A Theory of Soul Consistent with Scripture and Neuroscience - Part 10: A Personal Example of Soul and Body in Action

[See here for introductory comments.]

 

             In this entry, I want to use a personal example to bring together a few of the ideas presented so far.  This example will combine the "noodles for reins" analogy [here] with the fundamental principle that most of what we do follows the pattern of "dog activity" [see discussion here].  When you put these two things together, you realize that the soul's influence might be pretty rare and is certainly weak.  The question that arises then is "when is the soul ever active?"  I want to provide an initial answer to that question using the following personal example.

 

Personal example of soul in action

             As an undergraduate, I was always on the thin border of being able to afford college.  In order to make ends meet, I needed to get scholarships, grants, work study jobs, and regular jobs.  I was constantly worried about whether I was going to be able to make the next tuition and room & board payment.  My dad worked, but my parents were not in position to help me substantially with college and, in fact, they lost their house during my freshman year of college. 

             After my first year of college, I gained a better understanding of how the federal financial aid system worked.  In my first year, the financial aid package included some amount that was supposed to come from my parents, but they were not able to do that.  During that year I learned that if I could qualify to be an "independent" on my taxes, then my parent's income would not factor into the financial aid calculation.  That seemed like a good plan to me, but I had to meet all of the criteria.  I don't remember all the details, but I recall there were three criteria and I met two of them easily.  But the third criterion was something like "you can't live with your parents for more than six weeks during the past year."  I had attended summer classes, so I hadn't lived at home during most of the year.  But when I added up the total time I had lived at home, it was something like eight weeks - just exceeding the official limit to qualify to be an independent.

             At the time, I was trying to "live by faith" and believe that God would provide sufficient funding for school.  I had already experienced a couple of miracles in that regard - someday I will have to relate that story.  But, miracles or no, I was constantly worried that I was not going to be able to pay the next bill and I'd have to take whatever money I had left and take the 48-hour Greyhound bus ride back home. 

             When it came to doing my taxes that second year, I struggled.  I almost met the criteria to be an independent.  Two out of three I easily met.  The third I was sooo close.  And if I could be an independent, I would get so much more aid.  I could pay for school.

             So...I lied on my taxes that year.  I claimed I met all three criteria and was an independent.

             What I want to do in this entry is relate my actions to the different components of my theory of the soul.  The decision to lie on my taxes was a moral decision, but driven strongly by the rational and emotional aspects of my mind.  There was an emotional component of the decision:  fear and anxiety.  I was certainly fearful about not being able to pay for school and fearful that if I wasn't declared an independent, I wouldn't get enough financial aid to pay for school.  And there was a rational component to the decision:  it seemed like a small thing because I was really close to qualifying.  And, besides, how could the IRS ever find out anyway?  There was no track record of where I lived during the past year (this was long before cell phones with GPS), so how could it ever be proven?  And what were the odds that the IRS would ever audit a poor college student?

             I used the term "mind" in the previous paragraph because I wanted to be vague.  Now let me break this down into the spiritual and physical realms - soul and body.  First, let me say this:  although I certainly believe the soul and physical body are different and distinct things, I think it is very hard for us to discern where one ends and the other begins.  The soul and body are intricately linked and I think it is hard to separate some of our actions into physical and spiritual categories.  I'll dive into this more when I talk about anger, which is certainly one of those characteristics of humans that resides in both the body and the soul.  But despite the difficulty in separating our actions into soul and body, I'm going to give some general thoughts regarding this situation that I hope will shed light on my theory of the soul.

             First, there are plenty of aspects to my decision to lie on my taxes that were purely physiologically-based.  But, since I don't think dogs lie on their taxes, there must be some aspect of my actions that was soul-based.  The fear of not being able to pay for college was strongly physiological.  We know that there are areas of the brain that are active when we are afraid or anxious.  There are also general physiological responses to fear that, to a greater or lesser extent, further heighten our sense of fear.  There is a positive feedback loop that can sometimes be detrimental to us.  I think the desire to extract ourselves from any situation that produces fear or anxiety - the "flight" of the autonomic nervous system - is nearly all driven by our physiology and can happen without the intervention of our soul.  Dogs avoid fear.  The things that cause human beings fear, such as not being able to pay for college, are certainly more abstract than what dogs fear, but that doesn't change the fundamental fact.  I think our physical brains are capable of extensive abstraction, allowing us to respond in fear to all sorts of rational and irrational concepts.  I think the drive to avoid fearful situations and find a place of calm and comfort is a very strong physiological drive.  Going back to the "noodle reins" analogy, trying to keep the horse from jumping when it hears a rattlesnake rattle is an almost impossible task for the jockey. 

             But fear alone was not sufficient to cause me to lie on my taxes.  I also needed the rationalization that 1) I was very close to qualifying and 2) I wouldn't be caught.  Our ability to rationalize must be one of those things that requires both the physical brain (mostly frontal cortex, I'm assuming) and the soul.  The ability to rationalize seems to me to require a broad, unified view of the situation we are in.  Specifically, it seems that rationalizing requires consciousness.  Since consciousness resides in the soul, then the soul must be involved in rationalization.  But I also think there is a lot of "computation" to rationalization which probably takes place in the physical brain.  Where does "thinking" lie?  In the physical brain or in the soul?  At the very least, our awareness of our thinking lies in our soul.  But the thinking itself?  I don't know for sure.  I think it could be that most of our thinking takes place in our brain and our conscious awareness of it is mostly in the sense of a spectator.  We are aware of our brain thinking.

             So, coupled with my fear, I rationalized that lying on my taxes was not that big of a deal.  It was "not that bad" I reasoned.  But, of course, I'm not the only one to lie on my taxes.  There are some who intentionally don't even pay their taxes.  I could have just not filed taxes, or any of a number of other equally wrong actions.  Where is the "setting" for how much of a lie on my taxes was "not that bad"?  I believe it is within the soul - the will - where these kinds of personal standards are established.  With my soul I decided to go ahead with filling out my taxes in a way that was not true.  Actually, "decided" is too strong of a word here.  In reality, based on my fears and rationalizations, I was fully prepared to claim I was an independent.  But ultimately my soul did not put the brakes on that action.  My soul let it happen.  But, even further, it's not like my soul was strongly opposed to proceeding.  My character, embodied in my soul, is pretty typical of most people, I think.  I generally want to do the right thing, but I also place a bit of a limit about doing the right thing and I have a very fuzzy border between right and wrong.  So, in the case of this particular action, my soul was complicit.  I didn't work that hard trying to keep myself from proceeding!

             So, I filed my taxes, claiming I qualified to be an independent.  And, it worked.  I was declared an independent.  My college financial aid was calculated based on my income alone and my college aid was maximized.  To be honest, I'd like to say I felt bad for doing it.  I'd like to say that I felt guilt over being dishonest on my taxes.  But I didn't really.  I felt uneasy, but it was the unease that you feel when you think you might get "caught".  That was it.  I made the same claim in the remaining years of my undergraduate schooling, but in later years I hadn't lived with my parents in excess of the maximum number of weeks, so I really did qualify.

             Let me just note here, before I go on, that when you ask the question "so, what part of you is responsible for lying on your taxes?  Your body?  Your brain?  Your soul?  Your will?"  I think there is only one good answer:  "I was responsible."  Though I am a dualist at heart, and therefore I think there really is a difference between body and soul, physical and spiritual, I also see each human being as a cohesive whole.  I'm not two separate people, i.e. a body-self and a soul-self that just happen to hang out together.  I'm one person.  We can't use the concept of dualism to start justifying any concept that "you" can separate from the guilt of your physical self.  Sorry - it's not that easy.

             Well, quite a few years later, when I was in graduate school, something happened that caused me to face my guilt about lying on my taxes.  I say "something happened" because I actually can't remember.  It may have been my own personal study of the Bible.  Or it might have been something someone said to me about living a life pleasing to God.  Regardless, I saw clearly that lying on my taxes was just plain wrong, regardless of whether it was "not that bad."  I was guilty.

             I rebelled against this idea with every fiber of my being.  But it didn't change the facts.  I had to admit guilt and make it right.  How could I do that?  I had no idea, but I had to try.  So, you may laugh, but what I did was to write a letter to the IRS, explain exactly what I had done on the specific year of taxes in question.  I didn't know if the IRS even had a mechanism to receive and act on a letter like that.  I can't imagine they get many letters from people admitting they lied on their taxes!  But they actually did read the letter because I received a response from the IRS in which they asked for some additional documents, which included a copy of my parent's taxes for that year.  It was rather embarrassing for me to have to ask my parents for a copy of their taxes from a few years earlier.  Although, come to think of it, why did the IRS need a copy of anyone's taxes - don't they have copies???  Anyway, I sent the required documents and never heard anything further.  That was more than 30 years ago.

             So why do I relate this "Part II" to this story?  Because I believe it illustrates a deeper component of my theory of the soul.  My action to admit my guilt and write a letter, while carried out by my physical body, was driven by my soul.  Actually, not even my soul.  I believe it was driven by the Holy Spirit.  If I use the horse and jockey analogy, this was one time when I let go of my "noodle reins" and let the Holy Spirit use his "steel reins."  As I said at the beginning of the previous paragraph, I "rebelled against this idea with every fiber of my being."  By that I mean that my body and my soul were united in rebellion against any suggestion that I should make this situation right or even that I was really guilty.  This situation was not just a physical response to inputs or past memories.  This was years after the event.  It was certainly not something I obsessed about in the intervening years.  In my opinion, this was purely an act of the Spirit.  If you don't believe in a spiritual realm, then of course you will claim there was a physical explanation for why I suddenly felt guilt and took steps to do something that I really didn't want to do.  Good luck with that!

             I don't expect it will ever be possible to do this experiment, but this is a case where, if you could read the entire set of neural activity in my brain, you would have found at least one neuron acting in a way that was not entirely consistent with all of its inputs.  This would be the influence of the Spirit via the soul upon my physical brain.  That is one of the fundamental claims I make in my theory of the soul, and I believe it has to be a fundamental claim any dualist (or similar) must make.  But these events are rare and can't be prescribed.  As I look back over my life, the event I relate here, where the soul and Spirit are clearly involved, seems to be pretty rare.  That is why it is so difficult to do an experiment to demonstrate this basic principle.

A Theory of Soul Consistent with Scripture and Neuroscience - Part 9: Running away with the horse and jockey analogy

 [See here for introductory comments to this general thread.]

             I can't resist running with the noodles and thorns analogy just a bit further.  After all, this is my blog, so I can do what I want.

             The basic premise of "noodles for reins" is described in the previous blog [here].  Briefly, the analogy I am using to describe the soul-body interaction is to imagine a jockey on a horse, where the horse represents our physical body (especially the brain) and the jockey represents our soul (especially the will and the "efferent pathway" connecting the soul to the brain).  Further, I said that the jockey has soft spaghetti noodles for reins and the reins have handles covered in razor sharp thorns.  Yes, it is a strange picture.  If that analogy didn't resonate with you, then you might want to skip this entry and go to a more concrete personal example [here].

             What I want to do now is extend this to a broader view in which I use this analogy to compare the "commonly-accepted academic view" of the body-soul condition vs. what I consider the common Christian view of the body-soul condition.  Granted, there is a lot of variability with respect to either one of those views, so please treat my use of those labels loosely!

             First, I'm going to start with the Christian view, then present the Common Academic view.  This analogy has helped me to visualize the stark differences in these two ways of thinking, so I'm hoping it helps you as well.  Also, I will just note that I think the typical view of the "average non-academic, non-Christian" falls somewhere in the middle of the two views I will be presenting.  For example, I think most people believe that each person has a soul of some sort even if they do not ascribe to any particular religious view.  In that sense, I think the "average person" would be surprised at how completely and overwhelmingly the academic world has jettisoned any concept of a human soul.  It's pretty clear that neuroscientists do not write song lyrics!

             The Christian view of the human condition has to be split into two separate conditions.  This is because Christians hold to the concept of "salvation", or, as Jesus said, "you must be born again."  Thus, there are humans who are in the condition of having been born once, and there are humans who are in the condition of having been born twice.  First, let's consider the "born once" case.  Here is a summary of the features of that condition (again, this is just an analogy):

 

•        Christian view of the Born-once Human Condition

•        Like a jockey guiding a horse in a race

•        Horse is our physical body

•        Jockey is our will/mind/heart…or soul

•        Jockey has spaghetti noodles for reins

•        The reins have thorns on their handles

•        The horse and jockey are riding in darkness

•        The jockey is embarrassed about the state of his reins

•        Side note:  the Biblical “self” is both horse and jockey together

 

       In contrast, for the Christian, to be "born again" means that God, in the person of the Holy Spirit, in some manner "indwells them." [Rom 8:9]    Jesus even refers to being born again as being "born of the spirit." [John 3:5-8]  It is clearly a transformation that occurs in the soul because we know that the physical body of Christians is no different after being "born again."  So...what are the key features of the analogy for this born-twice condition?

 

•        Christian view of the Born-twice Human Condition

•        Like a jockey guiding a horse in a race:

•        Holy Spirit now also riding on the horse

•        Holy Spirit has steel reins

•        The Holy Spirit can see clearly the path ahead

•        Jockey can still try to use the noodle reins

•        Holy Spirit only uses his steel reins when the jockey lets go of the noodle reins and puts his hands on the Holy Spirit’s “hands”

 

             Now I want to talk about these two conditions and draw out some thoughts.

             First, the Born-once condition.  The jockey tries hard to control the horse, but with noodles for reins, it is a hopeless task.  With effort, sometimes the jockey can control the horse, but it is clear that, at any point, the horse could overpower the jockey.

             The horse is really a horse in this analogy.  It is living.  It "makes decisions" so to speak, but it does not have free will.  It responds.  It seeks what is good for itself.  It is selfish.  It seeks comfort and pleasure.  It avoids pain.  It is a living, breathing animal.

             The jockey is the locus of free will.  I acknowledge that, with respect to this part of the analogy, all I'm doing to represent a human being with free will is just substitute a specific human (a jockey) with free will.  It's not much of an analogy, but that's because there is nothing else in the entire universe that is analogous to a human soul other than another human soul (in my opinion).

             Here's where self-help comes in.  By hard work, it is possible for the jockey to learn to control the horse somewhat.  The jockey can train the horse to respond in a more or less repeatable way to the weak tug of the noodle reins.  Thus, building positive habits is useful in changing our actions.  With repeated effort we can break bad habits.  This is why there is a whole world of self-help books and ideas, and they really do work to improve our behavior.  But every attempt at improving human behavior will fail in a major way:  the reins are still noodles.  So, despite all the repeated effort by the jockey to train the horse and keep it under control, the horse can, at any time, overpower the jockey and suddenly go back into bad habits.  I believe this analogy describes our collective human experience.  With effort we can be better, but it is always so tenuous and we always end up doing things we regret.  Our human efforts can make things better, but those efforts do not transform the fundamental situation and the fundamental problem that we have as human beings. 

             The jockey has to go where the horse goes.  Thus the jockey is strongly affected by the decisions made by the horse.  The jockey is embarrassed by his inability to control the horse, and so he often tries to act as if he really is in control with his noodle reins.  He tries to justify, in his own mind (and to whoever will listen), that wherever the horse goes is "where I wanted to go in the first place."  This is why we have such a strong tendency to justify the actions of our natural bodies.  This is a downhill spiral.  Things that bothered us initially - our reactions to events, words we speak, thoughts we think - eventually start not to bother us.  And then eventually we give in and rationalize why those actions are "ok" and then "good".  In that way the horse influences the jockey and changes the jockey.  This is what happens to us.  The more we keep "doing the things we don't want to do", the more we get worn down and then we give up and we give in.  And then we are embarrassed by giving in and we try hard to figure out how to say "it is good" or "I meant to do that".   

             As Jesus describes, the horse and jockey are also riding in darkness.  Thus, even in those rare cases when the jockey has the right desires, and has trained the horse to respond properly, the jockey still has no hope of staying on course because he can't see the course.  The horse and jockey end up hopelessly lost and, worse yet, don't even know they are lost.

 

             Second, in the Born-twice condition, the fundamental transformation that occurs is that the Holy Spirit comes and sits behind the jockey.  The Holy Spirit has reins of steel and certainly is capable of fully controlling the horse.  But the horse is still the jockey's horse.  The Holy Spirit waits for the jockey to drop their noodle reins and hold onto His hands as He drives and directs the horse. 

             The problem in this condition is that the jockey can still pick up the noodle reins and go back to old, failing habits.  The steel reins of the Holy Spirit are still there, but are limp as the Holy Spirit waits for permission from the jockey.  The practice of "living by the spirit" [Romans 6-8] is learning to drop our noodle reins and hold on to the Spirit's powerful hands. 

             The jockey may feel like he is guiding the horse via the Holy Spirit's steel reins.  When the jockey is in sync with the Spirit, it is hard to sense who guides who.  This describes the struggle Christians have in trying to describe whether the Christian life is lived by faith or by effort - a struggle that is described beautifully by Paul in the last half of I Cor 15:10  "...I worked harder than all of them-- yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me."

             Why doesn't the Holy Spirit just take control?  Well, if the Holy Spirit just displaced the jockey, then the horse and jockey would no longer be a "self".  All you would have is the Holy Spirit controlling a horse that is temporal and destined for death anyway, and so what would be the point?  The idea of a continuing self would be lost in that scenario.

             At some point, we physically die.  This represents the loss of the horse with all its ingrained habits and problems.  The jockey survives and is united with a new horse [I Cor 15:35-55].  With the new horse comes real reins.  And the new horse does not have the old habits.  But, at this point we have stretched the analogy well beyond its usefulness, so I must stop.

             This analogy has holes in it, of course, and, for example, it doesn't address the manner in which the Holy Spirit transforms the soul [e.g. Rom 12:1-2].  But I have found this analogy helpful as I think about my own behavior and as I think about how my spiritual and physical self works together.   I have found it helpful in visualizing how to "live by the Spirit."  Therefore I wanted to put it out there for consideration, in case the concept is helpful to others.

             Now let's turn to what I called the "Common Academic View."  Here's how I would summarize that condition:

 

•         “Common Academic” view of the human condition:

•        Humans are just the horse – no soul/will/mind beyond the material brain

•        Horses are just grazing – no ultimate purpose, no race, no goal

•        The Horse believes it is “in the light”

 

             In this view, the horse is just wandering in the meadow, distracting itself with amusement until it dies.  Granted, there are some awesome, powerful, and fast stallions in the meadow.  The meadow has some beautiful flowers in it.

             But the end is the same.  Death[1].

 

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[1] As I mention elsewhere, this condition is clearly illustrated in Tolstoy's "A Confession".