Bipartite or Tripartite Nature of Man?

[Freedom]

I might be opening a can of worms here, but I wanted to have a discussion on this subject. The POV that I'm coming from is that as I became disillusioned with the LC, I realized that much of what they call exercising the spirit was just show. This led me to question just what importance the teaching of the human spirit/three parts of man actually had. When the actual practice of the teaching was bizarre things like yelling and shouting, it just made me start to wonder what purpose it all really served in the first place.

WL taught that the spirit is the organ to contact God, by which we have God-consciousness and it differentiates us humans from the animals. The other key point to the teaching was the idea that to use/exercise the spirit was to open your mouth. There is a LC song with a line that goes something like "have you found your human spirit? It's connected to your mouth..." It all made sense to me at one point in time, and the supposed simplicity of it, just seemed compelling. The real shocker for me was when I began to consider that there are countless numbers of Christians who are neither aware of nor accept the tripartite view of man, yet they have no problem knowing and contacting God. So in summary I don't buy into the notion that those who don't hold a certain view of man are only 'accidentally' contacting God.

Of course, the elephant in the room is all the verses that seemingly support the teaching of the three parts of man. It is not my intention to address these verse in detail just yet, but I want to explain just why I'm not so keen on this idea of the three parts of man. As a bit of a humorous, tongue-in-cheek example, consider the following verse:
Ecc 3:21 Who knows the spirit of the sons of men, which goes upward, and the spirit of the animal, which goes down to the earth? (NKJV)

Spirit of the animal?!? I thought we were told in the LC that only man has a spirit? In interest of full disclosure, it is of little concern to me what this verse actually means. That is actually partially the point that I want to make, because I doubt the phrase spirit of the animal is of much concern to anyone. If by chance someone decided to develop a teaching that animals have a spirit, and used this verse as their proof-text, then and only then would it be considered a significant verse - and only by those who actually bought into such a teaching. In like manner, I believe that this is what WL often did with certain verses.

With respect to the teaching of the three parts of man, there are a several verses that are given a great amount of importance in the LC. Interestingly, these verses aren't viewed as being important in the actual context of what they're talking about, but because they support something that WL taught. When I read 1 Thess 5:23, what sticks out to me is the phrase sanctify you completely. The listing of body, soul and spirit seem to be there to emphasize this. The way I think about it is when Paul wrote this, was his intention to define a doctrine of a tripartite nature of man or to emphasize being sanctified completely? I would say the latter. I think the same can be said of Heb 4:12. When I read that verse, what I see as being the key point is that the Word of God is sharper than any two-edged sword. The mention of the division of soul and spirit along with joints and marrow seems to be more metaphorical than anything else. Anyways, I'm curious to hear what others have to say on this subject.