[Cal]

Part of the debate on soul and spirit hinges on what we mean when we say something is genuinely beneficial or helpful to a human being. When hyper-spiritual Christans say counseling cannot really help somebody, what they mean is that counseling cannot itself ultimately save someone's soul. But this is still an extreme view. Because counseling might be the first step to getting someone to a place where they can receive genuine salvation from God. So in that sense it is very helpful.

Saying that psychological counseling cannot help someone carries all sorts of ramifications that anti-psychology advocates probably never considered. If counseling can't help someone, then neither can training a child in life lessons, or giving your wife flowers, or calling your mom and telling her you were thinking of her, or cooking a meal for a sick neighbor, or listening to a grieving friend, or any other legitimate good work, because those are directed at the human soul. Yet all those kinds of things convey the love of God to people every day.

Like most LCers, I looked down my nose at "good works," because they weren't spiritual enough for me. That was nothing more than ignorant snobbery. I've come to see now that some of the most spiritual acts I have ever witnessed have been simple acts of love and service which met people's needs and potentially opened their hearts to God.

There is a beautiful connection between spirit and soul there which I think God intended and which the LC spirit-good/soul-bad dichotomy tramples underfoot. The spirit and soul are meant to complement each other and work together, not to be antagonistic with each other. Did any one ever think that this is what it means when we say our "soul magnifies the Lord?" What do LCers mean when they say we need to "express God," anyway? Sometimes I think they don't really know. It's just a high peak concept to them.

The Bible says the Spirit wars against the flesh. I don't think it ever says the Spirit wars against the soul. When the Bible says deny the soul and lose the soul it doesn't mean lose the function or even experience of the soul, it means to give control of it over to the Holy Spirit. It means surrendering what we think, feel and decide to do over to God. When the Bible says the soulish man cannot understand the things of God, it simply means without the Spirit we cannot have what theologians call "special revelation."

The teaching that we should not enjoy things "in our soul" is at worst an absurd contradiction and at best a poor way of expressing a basic truth. We are our soul and beside that it's pretty tough to enjoy anything without our emotions being involved. The truth should be rather expressed as: Whatever we do we should do under God's control, whether it is laughing at a joke, playing with our children, taking our bride (or husband) out on a date, or just marveling at nature. The Bible says God has given us "freely all things to enjoy." Not enjoying those things all around us which he has given could be construed as a lack of appreciation and worship.