What is the Soul?

The following is the first installment of a two-part entry:

If you want the short answer to the question, "what is the soul?" it's this: I don't know. But if you have time, read on and I'll attempt a deeper dive into the question. In his book Consilience, E. O. Wilson noted that sociology has identified belief in a soul as one of the universal human cultural elements. Every culture has some type of belief in the soul, and yet no one has really been able to concretely define it. For some reason the ability of "soul" to stand outside the gates of a strict definition is part of what makes it so appealing to me. Turning to the "wisdom" of childhood I asked my six-year-old, Abby, "what is the soul?" And she said, "oh you mean like after you sell something." No help there (but even though she got the word wrong, I was kind of impressed that she got the tense right). Then I went to ask the eight-year-old and she said, "um, yeah, I think it's like when you . . . actually I have no idea." And she went back to watching tv. So much for the "mouths of babes."

But then I don't know what I expected. Children think in concrete terms, and as I mentioned earlier, the soul is far too fluid to be confined to a concrete definition. When I was a child I had the concrete faith of a child. I knew who God was, I knew who Jesus was. I knew where they lived--up there in heaven somewhere. I knew what they looked like. God looked kind of like a bright white star, and Jesus looked kind of like Billy Ray Cyrus. Only he frowned at me a lot because I'd get mad at people and think bad words in my head. Well as I've grown, I've found it harder and harder to grasp exactly what God is . . . I just can't seem to construct a definition whose walls God is content to stay inside. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said, "I can't define pornography but I know it when I see it." Well I feel much the same way about the soul. I can't define it, but I know it when I feel it. So rather than trying to define what the soul is I want to discuss the relationships in which the soul blossoms and reveals itself.

“And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”—Genesis 2:7 To me this scripture gives us the first relationship that reveals the soul and that's the relationship of human and divine. Here we have this beautiful explanation of how we are made from the physical stuff of this earth, but that we also have the unseen breath of God in us. It means there is more to us than meets the eye; and boy am I thrilled about that. When I was in college my sister, Jill, had a new friend over to the house who had never met me in person and she saw a picture of Jill and me on the mantel over the fireplace and said, "Oh, is this your brother? I'm so sorry, I didn't know he was mentally challenged." Let me tell you, I for one am glad that there is more to me than meets the eye. Each person is a unique aspect of God. That thought used to be for me, like a millstone around my neck because I could never live up to these expectations I'd made for myself as someone who supposedly had Christ within me. That goes back to Billy Ray Cyrus Jesus I mentioned earlier that scowled at me a lot because I couldn't live up to how I thought he wanted me to be. But the soul is the synthesis of the spiritual and the physical, the perfect and the imperfect, the strong and the weak. It lives at the intersection of the human and divine. This world is full of people who are focused purely on the physical, and that typically leads to hard times. But there are others who try to shun everything in this physical world and deny themselves every physical desire and we can find plenty of examples of that not working out so well, either. Personally, I'm inspired by people who seem able to embrace both aspects of themselves.

If you've read the books or seen "The Lord of the Rings" movies you're familiar with the wizard Gandalf. It's certainly not a stretch to say that his character is a Christ metaphor. The author of "The Lord of the Rings," JRR Tolkien, was a self-professed Christian and great personal friends with Christian author CS Lewis. As the story begins, Gandalf is known as Gandalf the Grey and he's a bit dingy and mysterious and almost scary. In the first third of the trilogy he dies, but later re-emerges in the story. He's back to life and all cleaned up. He's no longer dingy, but now brilliant. And the "new" Gandalf is no longer as mysterious or scary as he is awe-inspiring. Finally, and perhaps not suprisingly his name has changed from Gandalf the Grey to Gandalf the White. And at this point in the story I always get a little sad. I love Gandalf the Grey, but Gandalf the White seems unapproachable to me; somehow not real. In popular culture the word soul tends to be equated with the word "real." Soul music is real music, that touches you at your core. I want my heroes, I want my savior, to be righteous and concerned for others, but I also want them to be comfortable slipping out behind the building to share a dirty joke with the smokers. I want my heroes to be soulful/real, to be a mix of the human and the divine. And to me, it's at this crossroads of the spiritual and temporal that soul really begins to reveal itself.

In the next entry I'll explore another way the soul reveals itself.