field.' He answered, 'The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man; the field is the world, and the good seed are the children of the kingdom; the weeds are the children of the evil one, and the enemy who sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels. Just as the weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Let anyone with ears listen!' "

In the eyes of some, I will now become direct, blunt and perhaps cruel as I address those who capitalize on a personal illness. Let me first relate a marvelous episode in John 5: 2 - 9 and continued in John 5: 13 - 15; it goes like this:

"Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew Beth-zatha, which has five porticoes. In these lay many invalids - blind, lame, and paralyzed.  One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, 'Do you want to be made well?' The sick man answered him, 'Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.' Jesus said to him, 'Stand up, take your mat and walk.' At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk." In 13 - 15 it continues: "Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had disappeared in the crowd that was there. Later Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, 'See, you have been made well! Do not sin any more, so that nothing worse happens to you.' The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well."

Even to those unfamiliar, the strangeness of Jesus' question to the man, 'Do you want to be made well?' should have provoked curiosity. Why would Jesus say such a thing to an obvious cripple? Better yet, why didn't he ask it of every invalid at the pool? Why this single man? Could it be that Jesus knew that this man perhaps did not want to be healed? After all, the fellow had his infirmity for thirty-eight years. Surely, someone would have helped him out during those years; perhaps even the people who brought him to the pool in the first place? Or, was there something else going on with this particular man... something along the line of Tillich's observation above? Did the man's soul choose the path of victim-hood and defeat instead of choosing the path of faith, hope and belief that God would cure him? Could it be the man took comfort in his condition, having people feel sorry for him? Was this his escape from life? Notice how he answered Jesus' question, 'Do you want to be made well?'  It was not the expected 'Yes!', but instead the man instantly reverted to what I suspect was an oft-used excuse of his, 'Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool...' Jesus saw through this mental crutch and still the Savior of Mankind expressed a great love and forgiveness for this invalid. Possible?

Far fetched questions? I don't think so, and I say this based on the second encounter the man had with Jesus in the temple. Why would Jesus say to him, "Do not sin any more, so that nothing worse happens to you."? Why would Jesus say such a thing to the man? Have we identified the man's sin? Could it be what Tillich described? I believe it to be the case.

Disciples, the Kingdom of God not only reconciles the believer's soul to God, but it also heals what is wrong with the believer, but only if the person truly believes and has faith in the healing power of Jesus.  Up until the coming of Christ, such healings were mostly unheard of. Once invested with the Holy Spirit and the Power of the Christ, believers by exercising their faith opened the door to the Kingdom of God. No longer stood the old way of absolving sin - offering sacrifices and attempting to fulfill the Law. No! Something new had arrived in Jesus, and it no longer depended on the past, nor counted on the future. It was a 'something' that happened in the 'now'. The diseased soul was made clean and pure by the medicine of  the Holy Spirit as it came from God, entered the new believer and destroyed the evil that held the soul hostage. Pray, truly believe, and then expect God to deliver! That's putting one's faith directly on the line. It takes courage to do it, and it is the soul that either summons forth the courage to stand and believe, or trembles in insecurity and doubt, urging the person to seek other, less demanding alternatives. Many Christians do not possess this kind of courage. Do miracles always manifest for the faithful? No. The reason why not is God's business, but there are those times when the suffering believer is delivered a miracle. Trust in God, because perhaps there are times when the miracle we want to see happen may not be God's answer for the situation.

The disciple of Christ has to discern the true nature of the person seeking help. Is their petition genuine, or is it a ploy to draw sympathetic hearts into their net of self-pity? Many a good Christian has been ensnared in such a net where their time, strength, and sometimes money, are squandered. I speak from experience about this. What is the disciple to do?

If the suffering person is truthful about wanting to be healed, then work with them. Pray together with the person and point them in the direction of Jesus' healing words in the Gospels, and God's healing words in the Psalms.  If the person needs assistance in arranging for medical or psychiatric help from health care facilities, help them and see that they get it. If, however, the suffering person does not show any desire to help themself, or gives up on every proposed suggestion of outside help, then the disciple will know they are being used. Disciples, there is too much evangelizing and genuine ministering work yet to be done, time is precious and you cannot be tied down to a single person who continually cries for help but will not lift a finger in their own rescue. Emotional vampires do not want to be healed. Their soul opts for another direction that has nothing to do with the healing power of Christ. Sadly, this type of person prefers their soul to wallow in a sea of self-pity and self-centeredness and actually does not want what Paul claimed for himself: "I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me... ." (Galatians 2:20).

A word of warning to the disciple: Do not come to think of yourself as a kind of great spiritual healer. You may have instances of success with difficult people, and that is good if the outcome of their truly having faith in, and trusting, Jesus is genuine. Because disciples are only human, headlines of success may develop and the disciple's own soul  may slip into the sin of self-infatuation, falling into the trap of seeing themselves as some sort of a personal one-on-one messiah. Do not go there! It is Jesus who does the healing, and the Holy Spirit who changes a sufferer's life. It is counterproductive to your mission to think otherwise and in the end it will be you who becomes the spiritual and emotional basket case.