1 Thessalonians 5:23 (soul)

I last entered a post about 1 Thessalonians 5:23 and discussed the aspect of the spirit and how it functions. The soul is a lot more complex. There are three parts to the soul: the mind (noos) the heart/emotions (kardia) and the will (boulomai). These three parts are often confused in Christian circles and I hope to show what they really were designed to do. You may have heard people say, "It didn't get from their head down to their heart" when explaining why some believers don't act on truth. Still a contradictory statement to this is the "willful child" scenario where a child or adult is referred to as willful when they stubbornly keep a course of action despite punishment or consequences. These both are incorrect and I will show why they are. Remember the spirit is the method by which God communicates to us and infuses power to our behavior. The spirit in us has to agree with God about anything He says and trust it before that information will travel to the mind. In many ways the mind and spirit function in tandum. Our spirit communicates trust of God's communication, the mind then evaluates that information and makes a compelling argument to the will to act upon that information. The mind is the faculty by which we observe, analysis and make relationships between pieces of information. Remember in John 14, Jesus promised the disciples that the Holy Spirit would bring back to their memory all that He had taught them. Memory here is hupomimnesko, meaning to bring back to one's mind. The mind is how we learn about things and people around us, store that information and build upon it. Our spirits translate faith to the mind so that the mind can store that information, use it and make the self understand it. Paul says in Romans 12:1 to metamorphoo, be changed from the inside out by the renewing of our minds. Changing our patterns of thinking is difficult but through faith managed by our spirit we can change how we think. When we trust God's character and who He is we encode that information into our minds and when a situation presents itself, the spirit translates faith to the mind which remembers who God is and persuades the will to act on the information the mind now possesses. This all happens in a split second. Because we don't make ourselves consciously aware of what is transpiring we often miss how to change how we think. Let me explain. The heart, (kardia) is the seat of emotions. Without the spirit having functioned as the head of the self for years, the emotions or heart give primal or irrational reactions to the environment around us. Many times our emotions have reactions that don't match the reality of the situation for instance being fearful of someone we love with no evidence that they are dangerous. In this crazy mix of emotions we can encode wrong emotional reactions to situations around us in our minds and with no evidence to override these emotions the will takes the more powerful argument. So the mind has to be empowered by the spirit to put the emotions and body under control so that the will can get the correct information from the Spirit. The mind is not something to be dismissed as in the first comment I mentioned. The will doesn't act without information either. If a person is stubborn it is because they trust something that may not be true or good for them. No one is actually willful but rather control by a bad influence whether it is their mind, their emotions or their body. We have to convince our minds of truth and once it is persuaded then it will persuade our wills to act accordingly. If the spirit within us in under control of the Spirit of Christ then it will order the mind, emotions, body and will so that a chain of order is consistently kept. This is what 1 Thessalonians 5:23 was talking about. I will post an entry on the heart another time.