The liberty we find in Christ and the care of the soul


II Corinthians 3:

17 Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.
18 But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.

I sit here with a mug of hot tea and a plate of cherries and orange wedges. I'm pondering the freedom we have in Christ, and how we maintain it. And, within that freedom, the nourishment of the soul.

A couple of days ago, I took my aunt to a vegetarian restaurant. Next door was a New Age book store. The kind of place with crystals for sale and all sorts of New Age, Gnostic and non-Christian religious books. They had a work of fiction by a Canadian author sitting on a table on the sidewalk, price marked down. So, I took the book inside to purchase it.

I scanned some of the material on the inside shelves and thanked God for the freedom I had to be able to go into this store and not worry that devils were trying to lure me astray from every book shelf.

Since then, I've been pondering some of the things I learned in the days when this kind of book store was a destination of choice for me, where, in my searching, I gobbled up book after book on my spiritual journey which eventually brought me to call Jesus Christ my Lord and Savior. (He after all chooses us, right? So maybe I thought I was on a journey, but He was drawing me all along)

Here are some of the thoughts I'm having. Art, music, literature, ideas, psychology that plumbs the depths of human nature such as that of Carl Jung's, has a huge appeal to the human soul. Several years ago, when Thomas Moore's book "The Care of the Soul" came out, I know many Christians who were drawn to this book, even though it talked about the Greek pantheon. In fact, this book spoke to one Christian I knew more than the Bible did because his soul was so starved. I thought that was sad, because I think there was a measure of disobedience in his life that made him unable to find his spirit fed through Scripture. Out of a starved soul, he was rejecting the "thy will be done" that would have put his life in order, and that rejection quenched the Spirit. IT seemed to me he thought he had to take matters into his own hands to feed his soul, not willing to risk radical obedience and finding the divine ordering that would have allowed his other appetites to be filled in proper moderation.

I recall more recently going to a church service where those attending would not be considered Christians in a traditional, confessional way. The discussion over coffee afterwards was rich with intellectual insights. I remembered how I used to enjoy, and still enjoy that kind of talk. Yet what a dead end it was. Cleverly devised fables, I thought. As Christians we can enjoy them, but we do not follow cleverly devised fables, but eye-witness accounts of those who saw, heard and handled the Word of God and were eyewitnesses to His majesty. (2 Peter 1: 16 and 1 John 1.1)

Then, I remembered reading Watchman Nee long ago, and his attacks on "soulishness" in the church, where Christians failed to raise their worship up to a spiritual level, but were instead wallowing in the soul, perhaps substituting the grand feelings generated by the music, by the preaching for the still, small voice of Spirit.

Many Christian denominations have reacted against soulishness by stripping things that appeal to the soul from their churches, because people were mistaking the soul satisfaction for the spirit. The soul started getting in the way of the spirit. Christians were getting caught up with a substitute, a counterfeit, something other than the real deal.

You can also see that at various times in Christian history the body has been treated with contempt because physical desires were seen as an obstacle to spiritual growth.

What I'm thinking on today is this: God designed it all: our spirit, our soul, our bodies. He designed them all as good. However, there is an order that must apply. When we have that order in our life, then everything is good and in its place.

That order is God first, ruling in our spirit, and the soul and body subordinate. But that doesn't mean we foolishly deny the body or the soul its needs, it just means that we put no other gods before God, whether it's our soulish appetites or our bodily appetites. When we put God first, we have that glorious liberty and have nothing to fear from what might lurk in the soul, or in what lures might appeal to it in the arts, or music, or ideas that feed it.

I believe that in order to be whole and balanced, we must treat our physical bodies with care and respect, and that feeding our soul is a worthy thing and not something to be feared.

It's only when we confuse the soul with the spirit, and start elevating soulish activities to take precedence over God, and start feeding our desires in a Dionysian frenzy that caring for the soul becomes dangerous.

I think many Christians are soul-starved as well as spirit-starved. The vital, Spirit-led relationship we're called to have is missing, and thus when something comes along that feeds the soul, and speaks of the gods, or fantasy or archetypes, we feel such a burst of satisfaction that it can send us searching for fruitless repeat experiences that will never, ever satisfy the way the living God satisfies. And, some of these influences can open us up to forms of mental bondage, and even worse, the demonic.

But when we know God, when we are putting Him first, then it's as if a beautiful banquet for the soul is spread before us. With His light as a lantern to our feet we can discern what is wholesome from this banquet, without fear.

While it is wise to fast now and then from what feeds the soul or the body in order to re-affirm our connection with the Holy Spirit, it is also wise to make sure that we are feeding our souls and bodies with the kind of nourishment they need. This is what makes us whole people.

Christians often strike me as such desiccated people, because their faith is a narrow set of theological principles coupled with some vague memories of occasional touches of God. We're called to have life and have it abundantly. We're called to resonate fully, and to have bodies, souls, minds and spirits that radiate Christ down to the last physical molecule. He did become flesh, didn't He?