Soul

If you’ve arrived here with your own ideas of what a soul is, that’s fine– all I ask is that you keep an open mind while I introduce you to what I’ve discovered.

As a lifelong geek, studying computer systems from the very earliest days before the IBM Personal Computer to the present day hyper-parallel super-computers, I can only offer you a theory of a soul by starting you back at the basics.

I’m going to use some terminology to give context to the soul. If you haven’t read it already, you might want to review the diagrams in the chapter titled “A Test Model“.

Mousetraps

Does a mousetrap have a soul? My guess is you would say, “No.”

I don’t think it does either. However, no matter which way you slice it, a mousetrap is a designed combination of components that work together to implement a mechanism with a purpose. It is clearly evident that a Mousetrap is designed. Intelligence behind the design is likewise evident. It’s effectiveness is a testimony to the designer’s clear understanding of principles of physics as well as principles of rodent behavior. But a mousetrap doesn’t have a soul. Yes, a mousetrap is a mechanism, but it is a mechanism without a soul.

In order for a mousetrap to perform its designed purpose, it needs to be set into an “armed” state by an external human force. Once armed, it will react mechanically to trap a rodent. And like all truly valuable designs the purpose of a mousetrap serves humans.

Consider a stove-top coffee pot. Like the mousetrap, it is clearly designed by an intelligence that understands the principles of gravity, heat and water and their behavior when guided through a specialized mechanism. Like a mousetrap, a stove-top coffee pot is set into an “armed” state by an external human force and powered passively by heat. I hope you’ll agree that a stove-top coffee pot has no soul.

But what if we took that coffee pot and made it powered by electricity? Still no soul. What if we gave it an on-off switch? Still no soul. What if we gave it a new design where it turned itself on at a programmed time and turned itself off again after a programmed number of hours or until it detected that all the coffee in the pot had been removed? Now does it have a soul? If it doesn’t, at least we’re getting closer…

I believe that God gave us a model to judge whether something has a soul or not based on whether a mechanism can take over some of the responsibilities that once belonged to the external force that had to manage the mechanism. When we make the coffee pot “automatic”, it begins to take on the appearance of having a soul. The automatic coffee pot interacts with the humans who use it through a convenient interface that both the human and the coffee pot understand. The automatic coffee pot performs a service for the human, releasing the human from the management of the coffee pot, perhaps even ensuring a better resulting coffee. The automatic coffee pot is a servant of the human who commands it.

The prefix “auto”, found in so many of our technology words today, comes from the Greek word “self”. An “automobile” is literally a machine that “moves by itself”. We now have “self-cleaning” ovens. No home is without an “automatic dish washer”, “automatic clothes washer” or “automatic clothes dryer”.

Planes have had “autopilots” for a long time. Our cars have “automatic transmissions”, “automatic windows”, “automatic locks” and even “automatic parking”. At the time of this writing, cars are being developed that can even navigate roads at highway speeds automatically. The goal of nearly every technological advancement is to transfer a management burden from a human to a machine. The best machines have interfaces that are the most convenient and intuitive to humans. Early attempts at automation were dials and push-buttons. Many forms of automation are now activated by voice commands. Eventually, machines with operating systems that manage physical motion and sense stimulus from their surroundings will actually appear to be living souls.

Living Souls

The book of Genesis describes the high-level steps God used to create a universe perfectly suited for His highest creation: mankind. Like the machines developed to be our partners in living, God made mankind with the intelligence and personality to be God’s partners in living. Although God’s creation is so infinitely beyond anything mankind has crudely thrown together, the concept is still somewhat the same. I’m convinced that mankind may come to a point in sophistication and technology where we will surely be impressed with ourselves, but never will mankind be able to create life from organic, molecular, microscopic protein-based, cell-machines like God has. Man does pretty cool stuff, but nothing compares to what God can do. Man may mimic life, but all life comes from God.

The first “living souls” God created were the animals, both water and land, described for us in Genesis chapter 1:

20 And God said, “Let the waters teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth in the open expanse of the sky.” 21 So God created the great sea creatures and every living thing that moves, with which the waters teemed according to their kinds, and every bird of flight after its kind. And God saw that it was good. 22 Then God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters of the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” 23 And there was evening, and there was morning—the fifth day. 24 And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds: livestock, land crawlers, and wild animals according to their kinds.” And it was so. 25 God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and everything that crawls upon the earth according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.

Genesis 1:20-25

The terms “living creatures” (used twice) and “living thing” (used once) in the above passage are all the same Hebrew words meaning literally “living souls”.

In chapter 2 of Genesis, God gives us a detailed look at just how the creation of man took place. In that detail the Hebrew uses the same words which this time are translated “living being” instead of “living creatures” or “living thing”.

Then the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed the breath of life into his nostrils, and the man became a living being.

Genesis 2:7

I’m not sure why translators make judgment calls like this, but I feel they may be trying to hide a sense of pride, hoping to show in Scripture that a human soul is better than an animal soul. Personally I’m not offended to consider the soul God created for me equal by description to the same sort of soul created for an animal. Look around you… how many people find deep, satisfying companionship with dogs and cats? It’s clear that our soul’s need for companionship and affection can be met by another complex soul designed by God. As you will eventually read in other places, mankind was specifically designed to be a perfect companion for God, to share in an eternal relationship and to enjoy and love God deeply and freely. Pets weren’t created for that reason. Similarly, in the “good” world that God created, man should have found a far deeper satisfaction with relationships with other men (men in the mankind sense of men) than with any of the other creatures God created. Only man was created in the image of God and imbued with such attributes that make a relationship with God not only possible, but satisfying. The relationship between a man and a woman was also meant to be a relationship of complete unity… what went wrong is the topic for another chapter.

Before we leave Genesis 2:7, it is interesting to note that the Hebrew term “breath” is sometimes translated in Scripture as a form of the word “spirit”. Compare “breath” used here in Genesis 2:7 with “breath” used in Genesis 6:17

And behold, I will bring floodwaters upon the earth, to destroy every creature under the heavens that has the breath of life. Everything on the earth will perish.

Genesis 6:17

The word “breath” in Genesis 6:17 is the same word used for “Spirit” in Genesis 1:2:

Now the earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.

Genesis 1:2

A soul is “living”, but there is also life from “breath” or “spirit”…. we’ll talk about that more in the chapter titled “Life or Life?“.

Automatic Soul

At the very lowest level, our souls automate the incredibly sophisticated machinery our spirit possess.

Think for a moment about how few of your body’s actual mechanisms have to be managed by you manually. Do you have to adjust your thermostat? The programming built into your body does that (to a limit of course). Do you have to manually control the oxygen level in your blood, or your sugar level or the levels of dozens of chemical hormones and other trace minerals flowing through your veins? Do you manually adjust your heart rate to compensate for your body’s needs? Do you have to constantly monitor the moisture level on your eyes to prevent them from drying out and then squirt fluid on them and wipe them clean? Once food reaches your stomach, do you have to do all the digestive work yourself? Do you schedule blood cleaning?

We tend to think we manage our bodies, but in actuality nearly every part of our body is managed by precise sensors, being monitored by a control program, designed to adjust and adapt to needs in real time.

Yes, there are a few automatic features of our body that we can temporarily over-ride. We can blink wildly for a while or pause blinking. We can hyperventilate or hold our breath for a while. Eventually the body will take over and resume control.

The Hardware Interface Layer

There are so many things a soul can do on its own to manage a healthy state of the body, but there come times when the soul will need some help. If the body senses heat rising from nerves at the tip of you right hand’s index finger, the soul will raise a loud signal to a higher layer requesting a body reflex that will get that finger away from the heat. At the reflex level, this management is still very primitive and automatic.

But what about a signal such as, “I’m thirsty” or “I’m hungry”. These signals are raised above the reflex level and are sent to a place where satisfaction can be scheduled.

Our souls send us hundreds of these signals every day. If we’ve been sitting in one position too long, up comes a signal to adjust your seating position or change your posture. If we’re sensing a sun burn on our bare arms, we’ll get up and move into the shade. If we need to go to the bathroom to relieve some bladder or bowel pressure, that signal is raised and we schedule resolution ASAP.

Those issues that can’t be fixed automatically are signaled up the management chain for attention.

The Application Layer

Situated positionally “above” the automatic aspects of your soul are a set of programmed applications. Most souls come with several that border on the edge of animal instincts.

Instincts

Imagine you were a penguin. You were never “trained” or “educated” about a need to eat a ton of fish, then leave the water and travel miles and miles inland over the ice where you will mate, nest an egg, nurture a hatchling and then return to the sea. What would it feel like inside if a very sophisticated application were guiding your being in this way? Would you hear a voice in your head? Would it be an urge like hunger or an unspeakable intuition that somehow, using a force inside your mind, was pressuring you to behave in a way you never ever had known before?

I don’t know what an instinct would “feel” like or “sound” like in my head, but our souls do interface upward toward our control centers to influence our being’s behavior. Those upward signals can at times be difficult to interpret since they aren’t communicated in a written or spoken language. The upward signals from our soul are essentially “feelings”.

Feelings

Feelings are legitimate, but many feelings aren’t very precise. For example, I sometimes feel down or depressed, unmotivated and lazy. Should I see a doctor for an antidepressant? Almost every time I feel this way, a good night’s rest usually fixes the feeling.

Another common feeling that is too often misinterpreted is the feeling of being “scared” or “frightened”. A legitimate fright is easy to distinguish from a feeling of discomfort or awkwardness. But in social situations sometimes these uncomfortable feelings make us want to run like a legitimate fright. Fear is the most powerful feeling the soul uses, carrying tons of influence when the feeling is submitted to the mind.

Am I feeling irritable, snappy or impatient? Often this is because I am out of relationship with myself– I’ve done something I am not proud of and I need to be humble and apologize. Soul’s don’t like doing these things and will fight back with a mix of crazy signals. Are you stressed? Are you feeling performance pressures from someone? Our silly souls can become almost like unruly children when stressed. Even our bodies can begin so suffer when we fail to properly care for our souls.

In a well-oiled, properly functioning human (which there are very few), these feelings were meant to be acknowledged and scheduled for later satisfaction. As we’ll later see, this process has been corrupted and now feelings are often trump-cards played against the spirit and mind to demand instant satisfaction.

Be Aware of Your Soul

How does the mind and the spirit communicate down to the soul? By a loving, caring acknowledgement that the feelings are legitimate and a promise that satisfaction will be met. This reassurance from the mind and spirit gives the soul the ability to be patient and wait for the future satisfaction. When your soul knows you are aware of it and have the willingness and power to meet its needs, your soul will have peace.

Who’s Really In Charge?

But don’t get me wrong here… the feelings raised by the soul to the mind and spirit are a strong force, influence and pressure. Both body pain and soul needs reach levels called “suffering”. So strong are some feelings that a weak mind or spirit may lose the battle. If you are clueless and unaware of your soul’s power and influence, those desires and urges from the soul may become monstrous. There may be no level of reassurance that will calm a soul out of control– in such cases, the soul becomes “king of the hill”. If you’ve been fasting for forty days and your soul tells you it feels hungry, that message is going to be delivered with such a relentless, severe, high-priority intensity that your mind will become completely distracted until that hunger issue is resolved.

Perhaps you think your soul really isn’t in charge and that you as the spirit of your being are in total, rational control… just try to lose weight sometime– you’ll discover immediately who is really in charge. Try to kick a smoking addiction or worse, a drug or narcotic addiction. Try to get control back after succumbing to internet porn. My guess is you’ve already tried this and you know what I am talking about.

Not only is your soul calling the shots, in order to “feel” good about yourself and your soul’s selfish behavior, your mind will enter into delusions, nearly insane rationalizations to convince your mind that you actually made the decision to let your soul have its way– thus we deceive ourselves… integrity demands that we believe we are good, rational beings, even when the irrational, feelings-based, impulsive soul is running the show.

If you thought this was going to be simple, let me remind you– it’s not! The application layer in our souls is automatically trying to keep relationships balanced, defend itself from being offended, monitor tasks and responsibilities, maximize its experiences of pleasure and comfort, rise socially and gain power, prominence and prestige. Many of these soul-desires have been amplified by sinful corruption. Likewise, because of this corruption, the mind and the spirit’s ability to control these desires has been lost and our beings are essentially in bondage to the power of these desires. If you want to learn more about this, read the chapter titled “What Went Wrong?” Every human being on this planet is living either very close to the edge of, or completely in the grips of an addiction and are unaware of the situation.

Are Souls Bad?

You might be tempted to blame all your failures on this out of control soul we’re bound together with… but let me warn you– that is the recipe for disaster. To see all this in the proper perspective, we must take responsibility for all our actions, even those actions that we know were caused by the selfish, sinful influences of our souls. We must “own” our being’s failures, love and forgive our souls, being grateful for how the soul is managing the mortal life of our bodies. This attitude of unity in our being is required for a healthy life. Hating yourself for your selfish actions leads to a myriad of horrible dysfunctions.

In the beginning, God created us in a perfect world– and that world included bodies and souls programmed with complex and perfect algorithms to manage our earthly lives. God programmed our hungers and desires (even for the opposite sex) in perfect balance with our conscious minds and spirits. Souls weren’t bad in the perfect world God created, but that all changed when Adam and Eve chose to disobey God’s moral laws. Ever since that day, souls haven’t been perfect, but God’s recovery plan is perfect. It is possible to be restored to a better balance and control.

I won’t go into them here, but there are many options available to help gain control over your soul… and they all start with Jesus.

So, What is a Soul?

The soul is a complex program designed to automatically manage the lowest level needs of the body as well as be responsible for higher needs for physical, social, relational, and inter-personal satisfaction. God created our beings with the intention that the soul would NOT be the decision maker for our beings, but because of the corruption of our souls and the death of our spirits, the normal experience of every human alive today is bondage to its selfish demands.

As was mentioned before, with early training and education, a soul can be disciplined with manners, courtesy and equity to meet minimum requirements for a functioning society, but if discipline is ignored, humans will become evil beasts. Even with discipline, the soul is still a selfish, corrupt force, giving us a constant battle– only through God’s plan of redemption do we have any hope of returning to a state free from the power of sin.

There is hope…