In Intro9: What is a Soul, What is a Spirit? We showed that a man’s soul consists of his body and his spirit. But Jesus said that we should worship God with our whole heart our whole mind our whole soul and our whole strength.
30 And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. (Mark 12)
So how do all of these things relate to each other. Let's analyze the human being a little further in order fully to understand how we mirror the image of our Holy Father.
The first point to make is that Jehovah God has a heart and a soul:
35 And I shall certainly raise up for myself a faithful priest. In harmony with what is in my heart and in my soul he will do; and I shall certainly build for him a lasting house, and he will certainly walk before my anointed one always. (1Samuel 2)
Since man is made in God’s image, it is not surprising therefore that man also has a heart and a soul:
65 And among those nations you will have no ease, nor will there prove to be any resting-place for the sole of your foot; and Jehovah will indeed give you there a trembling heart and a failing of the eyes and despair of soul . (Deuteronomy 28)
Furthermore God and man (and angels) also have a mind:
16 For “who has come to know the mind of Jehovah, that he may instruct him?” But we do have the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2).
However scripture describes God as pure spirit:
24
God is a Spirit and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth (John 4).
So God is spirit who has a soul a heart and a mind. We know that the bible uses the word heart to stand metaphoricaly for man’s emotions and desires rather than the organ that pumps blood around the circulatory system and we know that the mind is a facility for logical thought rather than a physical brain. The question is, do the mind and heart lie in the soul or in the spirit? We can see the answer be remembering that several demons could possess one human body. So their minds and hearts must have been in their spirits and not in any body.
9 But he began to ask him: What is your name? And he said to him: My name is Legion, because there are many of us.
10 And he entreated him many times not to send the spirits out of the country (Mark 5).
2 and certain women that had been cured of wicked spirits and sicknesses, Mary the so-called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had come out (Luke 8).
This realisation helps us to understand a little more about our very natures and indicates to the writer that we are much more like our Heavenly Father than we might have dared imagine. The main differences being that mankind is an infant in the management of his emotion, is inexperienced in using his logical thought capability in truly creative ways and has had his spirit placed in a very limiting physical vehicle. The following material in this understanding develops these ideas with the help of substantial scriptural evidence.
There are numerous scriptures that direct mankind to love God with their whole being:
5 And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. (Deuteronomy 6)
12 And now, Israel, what doth the Lord thy God require of thee, but to fear the Lord thy God, to walk in all his ways, and to love him, and to serve the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, (Deuteronomy 10)
5 But take diligent heed to do the commandment and the law, which Moses the servant of the Lord charged you, to love the Lord your God, and to walk in all his ways, and to keep his commandments, and to cleave unto him, and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul. (Joshua 22)
37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. (Matthew 22)
30 And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. (Mark 12)
33 and this loving him with one’s whole heart and with one’s whole understanding and with one’s whole strength and this loving one’s neighbor as oneself is worth far more than all the whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” (Mark 12)
27 And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself. (Luke 10).
Now the above accounts cover various combinations and descriptions of the elemental aspects of mankind’s being. So we have the elements: heart; soul; might; mind; strength; understanding. It is noteworthy that none of the above elements are explicitly described as ‘spirit’. Does this mean that God does not want us to love him in spirit? John 4:24 suggests otherwise.
24 God is a Spirit, and those worshiping him must worship in spirit and truth (John 4).
The use of the word ‘strength’ throughout these verses would seem to indicate that God wants us to use the physical strength of our bodies in his worship. I9 tells us that a soul is a spirit in a body. 2Timothy1 show us that the heart,
our emotional character, is in the spirit
7
For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power,
and of love, and of a sound mind. (2Timothy 1)
Following the idea expressed by the science fiction movie ‘The Matrix’, let us conisder whether there is indeed a matrix of connections between the heavens and all human beings. David said to his son...
9
And you, Solomon my son, know the God of your father and serve him with a complete heart and with a delightful soul; for all hearts Jehovah is searching, and every inclination of the thoughts he is discerning. If you search for him, he will let himself be found by you; but if you leave him, he will cast you off indefinitely. (1Chronicles 28)
Well how does God remotely search our hearts? Surely he has a connection to them, some kind of heavenly modem link? It would certainly appear that God has the equivalent of a server read capability into the workings of the client spirit!
Check out Understanding [255] The Heavenly Modem Link.
26
In like manner the spirit [holy spirit] also joins in with help for our weakness; for the [problem of] what we should pray for as we need to we do not know, but the spirit itself pleads for us with groanings unuttered.
27 Yet he who searches the hearts knows what the
attitude
of the spirit [of an individual]
is, because it
[the holy spirit]
is pleading to God on behalf of [the] holy ones [The mother tells the father what the kids are feeling]
(Romans 8).
The above scripture from Romans indicates that it is not only God that can plug into a man’s heart to search his spirit but also the Holy Spirit, God’s Helper, has the capability to hear our prayers and tell God about them. So perhaps we have a three-tier architecture here with the Holy Spirit negotiating between the upper and lower tiers? Furthermore we see that God’s Son, who is himself a member of the holy spirit, also has the capability to read our minds and our hearts:
47
Jesus, knowing the reasoning of their hearts
[via the modem link or due to his vast experience of the behaviour of both men and angels?], took a young child, set it beside him (Luke 9)
Furthermore God can influence mankind’s heart condition and whole spirit by performing a cleansing 'download':
26
A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh.
27 And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them. (Ezekiel 36)
19
And I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within you; and I will take the stony heart out of their flesh,
and will give them a heart of flesh:
20 That they may walk in my statutes, and keep mine ordinances, and do them: and they shall be my people, and I will be their God. (Ezekiel 11)
18
The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit. (Psalms 34)
12
For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. (Hebrews 4)
This must now begin to look quite worrying to the casual reader. It appears we have a God who can not only read our very thoughts,
but also allows his friends to do likewise and furthermore seems to effect our thoughts for his own purposes by going so far as to replace or repair the heart, our interface to the matrix, and even our whole spirit which would include the mind in our present understandings. So God has a maintenance engineering role in place for our connection to the matrix. He is beginning to sound like the most powerful of control freaks! Is this what we would expect of our loving God?
Well it does appear that mankind does have the ability to determine his own heart and mind for good and for service to God:
21
And they came, every one whose heart stirred him up, and every one whom his spirit made willing
[clearly showing that the heart is in the spirit], and they brought the Lord's offering to the work of the tabernacle of the congregation, and for all his service, and for the holy garments. (Exodus 35)
Mankind can also, apparently, request God’s help in repairing (rebooting even!) a damaged heart; a call to God’s maintenance crew?
4
Therefore is my spirit overwhelmed within me; my heart within me is desolate. (Psalms 143)
13
A merry heart maketh a cheerful countenance: but by sorrow of the heart the spirit is broken. (Proverbs 15)
10
Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.
11 Cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy holy spirit from me. (Psalm 51)
Mankind can also determine an evil course for themselves and separation from God. This effectively means that men can disconnect themselves from God’s matrix and influence if they so choose:
8
And might not be as their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation; a generation that set not their heart aright,
and whose spirit was not steadfast with God. (Psalms 78)
3
Son of man, these men have set up their idols in their heart, and put the stumblingblock of their iniquity before their face: should I be inquired of at all by them?
4 Therefore speak unto them, and say unto them, Thus saith the Lord God; Every man of the house of Israel that setteth up his idols in his heart,
and putteth the stumblingblock of his iniquity before his face, and cometh to the prophet; the Lord will answer him that cometh according to the multitude of his idols;
5 That I may take the house of Israel in their own heart, because they are all estranged from me through their idols.
6 Therefore say unto the house of Israel, Thus saith the Lord God; Repent, and turn yourselves from your idols; and turn away your faces from all your abominations.
7
For every one of the house of Israel, or of the stranger,
that sojourneth in Israel, which separateth himself from me,
and setteth up his idols in his heart, and putteth the stumblingblock of his iniquity before his face, and cometh to a prophet to inquire of him concerning me; I the Lord will answer him by myself: (Ezekiel 14)
God has also given instructions for mankind’s own self-maintenance program for successful connection to the matrix:
31
Cast away from you all your transgressions, whereby ye have transgressed; and make you a new heart and a new spirit:
for why will ye die, O house of Israel?
32 For I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth, saith the Lord God: wherefore turn yourselves, and live ye. (Ezekiel 18)
So it seems that a man can decide for himself whether he wishes to establish a link into God’s matrix or not so his spirit is more of a ‘fat’ client rather than just a dumb terminal! To summarise our matrix analogy it seems that the server has a read/write capability into the client but the client can determine whether it wants to be written to or not.
So God’s connection is a facility that is freely available to all but an option that is not always taken up by the client spirit through its component heart. So mankind is allowed his free will and our God is therefore no control freak.
Of course we are not conscious of this connection and consciousness is to do with the mind not the heart. So the modem link cannot be to the mind or we would experience it consciously.
But this technological analogy can be taken a step further; it would seem that God’s central server can also be used by the client as an internet knowledge database at the request of the client. Solomon was clearly a significant user with a large bandwidth:
14 The heart of him that hath understanding seeketh knowledge: but the mouth of fools feedeth on foolishness. (Proverbs 15)
16
I communed with mine own heart, saying, Lo, I am come to great estate, and have gotten more wisdom than all they that have been before me in Jerusalem: yea, my heart had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.
17 And I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly: I perceived that this also is vexation of spirit. (Ecclesiastes 1)
But what is the mechanism by which the heart can gain access to the matrix? Paul’s letters to the Romans and the Colossians literally contain the key to this as does the early Old Testament book of Deuteronomy:
16
Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no more stiff necked. (Deuteronomy 10)
29
But he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God. (Romans 2)
2
Ye are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read of all men:
3 Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart.
(2Corinthians 3)
51
Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do ye.
(Acts 7)
So the cutting of man’s heart with God’s very spirit, the tracing out of the necessary integrated circuitry is the key to gaining access to the matrix and this is clearly a matter of man’s own free will in accepting God’s free gift of immeasurable love. It is worth adding here that Romans 2 also explicitly states that the heart is in the spirit so we have the definitive proof that the spirit comes with its own intrinsic structure.
To demonstrate the free will aspect of the clients’ choice to be connected to the matrix God has, under certain circumstances, allowed the connection to be broken, and this appears to make the heart become harder and more obstinate.
10
This is what the Sovereign Lord Jehovah has said, ‘And it must occur in that day that things will come up into your heart, and you will certainly think up an injurious scheme;
(Ezekiel 38)
30
And Sihon the king of Heshbon did not let us pass through him,
because Jehovah your God had let his spirit become obstinate and his heart become hard, in order to give him into your hand just as at this day. (Deuteronomy 2)
21
And Jehovah went on to say to Moses: “After you have gone and returned to Egypt see that you men actually perform all the miracles that I have put in your hand before Pharaoh. As for me, I shall let his heart become obstinate; and he will not send the people away. (Exodus 4)
The heart is the driving force of our emotions and desires and as such reflects to all the disposition of our spirits and, therefore, what sort of person we each are.
So our hearts cause us to feel emotional extremes of joy and sorrow, God’s as well as our own:
6
And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth,
and it grieved him at his heart. (Genesis 6)
14 Behold, my servants shall sing for joy of heart, but ye shall cry for sorrow of heart, and shall howl for vexation of spirit. (Isaiah 65)
Also our hearts can be described in terms of their desires and tendencies. Wicked intent is seen in the following scriptural examples. This wickedness is clearly capable of being read at the server end but can be repaired through repentance:
5
And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth,
and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. (Genesis 6)
21
Thou hast neither part nor lot in this matter: for thy heart is not right in the sight of God.
22 Repent therefore of this thy wickedness, and pray God, if perhaps the thought of thine heart may be forgiven thee. (Acts 8)
Other negative emotions/tendencies are written in men’s hearts:
hatred, fear, harshness, obstinacy, haughtiness:
41
And Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing wherewith his father blessed him: and Esau said in his heart, The days of mourning for my father are at hand; then will I slay my brother Jacob. (Genesis 27)
28
And he said unto his brethren, My money is restored; and, lo,
it is even in my sack: and their heart failed them, and they were afraid, saying one to another, What is this that God hath done unto us? (Genesis 42)
13
And he hardened Pharaoh's heart, that he hearkened not unto them; as the Lord had said. (Exodus 7)
21
And Jehovah went on to say to Moses: “After you have gone and returned to Egypt see that YOU men actually perform all the miracles that I have put in your hand before Pharaoh. As for me, I shall let his heart become obstinate; and he will not send the people away. (Exodus 4)
20
That his heart be not lifted up above his brethren,
and that he turn not aside from the commandment, to the right hand, or to the left: to the end that he may prolong his days in his kingdom, he, and his children, in the midst of Israel. (Deuteronomy 17)
If mankind’s heart operates in a similar way to that of God, as proposed earlier, does this include the negative aspects? We are left asking the question ‘Is God capable of wicked or fearful thoughts and desires?’. The answer must be yes wince we have that capability and we are his sons. But he knows what the effects of such negative emotions are and so is able to control them to the point that he never desires anything unrighteous. He wants us to learn that same level of control to push our negative tendencies to the background of our thinking and behaviour.
Although quite what might cause our God to be fearful one cannot quite imagine!
8 Although he was a Son, he learned obedience from the things he suffered;
9 and after he had been made perfect [through his final sacrifice] he became the cause of everlasting salvation to all those obeying him (Hebrews 5).
One learns by experience the fruits of righteousness and the fruits of unrighteousness. After a few thousand years of sincere love, one loses all interest in the former! And righteousness becomes written into your heart.
It would appear that the heart can be overloaded with emotion to the degree that it almost ceases to function:
26
Then they reported to him, saying: “Joseph is still alive,
and he is the one dominating over all the land of Egypt!” But his heart grew numb, because he did not believe them. (Genesis 45)
At the positive end of the emotional/tendency scale we have the heart conditions of integrity/honesty, generosity, wisdom,
humility, love, righteousness:
5
Said he not unto me, She is my sister? and she, even she herself said, He is my brother: in the integrity of my heart and innocency of my hands have I done this. (Genesis 20)
41
And that I also have walked contrary unto them, and have brought them into the land of their enemies; if then their uncircumcised hearts be humbled, and they then accept of the punishment of their iniquity: (Leviticus 26)
5
And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. (Deuteronomy 6)
15 They are the very ones who demonstrate the matter of the law to be written in their hearts, upon their conscience bearing witness about them, and between one another of their thoughts, they are being accused or even excused (Romans 2).
22 Let us approach with true hearts in the full assurance of faith, having had our hearts sprinkled from a wicked conscience and our bodies bathed with clean water (Hebrews 10).
So the conscience lies within the heart. It is the spiritual side of the heart, symbolised by the circulation to the lungs and brain. But then the heart also has a fleshly side, an animalistic side, symbolised by the circulation to the body. This conflict between the two driving forces in the heart of man is summed up in Galatians 5...
14 For the entire Law stands fulfilled in one saying, namely: You must love your neighbor as yourself.
15 If, though, you keep on biting and devouring one another, look out that you do not get annihilated by one another.
16 But I say, Keep walking by spirit and you will carry out no fleshly desire at all.
17 For the flesh is against the spirit in its desire, and the spirit against the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, so that the very things that you would like to do you do not do.
18 Furthermore, if you are being led by spirit, you are not under law.
19 Now the works of the flesh are manifest, and they are fornication, uncleanness, loose conduct,
20 idolatry, practice of spiritism,
enmities, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, contentions, divisions,
sects,
21 envies, drunken bouts,
revelries, and things like these. As to these things I am forewarning you, the same way as I did forewarn you, that those who practice such things will not inherit God's kingdom.
22 On the other hand, the fruitage of the spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness,
faith,
23 mildness, self-control. Against such things there is no law.
24 Moreover, those who belong to Christ Jesus impaled the flesh together with its passions and desires.
25 If we are living by spirit, let us go on walking orderly also by spirit (Galatians 5).
Now a conscience can either be weak or strong just as heart muscle and blood supply can be weak or strong. How does this manifest itself? Well the heart has a dual function. It sends blood round the body, which prefigures ones fleshly desires and it sends blood round the lungs and brain, which prefigures ones conscience, one's higher desires. This physiology is telling us that the conscience part of the heart is connected to the mind, and the fleshly desire part of the heart is connected to the conscience which moderates ones animal desires in either a weak or a strong manner. Now the blood loses life giving oxygen as it travels around the body loop, but gains life giving oxygen as it travels around the cerebral and pulmonary loop. So the conscience keeps one alive spiritually whereas the flesh is tending to kill us spiritually.
When one thinks then one is self aware which means one is conscious. Logical thought is the job of the mind.
5 For the living are conscious that they will die; but as for the dead, they are conscious of nothing at all, neither do they anymore have wages, because the remembrance of them has been forgotten (Ecclesiastes 9).
The mind gets us logically from A to B but the heart tells us that we wish to go from A to B.
10
‘For this is the covenant that I shall covenant with the house of Israel after those days,’ says Jehovah. ‘I will put my laws into their mind
[so they become conscious of what the new laws are], and upon their hearts I shall write them
[upon their consciences]. And I will become their God, and they themselves will become my people (Hebrews 8)
16
This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord, I will put my laws upon their hearts
[upon their consciences],
and upon their minds will I write them
[so they become conscious of what the new laws are]; (Hebrews 10)
So the mind and the heart cooperate with each other to form our spirit, to form us, to form our chracter, who we are.
Where is the metaphorical heart and where is the mind in a human?
1. God and man have a heart, a mind and a soul.
2. The heart is the seat of emotions and desire.
3. The mind facilitates logical thought processes.
4. The spirit comprises heart and mind.
5. The heart is the interface through which spirit creatures can communicate with man.
6. Scripture identifies all the important emotions and desires of man as defined through the heart condition.
7. The Conscience lies in the heart and is the part of the heat which communicates with the mind.
8. The Conscience moderates the fleshly desires of the heart strongly or weakly.
9. The strength of the conscience determines whether we are spiritual people, marked for salvation, actually through the baptism test of the 1AC, or not.
The left and right hemisphere of the human brain (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateralization_of_brain_functionparts) are different in how they operate. The Left Hemisphere communicates using words. It has highly developed verbal abilities (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broca%27s_area). It is logical and analytical and therefore, it contains the human mind.
The Right Hemisphere communicates using images, is holistic, intuitive and imaginative, concerned with emotions and feelings and therefore, contains the human heart.
The two hemispheres process the same data differently. The left lobe processes in a linear, or sequential manner, the right lobe processes data simultaneously, or in parallel.
I often find myself providing excellent post factum reasoning for my decisions and actions without any understanding of the real cause of them except that it felt right at the time. Clearly a case of my (spiritual) heart ruling my (spiritual) mind. Whilst we are logical creatures, love should rule our every action.
At this point the reader may be thinking aha, women must have more dominant right hemispheres and men must have more dominant left hemispheres. Really one can argue that gender separation is a designed in cerebral imbalance. God, who exists in a divine genderless spirit body, will have perfect balance between his mind and heart. Whereas men and women are dominated by the one or the other. But this partial separation of our capabilities is what makes us so attractive to each other. Each one of us is institutionally incomplete and unbalanced. Together we form a balanced pair if we cooperate as God meant us to do. For gender is a tutor to love.
So here is a graphical representation of the human spirit and where it resides in the brain...
Sequential processing
Parallel processing
Logical
Emotional
|
The left/right mind/heart structure of the spirit is declared by the Aramaic language in which...
lb
leb means heart in both Hebrew and Aramaic.
bl
bal means mind in Aramaic and is only used once in the OT at Daniel 6:14.
So the heart and mind and stereo isomers (the left/right images of each other)..
OK, so we know the components of the spirit and we know that the heart lies in the right hemisphere which is our parallel processing emotional engine, and the mind lies in the left hemisphere which is our sequential processing logical engine. But how exactly are the mind and the heart implemented in the human brain. Are they simply the hemispheres themselves? Or are they something more ephemeral?
Well from a Christian standpoint, whatever they are must be saveable after death. So they cannot be our physical bodies. What then does God save after death? He certainly saves our spirit, and he puts it into another vehicle, a sleeping angel
So yes folks, that is it. We are all pieces of software! When we die, God uploads us into his heavenly server and then puts us into an sleeping angel until we are resurrected. At the 10th-20th week after conception when the foetus becomes human, God blows into the foetus his spirit. This is him downloading a self developing operating system onto the hardware of the foetus. Not MacOs10 but perhaps ManOs144000!
So we are in fact spirit creatures, even inside a foetus!
Once a baby contains God's spirit, and so is a human soul, it is murder to kill that soul, but not before then. That spirit will exist forever, it will never cease to exist, although its soul may die, which means the spirit enters into the first death or the second death until it is resurrected into a new soul. For God loves that spirit just as much as he loves himself!
In fact God is harvesting the software development that our Self Developing Operating Systems (SDOS) have made to themselves, during our lives, over and above what he originally downloaded into the foetus.
When you are born again you get an associated angel. This angel becomes a part of you and of your spirit. It must provide a continuous live backup facility for your memories in the event of Alzheimers or death etc. In fact anyone with a memory loss problem must be given a temporary angelic host in order to preserve his character and to prevent memory rape. In fact the existence of Alzheimers proves that God stores your memories before you are resurrected if such storage is necessary. God can permit Alzheimers of the mind but not of the heart, for that would be character rape. Your associated angel (shared or owned) is the one that keeps your memories if your mind is damaged we think.
Bible references throughout this Understanding have been taken from the King James Version except where there are significant deviations from the precise meaning of the original Greek or Hebrew texts in which cases the New World Translation has been used.
For more details visit www.jewishlordswitness.com