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Where is the Soul and how does it Grow?

Many people believe that we continue to exist in some form after we have died and that we can meet each other again. My long-ago contacts, the astral projectionists, taught that the astral body (soul) was the exact shape of the physical body. When the astral body temporally floated off to the astral plane, it was whole and recognisable - amputees had intact ‘astral bodies’ - no missing limbs! They thought ‘phantom pain’ from a missing limb was due to the body/soul mismatch, as much as to damaged nerve endings. As they also claimed the astral body could travel anywhere on earth at the speed of light, directed by the will of its owner, I have serious doubts about their ideas.

Various ancient cultures have thought the soul lived in different organs of the body: the stomach, the liver, the blood, the heart. We now know that the brain is the seat of consciousness. We can track brain activity manipulate it and turn consciousness on and off. We think that if someone is brain dead then they really are dead - their soul must of gone. I wonder if this is true.

The Bible, as usual, provides a for more coherent set of beliefs. Within, or attached to, an early embryo there must be an element of the nature of God, just as a seed contains the nature of the plant into which it will grow.

As the physical and mental being develops, so also the expression of the soul must also grow. I like to imagine the souls of miscarried and neo natal deaths existing in heaven like beautiful, eternal soap bubbles, floating about in the ‘air’, simply enjoying ‘being’. Older infant souls would have a more defined spirit - perhaps like flowers that never fade or, again, perhaps enjoying ‘unselfconscious being’ like a child in a sandpit. (There is no biblical evidence for this but readers could look back in the blog archive where I summarised a book by a Methodist minister about his boy’s experience of heaven whilst critically ill - ‘Heaven is for Real’, by Todd Burpo. Another, although fictional, view of a child’s experience of heaven is given in ‘The Shack’ by Wm Paul Young.) H

However it happens, grown-ups have developed by physical and mental processes to become fully formed individuals with ‘adult’ souls. Child souls in heaven will still be children; elderly peoples souls will be elderly - although both without ‘spot, stain or wrinkle’ and there will be no more sickness or crying or pain (so no dementia, no rheumatism, no Down’s syndrome!). It makes make sense to me that, while I worry about ‘unsaved’ friends down here, I shall no longer worry about them if I get to heaven, nor even be sad that they have declined God’s invitation. The burdens of the world cannot follow us there because heaven is a perfect place, filled with the love and glory of God - ‘no more sorrow… the past things will be remembered no more’ (Rev 21 v4).

I don’t believe the soul is attached to the body by any specific part. If you lose a leg, your soul is not less. If you lose a hand, your soul is not less. If you go deaf or blind, your soul is not less. If you have a brain injury or a brain tumour that incapacities or removes consciousness, your soul is not less. The soul is outside of time and space except for the fact that it is somehow associated with the body, most closely connected to the seat of consciousness, the brain. The soul, in its primitive form, was with God who then gives a soul to the embryonic body. The soul always has the potential to be an eternal soul but whether it or not it becomes one depends on its moral and spiritual development within the body and mind. Unsaved souls wither untimely and cease to exist (the second death - Rev 20 v14 and 15) while saved souls receive everlasting life and return, likes sparks back into a bonfire, into oneness with God (Rev 21 v7). Jesus told us to worship God with all our body, mind and spirit (soul). If we don’t, we cut ourselves off from the source of true life.

Before Jesus’ time, Jewish scriptures (our ‘Old Testament’) only mentioned body and soul (spirit). We follow this tradition when we say, about lack of food: “It’s not enough to keep body and soul together” - that is, it’s not enough to keep a person alive. Also when we use the distress call S.O.S - save our souls - we don’t mean ‘stop us drowning so we can go to church’. We mean ‘keep us alive by keeping body and soul together”. It is a common belief that when the soul departs from the body and goes to the spiritual realm, it leaves an empty corpse behind. Jesus, when speaking of ‘body and soul’, added ‘mind’ to the Old Testament reference he was quoting. In so doing, he was incorporating Greeks thought of the time. They thought humans were body (soma), mind (psyche) and spirit, or essence (pneuma or ruach) and Jesus said: ‘Worship the Lord your God with all your body, soul and mind.’

Occasionally twins are born joined by some part of their bodies. Often this is at the hip or at both hip and shoulder. In the unfortunate event of two bodies being joined at the neck to one head, I think there must only be one soul because there is only one mind. It is in the mind, the psyche, that the battle of good and evil takes place within us.

Jesus said: ‘If a man even thinks about a woman lustfully, he has committed adultery’ (Matt 5 v27-8)

Someone said: ‘First the thought, then the word, then the deed.’ Sin starts in the mind, whether it is eventually expressed physically or not - so, one mind, one spirit. However, when one body has two functioning heads (cerebrally conjoined twins), I think there are probably two spirits. I once saw a TV programme about conjoined twins whose two heads shared one body.

They grew to be middle age adults and each had different tastes (e.g for food). One person was musical, the other wasn’t, and so on. One body, two heads, two souls; NOT because there were two physical brains but because the two brains contained two minds (psyche). As the two minds can make different ethical and faith decisions, so there can be two souls with, potentially, two different fates. One soul, of a believing head, might be Christian and saved and the other, of a non-believing head, might be lost.

Once Jesus was asked the question: “A woman married a man who died without children. In accordance with Moses’ law, the man’s brother married her but he also died without children. She was married to seven brothers, none of whom had children. Whose wife will she be in heaven?” (Luke 20 v29).

Jesus said “In heaven we (as spirits) are neither male nor female and people in heaven are not married nor given in marriage…” Luke 20 v34-5. The appearance of Moses and Elijah with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration shows that our spirits will be individually recognisable after death. Also, in Jesus’ story of a rich man and Lazarus, a poor man, each recognised the other after their deaths. When Jesus appeared after his death, he was (usually) recognisable.

It seems that, while we will still be recognisable and individual, patterns of dominance, legal ties and the issues of sex and procreation will not concern us - they belong entirely to this earthly realm. (I wonder what lawyers will do in heaven - if any get there!) We won’t miss our sex life,legal ties, etcetera. Everyone in heaven will be loving brothers and sisters, as we should be in the church, first relating lovingly to God and then lovingly to one another. As for feelings, the vocabulary of heaven is full of words like rapture and ecstasy, awe and love. As the apostle Paul says: ‘we are being transformed from one degree of glory into another…’ (2Corinthians 3 v18) among the stars there are different kinds of beauty… this is how it will be when the dead are raised to [spiritual] life.’ (1 Cor 15 v41-2).

When Jesus was born, He gave up his divine privileges (emptied himself) and took the humble position of a slave’ (Phil 2 v7). As the hymn says: He left all the glory of heaven, came to earth to die on Calvary.’ In Colossians 1 v19 Paul writes: ‘in him [Jesus] all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. Here Paul is emphasising the pre-eminence and superiority of Christ over all other things. He is not specifically referring to Jesus’ birth.

How Jesus retained or developed the fullness of God within himself is something we will probably never know. We are told that Jesus, before the age of 12, ‘grew and became strong; he was filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was on him (Luke 2 v40) and that, after a visit to the Temple aged 12, he ‘grew in stature and wisdom, gaining favour with God and men’(Luke 2 v52). It is hard to comprehend the growth of a spirit in any child, particularly one who was already God! Was Jesus ever a separate entity from the whole Trinity? ‘I and the Father are one,’ he said. Was this true from Jesus birth? When Jesus ‘gave up all the glory of heaven…’ to come to earth, was his acceptance of the limitations of a human body and of a small, dull human mind also part of the experience of the Father (crudely speaking, as if by telepathy) and of the Holy Spirit? Was Jesus’ spirit at birth a ‘normal, human spirit’ or was he indwelt by the Holy Spirit from birth? Or did the presence of the Holy Spirit commune more and more with him as he grew spiritually? If either of these is true, why did the Holy Spirit descend on Jesus at his baptism? Hard questions to unravel and I think we will never fully understand the answers - we can only tease out what scripture tells us and make a best guess. Certainly we should not become too dogmatic about these things.

Whatever Jesus’ experience of the Holy Spirit as he grew up, we can ask: does the Holy Spirit indwell any child prior to an act of ‘informed consent’ to Christian belief? I think it likely that the Spirit can do so, or, at least, be in close attendance on some. Psalm 8 v2; Mt 21 v16: ‘From the mouths of children you [God] have ordained. There is also the example of Samuel, who, as a child, heard God speak (1 Sam 3 v4 and following). There are also Old Testament examples of the Holy Spirit temporarily falling on people and then leaving them. I see no reason why this should only happen to adults!

It is hard to comprehend how any child could be sinless, particularly with all the 613 laws in the Old Testament. The Pharisees considered all children unclean - or at least, seriously at risk of being so. They wouldn’t touch them (except, possibly, in their own homes after the child had been purified by washing). That’s why the disciples wanted to keep children away from Jesus - they looked on him as their rabbi and children would probably contaminate him. They presumably hadn’t seen Jesus touch and heal a leper yet!

In Jewish culture, children prior to 12 years old were not responsible for their actions. Their parents were responsible for them. So when we say Jesus was without sin, it doesn’t necessarily mean he was never naughty or in error as a child. The Bible says he grew up as a normal child. He would have learned by mistakes and the example, correction and teaching of Mary and Joseph. Having a spirit that was human but essentially Godly, he would have naturally have responded to and absorbed all things that were right and good and developed godliness in his attitudes and behaviour. These attitudes would include openness to God and the Holy Spirit (beyond anything we develop), his prayer life in which he would hear directly from God, an attitude of open lovingness and forgiveness. When, aged 12, he became a ‘responsible adult’, any childish wrongs had been dealt with and he had learnt so much the teachers in the Temple were amazed at his answers. He said to his parents: ‘Did you not know I had to be in my Father’s house?’ To equate oneself with God was a sin to the Jews.

Jesus could say it at 12 and not sin. Was this a revelation to him by the Holy Spirit or a conviction from Mary’s teaching? I don’t think these are exclusive alternatives. If Mary told him, the holy Spirit could give inner confirmation; or the Spirit could tell him directly. Either way, he was right. From that time on, I believe, he lived as a sinless adult.

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