Disconnect

There is a disconnect

Between your heart and your head

I want to resurrect

Our souls as heavy as lead

Your heart and head are torn in two

You think with your heart  

And feel with your head

You have forgotten what you knew 

You have severed your heart from your head

Your feelings destroy your rationale

Your thought ignores your humanity

The affect is your soul is now dead

The truth will set you truly free

Set you fully free indeed

Yet you sell yourself in slavery

Blinded by your insane creed.

Men go mad because they lose their minds

Men go mad because they lose their heart

Man will become just a lone lunatic

With heads of sawdust and hearts of brick

And this one is finished except it doesn't have a title. I like it though. I think its one of my favorites.

What can man do against such reckless hate?

How can we fight such unabating death?

To charge into Hell to meet the teeth of fate

To fight for life until we take its last breath

Desperation beats upon us like dark rain

Death flows down our tired backs, dripping away

And we are dissolved down the empty drain

And we are lost even from hope of day

Ride out with me, Ride out and meet them I sing

To open blind eyes, to release the captives

Though they may fall to shadows, they are the real thing

So to fight is the truth, and the only way to live

The flood of doom may engulf  our windswept isle

But it can not destroy the roots in the sea

It can destroy our home, and turn us to exile

But we will forever know we are truly free

When most inclined to sleep, let us rouse ourselves to live

We will fight for this good earth, though we have little to give

Soul

Soul, is translated from the Hebrew word “psyche” meaning life, but what is the soul exactly? Our spirit is the eternal self. It is the part of us redeemed from the death of sin, by the spiritual death of Christ. The spirit is the “pneuma”, the breath that God gave Adam. The Soul is the connection of Life. It is the connection between our body and spirit. Where the natural, and the supernatural meet. Our physical life, and our spiritual life come together at this point.

Our brain is a physical entity. Its part of our physical self. But this creates a problem. From a strictly naturalistic perspective, the world is a huge set of dominoes.  In that everything is merely a domino piece in a long chain of causes and effects. I do something merely because my genetics, my environment etc caused me to do that. This creates a problem with strict naturalism though. Because, if everything is merely a cause of some effect, that would mean that my thoughts were merely the results of a random colliding world. And if that were true, then logic, would have no basis in truth. Because after all, if our thoughts are merely the result of a long illogical chain of events, how could it be logical? I only think it logical that 2+2=4 because I grew up in a society that indoctrinated such. I only believe that a square circle can’t exist because of a malformation of my brain.  Naturalism by proving everything wrong, starting with God, and ending with free thought slits its own throat. After all, why would you believe someone’s “logic” to be valid if it were only the effect of a malformed brain? Would you trust someone who believed that aliens had come from space, because that someone had been dropped on their head? Would you trust someone who was a democrat because they had been raised in California? Or a Christian who lived in Birmingham? How can our thoughts have a connection to truth? The Soul. Our Mind is not our Brain. Its our thoughts, taken into the eternal. Our ability to think logical free of natural laws controlling our thoughts, is because our Mind is above natural laws, being connected to our Spirit in the eternal. Our thoughts are not merely the result of chemical laws, but rather truly does have validity. Our beliefs are not merely boiled down to our genetics but our choice. That is why we are allowed free thought.

Emotion, empathy, can be traced to several different parts of our brain. We can specify exactly where a certain chemical is released into the brain. This seems to bestialize our emotions. The blind, senseless urges of a dog in heat. Surely our emotions can be traced to our brain, just as our logical functions are traced to areas of thinking in our brain, but how do we explain our feelings towards Beauty? How do we explain Art? After all, from a naturalistic perspective it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Why feel good when you see some painting? What purpose, what evolutionary advantage (such as having camouflage to hide, or a horn to defend) would it have?  Why would we have those urges? Those feelings. And what about Joy? I don’t mean just extreme happiness. I mean Joy as defined by C.S. Lewis. The closest word in a lot of ways is the German word Sehnsucht, which means “longing”. It’s a sharp desire that we all feel. A need for something “out there” We see it in the dawn, and in the twilight. We see it in books, as well as in Bach.  It’s a longing. A sharp pain. A knife to the heart. Are these just the random misfirings of a confused ape?  No. Because we have our emotions taken out of our merely physical self and realized fully by our Heart. A knife to heart, or rather to our Heart. See, with our sentient self, we are not able to understand and look at observe our emotions. We are not controlled by them but rather control them. In addition not only are we able to observe outside our emotions, but they become more apart of us. They are not merely passing instances of pain or pleasure, but they are ourselves. An animal may feel pain for a while. Moreover, it can even remember that pain. However, they cannot own that pain. It’s merely a flash through their body. They may feel sadness but not despair. They may feel happiness but not Joy.

But as I have said, we must control these two things. Our Heart, and our Head. We control them through what is called Will. Our free will. Free will is the ability to choose (or will) freely. See, and that is where we pose our problem with strict naturalism again. A world where we are merely dominos is not a world of choice. You are not a serial killer because you chose to be, but because you had a bad home. You are not a hero because your selfish altruistic gene caused you to choose to live as you do. And Choice is what defines moral decisions. We have no responsibility; we merely go down the grooves carved out long before any man carved in stone. We are the effect of millions and billions of senseless useless random events. But of course this leads to despair. For we can not choose our course. We can not choose our actions. We can not even own ourselves for our thoughts and feelings are only the result of a cosmic giant long before and after us. In a way, our naturalism becomes pantheism, for we all become part of the universe, for there is no “I”. It must be said that we can’t really prove this. Just as you can not prove that logic does not exist through logic, you also can not prove it does exist. We must merely accept that logic has validity, that our emotions have value, and accept ourselves as free. Otherwise we degrade into mania. So we must make a choice between madness and sanity.  Better to be a mystic than a lunatic.  

So in conclusion, this is what I believe the soul to be. A connection between body and spirit. The physical drawn into the eternal. Our mind, heart, and will.

The Biblical proof of this idea

I think that I can back up this idea with the Bible too. First of all check out 1 Thessalonians 5:23 “Now may the God of peace himself make you completely holy and may your spirit and soul and body be kept entirely blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” It lists the three parts of man. Body, the physical, Soul, the connecting force, and Spirit, the eternal. See, the Bible distinctly says “For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any double-edged sword, piercing even to the point of dividing soul from spirit, and joints from marrow; it is able to judge the desires and thoughts of the heart..” Heb 4:12. Now there are a couple of things I think I should point out. First of all, notice that it distinctly, specifically sets apart of idea the soul, and spirit. It says that are two different things. Specifically it says that. Second, I think something interesting to notice, is that it says that the Word of God judges the thoughts and desires of the heart. See in old testament times, there wasn’t the idea that divided the soul into “heart and head”. You thought, and felt with your heart. There was not this differentiation. There was unity between the two. To explain that difference of definition lets look at the greatest commandment. Jesus actually quoted the Old Testament when he told us to love God. What’s the OT says is “You must love  the Lord your God with your whole mind,   your whole being,   and all your strength” De 6:5 But see here I am using the NET translation, which strives to give the most current understanding of the Hebrew words. Most other Bibles say “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength”. In the translation notes (60,000 of them in the NET Bible which is one reason its so useful for in depth study) it says on the issue of the “heart/mind” change: “Heb “heart.” In OT physiology the heart was considered the seat of the mind or intellect, so that one could think with one’s heart.” On for the “whole being/soul” change it says “Heb “soul”; “being.” Contrary to Hellenistic ideas of a soul that is discrete and separate from the body and spirit, OT anthropology equated the “soul” with the person himself. It is therefore best in most cases to translate as “being” or the like.” See the heart, it our place of emotions, and of thought. As I mentioned earlier the Word of God judges both the thoughts (mind) and desires (heart) of our soul. Heart and mind are not two separate things, but rather apart of one thing. Our Soul. And our Soul is not distinct and separate from our body, or spirit. Rather it is the connection between the two.