Tag: christianity

Your Body, Soul and Spirit

A big question that affects both life and life after death is, “What are we?” You would think that we would know this answer before anything else, but this question is very deep.

Those with a materialistic world view would say that we are just a body. To be crasser about it, one famous evolutionist says that we are just “machines made out of meat.” We are just chemistry doing what chemistry does. This philosophy either makes you feel liberated to do whatever feels good or plunges you into the depth of despair because you are nothing. You have no purpose. You have no future.

The machine made from meat idea obviously doesn’t agree with Scripture. I would have to say that it does meet with experience either.

Another view is to see yourself as just your consciousness. That you are a spiritual being temporarily occupying a physical form. This worldview has the support of the fact that we will all die and our bodies will decay (unless we are alive at Jesus’ return). It doesn’t have the support of both Jesus’ resurrection and the promise of our own resurrection. The earthly body may need a total remake, but it is an important part of you.

I would like to consider the following passage:

23 Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

1 Thessalonians 5:23 (ESV)

Words mean what they writer thinks that mean. So someone may use soul and spirit as synonyms, while another is thinking of two distinct things. Since Scripture is inspired by the Holy Spirit, I would expect that these words have distinct meanings, especially considering this one:

12 For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

Hebrews 4:12 (ESV)

The Greek behind “soul and spirit” is “psyche” and “pneuma”. I don’t think we should get too Freudian because of psyche. I like this definition, “The psyche is the is life that the spirit gives to the body as long as the two are connected.” (R.C.H. Lenski) So our soul is our consciousness which includes such things as thoughts, emotions, feelings, desires, memories. The spirit is the immaterial/extra-dimensional part of what we are. This definition is backed by how the word “soul” is used throughout Scripture. For example:

I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.

Psalm 139:14 (ESV)

Our spirit then becomes something that we experience indirectly. At death our spirit and our bodies are divided because of sin. What do we “experience” then? Near Death Experiences may give some insight. If we are temporarily dead, then perhaps we are temporarily in a state of separation of spirit and body. We have senses but they don’t use our sensory organs. For example, people can “see” things in the operating room with their eyes closed and their brain flat-lined. We may feel that our spirit is all that we need and that a body and the embodiment of our spirit (our soul) is not necessary. But we have been created to be embodied. Hence the resurrection.

While the information about such details is sparse, I believe that even our experience of Heaven prior to our resurrection is embodied. It is just a body that is a part of Heaven’s time and space. More about that here:https://afterdeathsite.com/2020/02/04/we-will-be-made-multi-dimensional/

Eventually, we will have and will be both a being who can exist in this universe and one that can exist in Heaven: One spirit, a resurrected Earthly body and a soul from the interaction of the two, also a Heavenly body and a soul for that embodiment.

When Nobody Speaks Your Name

There is a tradition common among several cultures that speaks about dying twice. The first is when you physically die. The second is when you are forgotten, and nobody speaks your name. Variations on this belief can lead to distinctive practices. For instance, some cultures will memorize their family tree. Others will mummify their ancestors and take them out for special occasions, or there will be some other form of ritual to ensure that the ancestor is remembered. The Disney movie, Coco, incorporates this idea. Is it necessary to be remembered? What happens if you are forgotten?

Unless you are somebody who is quite famous or infamous, it is guaranteed that people will eventually forget your name. I have had a lot of success with researching my family tree. One branch I can trace back to before 1000 AD with a decent amount of certainty. The other branches don’t go back so far. They are likely forgotten by all. Hundreds of millions and perhaps billions have lived and died and left no living memory of themselves. Perhaps it is why some might do horrible things in hopes of just being remembered.

Let’s make this clear. Eternal life is not just being remembered by someone. Eternal life is being remembered by God. God forsakes and forgets the damned. But the dead in Christ continue to exist and live in happiness in the presence of God with or without being remembered.

And as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God: 32 ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not God of the dead, but of the living.”

Matthew 22:31-32(ESV)

Is it a lack of faith that leads some to doubt that those who die can be alive elsewhere? I once went on a tour of Israel. At the Church of the Holy Sepulchre there is an area that holds the traditional place of Jesus’ crucifixion. The very place where Jesus died to win for us eternal life is encased by three altars. We were in the central chapel while a Roman Catholic tour group was in the chapel next to us. I overheard the priest say something like this, “I don’t know what eternal life is, but would like to think that is has something to do with being remembered.” I was dumbfounded by this dumb idea. Eternal life has nothing to do with being remembered and we should celebrate that fact.

It is nice to remember somebody. But I assure you that they probably don’t know if you remember them or not, and their existence is in no way diminished or enhanced if you do. Memory is for our benefit. We can learn from the past. We can have an important thankfulness for what people did to make our present possible. But only Christ makes eternal life possible.

Heavenly Free Will

It is exciting to think about what our bodies may be like in Heaven and the New Earth. Can we move between Heaven and the New Earth? I think we will. Will we be stronger, faster, bigger, more coordinated? Will we look significantly different? Will we still be recognizable? All these things are mysterious and exciting, but I find one question disconcerting. Will we have freewill and if so, could not the whole cycle of sin start again?

There are a few things that we either know or can infer about the initial creation. Adam and Eve had completely free wills and had no knowledge of sin. They had one command and therefore only one way to mess up. The temptation to sin came externally from Satan. Satan was also created with a completely free will. Only vague information is given about His fall into sin:

You were blameless in your ways
    from the day you were created,
    till unrighteousness was found in you.
16 In the abundance of your trade
    you were filled with violence in your midst, and you sinned;
so I cast you as a profane thing from the mountain of God,
    and I destroyed you, O guardian cherub,
    from the midst of the stones of fire.

Ezekiel 28:15-16 (ESV)

Angels were also impacted. Nothing is known about the mechanism of their fall, but an approximate proportion is given:

3 And another sign appeared in heaven: behold, a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads seven diadems. 4 His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth. 

Revelation 12:3-4 (ESV)

If this is about the angels, then, somehow, two-thirds remained without sin despite the availability of a way to fall.

In Heaven and the New Earth, Satan is out of the equation. Also gone is the genetic distortion that we refer to as our sinful nature. Is that enough to preclude sin? Will we not also still have “knowledge of good and evil”?

In Heaven and the New Earth, there will also not be a way to be linked to somebody else’s sin. Adam and Eve made the choice. We inherited their genetic distortion.

God has always sought love from His creation. Love requires freewill. To love you I must have the opportunity to hate you. So I expect that there will be an opportunity to fall away. A forbidden tree in the garden. I also expect that knowledge of evil will be an advantage this time. No one will be seriously tempted to rebel against God because we will have genuine love, a great existence and a knowledge of what rebellion means. An individual’s rebellion would not bring down the house. Perhaps that is why this passage is there:

No more shall there be in it
    an infant who lives but a few days,
    or an old man who does not fill out his days,
for the young man shall die a hundred years old,
    and the sinner a hundred years old shall be accursed.

Isaiah 65:20 (ESV)

https://afterdeathsite.com/?s=Isaiah+65

If you feel a dread that you would choose to sin and be cast out of God’s Kingdom, just like a child who insists on putting their hand on a hot stove, don’t worry. Your attraction to do wrong is a part of your sinful nature. There won’t be a temptation to the forbidden. Your knowledge will keep you away, as well as, the presence of Jesus himself.

Our experience of Heaven and the New Earth is something to look forward to rather than something to dread. Stick with Jesus and I’ll see you there.

Honoring the Elders

When I am bored sometimes, I scroll through Instagram to find an interesting video. One caught my eye yesterday. It showed a man bringing out a mummified human from a grass hut in central New Guinea. Having a mummified descendent in their home was a way for this tribe to “honor their elders.”

I clearly come from a different culture. I wasn’t that thrilled about having my parents over for a long time when they were alive. 

Honoring elders is a large part of many cultures. It is understandable why that would be. Death often creates a great sense of loss. Incorporating communication and other ritual that involves the deceased keeps them emotionally close. If you depended on the knowledge of an older generation, you might seek to have a knowledge stream continue after death. Finally, if your sense of having a relationship with God is very vague, continuing a relationship with dead ancestors might be a substitute.

Certain cultures may have stumbled or were presented with ways to communicate with the dead. Seances and Ouija are more contemporary methods of communication with the dead. The Bible also records efforts of the Canaanites to do this and there is the story of the Witch of Endor (1 Samuel 28).

Whether out of grief, need, or a sense of responsibility, honoring your deceased elders needs to have definite limits. Great danger lies in crossing the line. God warned the Israelites not to copy the practices of the people of Canaan.

9 “When you come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominable practices of those nations. 10 There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens, or a sorcerer 11 or a charmer or a medium or a necromancer or one who inquires of the dead, 12 for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord. And because of these abominations the Lord your God is driving them out before you.

Deuteronomy 18:9-12 (ESV)

Many people today would scoff at the suggestion that these things are even possible. But think about the following:

  1. The dead are not non-existent. Even the damned are somewhere.
  2. Creating communication with any of the dead before Jesus, or those who are still in Sheol today, is a matter of bridging the separation between Sheol and Earth.
  3. While there are no natural ways of doing this, it appears that a form of “spiritual gift” can do this.
  4. Since God forbids it, this spiritual gift comes from the power of Satan. (Pharoah’s “magicians” were able to copy Moses’ sign of turning a staff into a snake and also the plague of frogs)

Many so-called mediums are just clever con-artists. That doesn’t negate the possibility that darker means are not legitimate. But one has to consider whether attempting to exercise such a power “honors” or “dishonors” our elders. 

Disobeying God is never honorable. Why would God forbid a connection that would ease our grief? We are not privy to this answer, but several theories come to mind. First, are we treating elders like God? God will act on our behalf, dead elders can’t. God hears our prayers, dead elders can’t. Death is a consequence of sin. It is a temporary or permanent separation we must accept. God is the source of information about life after death. Information sought from dead elders may be misinformation from the evil one. 

Playing around with or seriously using purported means of communicating with the dead also seems to expose people to more serious control of the demonic.

The most famous case in the U.S. was the source of the book and movie, The Exorcist. The event happening in 1949 in Maryland and was documented by the Washington Post. A boy and his spiritist aunt played around with a Ouija board to attempt communication with the dead. When the aunt died, the grieving boy attempted the use of the same method. What happened instead was a terrifying case of supernatural events and possession that finally ended in a hospital in St. Louis. The location of their home in Cottage City, MD continued to be surrounded by horrifying phenomena. A woman was found decaying in a plastic bag nearby. A man went crazy and decapitated his mother a few doors away. Also nearby, children were arrested for hacking off the limbs of their parents. The forces of Satan are not our friends.

There is one other reason to temper communication attempts with our dead. We may not wish to hear it. Heaven is awesome. When we die in Christ, we are swept away in joy and love and probably think very little about the life we have left. Nor do we have to. God is on the job to help those still on Earth.

What would be appropriate honoring of the dead? Speak well of them. Imagine them in their new glorious state. Flowers and visiting the grave is good. Talking to them might be therapeutic for you. Don’t imagine that they are birds at your feeder (I don’t know where that idea comes from). More importantly, honor your elders while they are here with you. Make sure they know and believe that eternal life comes from Jesus’ life and death. Then honor God with your life. Over-dependency on people both in life and especially in death is a bad thing. 

When Does Eternal Life Begin?

Does this title seem like a stupid question? I hope to show you that it is more complicated than you first think. It depends on the definition of “eternal life”, so let’s start with that.

God has made human beings to be eternal creatures. Once we have begun our existence there is an innate quality that preserves our existence forever. It is part of being created in the “image of God”

26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

27 So God created man in his own image,
    in the image of God he created him;
    male and female he created them

Genesis 1:26-27 (ESV)

When do we begin? The answer is probably conception. Our body and our unique genetic code begin then, and these are definitely a part of our being. The body is not just a rental. Does our spirit/soul begin then? We have no information. I think there is reason to say that the soul does not pre-exist our body, but it is possible that there might be a lapse between conception and having a soul.

The Bible does not care to refer to our existence as sinful human beings as “life”. I’ll call it “existence” instead. A definite change in our existence happens with baptism in the name of the Triune God. Baptism doesn’t look or feel like much, but God’s promise is forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:38). When you dig down into how we receive the forgiveness of sins, you find that these things needed to happen: Jesus, as a human, had to fulfill God’s Law perfectly, He then had to pay the Laws demands for a sinner on the cross (namely be forsaken by God), then an individual needs to be spiritually united with Jesus for Jesus’ actions to apply to him or her. God normally accomplishes the last one through baptism. I want to emphasize that this is the function of baptism, not a “sinner’s prayer”, nor coming to intellectual faith. So you could say that eternal life begins at baptism even though you still carry around an earthly body that is doomed to die.

The next choice, and most popular choice, is your physical death. At death, if you are in Christ (still connected by what God does at baptism), you temporarily leave your earthly, sinful body and your soul now joins with a heavenly body restricted to Heaven. 

 For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.

2 Corinthians 5:1 (ESV)

Being in Heaven does not feel like a restriction. It feels like life that is truly life and we can call it “life”. It is not complete, however. Part of you is missing still. You are your spirit/soul, your heavenly body, and your earthly body. Like I said, your earthly body is not a rental.

Eternal life made complete happens with Judgment Day and the resurrection of the body. All portions that make up what we are will be redeemed at that point. https://afterdeathsite.com/2020/02/04/we-will-be-made-multi-dimensional/

So, when does eternal life begin? You may pick the answer. Realize the process God has put in place for us. An uglier but parallel process exists for those who reject Jesus. Also understand what you are and what produces the complete you.