Soul Keeping

by John Ortberg

  The study is summarized in an article with the snappy title, “Neural Consequences of Religious Belief on Self-Referential Processing.” Non-religious subjects used one part of the brain (the ventral medial prefrontal cortex, in case you’re interested) to evaluate themselves, but another part (the dorsal medial prefrontal cortex) to evaluate others. Christians used the same part of the brain to evaluate themselves that they used to evaluate others. Researchers hypothesized this is because they were actually using a kind of “Jesus reference point” for self-evaluation; they were really asking, “What does God think of me?” UCLA researcher Jeff Schwartz said that this study is one of the most important scientific papers published in the last decade. Prayer, meditation, and confession actually have the power to rewire the brain in a way that can make us less self-referential and more aware of how God sees us. But these impediments to sin may not come easily.

  Peter wrote, “Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul.” In our day, soul language often conjures up images of herbal-tea-drinking, Birkenstock-wearing, flower-growing, scented-candle-lighting, conflict-avoiding granola crunchers. But that’s not what Paul is talking about when he talks about soul work. He says soul work is war. Spiritual war.

  People in certain church circles attribute just about every inconvenience to spiritual warfare. Once, on the way to a speaking engagement, I barely made it on time because I had a flat tire. One of the people at the site where I was speaking said, “Boy, that’s spiritual warfare.” Well, maybe, but I found myself wondering, “If a demon really was trying to keep me from getting to that church on time, why wouldn’t it mess with the transmission or the fan belt or the ignition system? A flat tire is the only thing I know how to fix in a car.” Peter was not talking about the ordinary consequences of life, but the soul-destroying effects of disintegration.

  Sin’s ability to disintegrate the soul is the subject of a book by a Duke professor named Dan Ariely. In The Honest Truth about Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone — Especially Ourselves, Ariely is astounded by how widespread people’s tendency is to cheat, be self-centered, lie, and be deceitful. He discovered that we are driven by two primary motivations. One, we want to receive selfish gain. We want to avoid pain. We want it so much that we are willing to lie or cheat or deceive for it. We want what we want, and we’re willing to cheat to get it. Two, we want to be able to look in the mirror and think well of ourselves. That means we all want to view ourselves as basically good, honest, honorable people. Clearly these two motivations are in conflict with each other.

  How can we enable our selfishness with deceit on the one hand but at the same time view ourselves as honest, wonderful, noble people? “This is where our amazing cognitive flexibility comes into play. Thanks to this human skill, as long as we cheat only a little bit, we can benefit from cheating for selfish gain and still view ourselves as marvelous human beings.” What Ariely calls our amazing cognitive flexibility, the apostle Paul calls “the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness.”

  It took me longer to read Ariely’s book than I expected because someone stole the book from me, and I had to get a new copy. Who would steal a book about being dishonest? When they read it, what did they think about this book about dishonest people who would cheat and lie and steal?

  Ariely’s book clearly gives empirical verification for what you and I know happens all the time. Here is a tiny example I hope you cannot relate to: Ariely says, “Over the course of many years of teaching, I have noticed that there typically seems to be a rash of deaths among students’ relatives at the end of the semester. It happens mostly in the week before final exams and before papers are due.” Guess which relative most often dies? Grandma. I am not making this stuff up.

  Mike Adams, a professor at Eastern Connecticut State University, has done research on this. He has shown that grandmothers are ten times more likely to die before a midterm and nineteen times more likely to die before a final exam. Worse, grandmothers of students who are not doing well in class are at even higher risk. Students who are failing are fifty times more likely to lose Grandma than nonfailing students. It turns out that the greatest predictor of mortality among senior citizens in our day ends up being their grandchildren’s GPAs. The moral of all this is, if you are a grandparent, do not let your grandchild go to college. It’ll kill you, especially if he or she is intellectually challenged.

  SIN BEGETS SIN

  Ariely goes on to write about how a single act of dishonesty is not a petty act, because it ends up shaping how we view ourselves. We are souls. Everything is connected. That singular deceit determines how far we will allow our standards to slip and still regard ourselves as basically good people. Every act of wrongdoing (sin) leads to the greater likelihood of another act. Start as small as you want. Stand in the express lane in the grocery store with too many groceries in your cart — seventeen grocery items in the twelve-or-less aisle. Try to board a plane when it’s not yet your group’s turn. “I’m not dishonest. I’m in a hurry. I’m too important to wait my turn.” Something as small as a pair of fake sunglasses will still register on the scale of your soul.

  Once you rationalize that first sin, it makes it more likely that you will say, “It was the traffic,” when it wasn’t the traffic. It makes it more likely that you will say, “I’m sure I sent that email,” when you know you did not send that email. If you say it often enough, you will come to remember and believe you sent that email. It makes it more likely that you will cheat on an expense account or fudge your résumé. Is it any wonder that workplaces become filled with gossipy, cynical, judgmental people exaggerating their own contributions and minimizing those of others? We tolerate jealousy, sabotage, and greed, but only enough so we can all feel good about ourselves — because we’re good people.

  Sometimes wrongdoing increases so much it can’t be rationalized anymore. When that happens, the common response is not repentance. It is not people saying, “Oh God, how could this happen? How could I be capable of this?” What happens is much more like what happens when you are on a diet. If you cheat moderately for a while, you will think you’re still on the diet. But if somebody blows it a lot, what will often happen is that their mind will say, “Well, I’ve already blown it, so I might as well just binge and eat anything I want to.”

  When I cross over that line where I can’t pretend anymore, generally what will happen is that moral behavior will collapse completely. You see this sometimes in scandal-ridden companies or corrupt executives, in abusive families, in the nightmare of child molestation. Even in the unbelievably scarring words hurled at anyone who does not look or think like us. You reach a point where you know that what you are doing is so wrong, but you don’t care anymore. You see it in whole cultures: Rwanda. North Korea. Stalin’s Russia. The Third Reich.

  Do you know what the name of this effect is in psychological research? It’s called the “What-the-Hell” effect. I can’t pretend anymore, so I might as well just wholly give in to my urges and gratify what I want, regardless of the consequences. What might those consequences be? What the hell? That dynamic is present not just in those bad companies, those high-profile executives, and those horrible regimes. It is right here. In me. In you. What the hell?

  The soul is able to bear only so much truth. Perhaps it’s like having a child: if anyone really knew the cost ahead of time, no one would ever do it. In the same way, if I were to see the depth of my own self-deceit and self-centeredness, I might give up on the possibility of change before I start. But there is hope, for as Francis Fenelon reminds us, “God is merciful, showing us our true hideousness only in proportion to the courage he gives us to bear the sight.” And the prophet Jeremiah bears witness: “I remember my affliction . . . the bitterness and the gall. I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me.” The soul remembers things that I forget.

  I saw my advisor from psychology g
raduate school recently. He reminded me of a time when I had done an internship and received a fairly negative evaluation. I had no memory of what he was talking about.

  He reminded me in some detail — and with a little too much enjoyment. Yet nothing registered in my brain. He still had the file in which my deficiencies had been pointed out. There was my name.

  Oh, yeah! I realized, as he spoke, that it was no coincidence that I had simply forgotten (or, more accurately, “put it out of my mind”). A negative evaluation did not fit with the positive achieving image I wanted to have of myself. So I did the reasonable thing and found a way to forget reality so that I could maintain the image. There was another alternative, of course. I could have stepped back from my feelings, open to looking at reality.

  My soul was trying to tell me something: “Don’t be a therapist!”

  I might have saved lots of time and money if I had been willing to pay attention. But it was too threatening to my sense of worth. So I forgot it for twenty-five years until remembering that it wouldn’t cost me anything anymore. On the other hand, when my mind focuses on that which is good, the integrating power of the soul calls to my will to choose it, and my body to live it.

  Yet another experiment offers insights into the soul. This one involved 450 students at UCLA. Researchers divided them into two groups and asked one group to remember some trivial memory: ten books you had been assigned to read in high school. They asked the other group to try to remember the Ten Commandments. The students in the ten books memory group engaged in typical widespread cheating. The students in the Ten Commandments group did not cheat at all. Merely the act of trying to remember the Ten Commandments made them think, “I was made for something better.” This despite the fact that not a single student in the Ten Commandments group was able to recall all of the commandments.

  “The law of the LORD is perfect, refreshing the soul.” That doesn’t mean moral rules can transform a human being, but it does mean the soul was made to love and do the will of God.

  A GOD-GIVEN ACHE FOR GOODNESS

  Conviction is not just the pain of getting caught or pain over consequences. It means a God-given, really sober sense of remorse over what I ought to feel remorseful about. It’s a God-given ache for goodness.

  A prodigal son comes to his senses. The mighty King David is humbled by a phrase: “thou art the man.” A sinful woman aching for forgiveness bathes Jesus’ feet with her tears. In the same way the stomach hungers for food, the conscience hungers to be cleansed. It is a God-given ache for goodness.

  During the most painful era of our marriage, I would often look at a picture of our children. There’s an old prayer that goes, “God, help me to be the man my dog thinks I am.” I don’t even think the dog was too impressed with me then. But when I looked at our children, it somehow reminded me of the man I wanted to be. Somehow, looking at their faces made me see both the soul that I was and the one I wanted to be. It made me ache to be a better person.

  I sat with Dallas and Jane during a visit that was painful, but there was hope in the pain. There is a pain that means things are coming apart. But then, sometimes there is a pain that means that things might be able to come back together. Surgery can be as painful as stabbing, but it leads to healing. I knew I was beginning to heal.

  I contrasted the pain that was bringing healing for me with that of a family I have known my whole life long, who had gone to church every week of their lives. Both parents died in their old age. It turns out the mom had been desperately unhappy, writing about how she wished so much she had married somebody else. At the same time, the father had been living a secret life. Nobody knew. Nobody found out until after he died, discovering pictures that revealed his deception. Their daughters were miserable. There had been this pattern of deceit and pain. So I held my pain dear, because it meant I was no longer deceiving myself. My soul was responding to its God-given ache for goodness.

  I left Box Canyon those many years ago and flew home to talk with my wife. I felt like Humpty Dumpty, trying to put together what all the king’s horses and men could not. But the soul will surprise you sometimes.

  PART 2

  WHAT THE SOUL NEEDS

  CHAPTER 6

  IT’S THE NATURE OF THE SOUL TO NEED

  In the 1991 comedy film What about Bob? Bill Murray plays the title character, a neurotic, phobic, obsessive-compulsive personality with innumerable needs. I quote (from memory): “Problems breathing. Problems swallowing. Numb lips. Fingernail sensitivity. Pelvic discomfort. What if my heart stops beating? What if I’m looking for a bathroom and I can’t find one and my bladder explodes?” Richard Dreyfuss plays the exasperated, impatient therapist who is stuck caring for him.

  Your soul is Bob. You are Richard Dreyfuss. It is the nature of the soul to need.

  The will is a form of energy. You can drive and stretch and push the will. The mind has an endless ability to think and feel. You can direct your attention. You can focus and study. The body is your little power pack. You can place demands on your body. You can exercise it, strengthen it, hone it, and force it to run for miles.

  But it is the nature of the soul to need.

  The soul is a little like the king on a chessboard. The king is the most limited of chess pieces; it can only move one square at a time. But if you lose the king, game over. Your soul is vulnerable because it is needy. If you meet those needs with the wrong things, game over. Or at least, game not going well.

  NEEDY MAN

  A great scholar named Hans Walter Wolff wrote a classic study of how the Old Testament writers understood personhood. He said that the word flesh stands for humanity’s bodily form with its mortality, physical strength, and limitations. Ruah, the Hebrew word for “spirit,” speaks of human beings as they are empowered — human existence with breath and will and inspiration. Wolff’s chapter on nephesh — the Hebrew word for “soul” — he titled “Needy Man.” Another name for nephesh is Bob. Your soul is a needy man, a needy woman.

  Thomas Aquinas wrote that this neediness of the soul is a pointer to God. We are limited in virtually every way: in our intelligence, our strength, our energy, our morality. There is only one area where human beings are unlimited. As Kent Dunnington puts it, “We are limited in every way but one: we have unlimited desire.” We always want more: more time, more wisdom, more beauty, more funny YouTube videos. This is the soul crying out. We never have enough. The truth is, the soul’s infinite capacity to desire is the mirror image of God’s infinite capacity to give. What if the real reason we feel like we never have enough is that God is not yet finished giving? The unlimited neediness of the soul matches the unlimited grace of God.

  Our soul’s problem, however, is not its neediness; it’s our fallenness. Our need was meant to point us to God. Instead, we fasten our minds and bodies and wills on other sources of ultimate devotion, which the Bible calls idolatry. Idolatry is the most serious sin in the Old Testament, leading one scholar to conclude that the primary principle of the Old Testament is the refutation of idolatry. Idolatry, according to author Timothy Keller, is the sin beneath the sin. Anytime I sin, I am allowing some competing desire to have higher priority than God and God’s will for my life. That means that in that moment I have put something on a pedestal higher than God. That something is my idol. All sin involves idolatry.

  We all commit idolatry every day. It is the sin of the soul meeting its needs with anything that distances it from God.

  We have another problem. We often don’t know what our souls are truly devoted to. Most people, especially religious people, would probably say their souls are devoted to God or a higher calling or an ideal. We want to believe that’s true even as we devote our souls to something else. Consider as honestly as possible the following statements. If any of them even slightly resemble your thoughts, it is quite possible you have discovered the true devotion of your soul:

  • I think about money a lot, as in getting more of it. Sometimes I fantasize about winning
the lottery or coming into a big inheritance. I have a mental wish list of the things I’d like to buy if money were no object.

  • I wish I had more power and control over others. It seems as if my spouse and kids just don’t respect me enough. Ditto at work. I know I would handle it carefully — I would just like to be a more powerful person.

  • I have missed important family events in order to pursue my career. I justify it by telling myself and my family that this is what it takes to provide for them. I tell myself that if I keep working hard, I will reach a level where I will be able to relax a little and spend more time with the people I love.

  • I consider myself an honest person, someone with good values. But I would set those values aside to pursue something important to me if I knew no one else would know about it.

  • I have desires that I prefer not to have my spouse know about. If I am confronted by any of those desires, I become defensive and try to justify it.

  • I have secrets that I am willing to lie to protect.

  • More than once I have had arguments over something I wanted to do but my spouse did not want to do. Or over something I wanted to buy that my spouse didn’t think I should buy.

  • Aside from my family and others I love, there are things in my life that if they were lost or destroyed, it would crush me, devastate me.

  • If my doctor told me I had to give up (alcohol, cigarettes, red meat, salt/sodium, sugar, caffeine, etc.) because it was seriously putting my health at risk, I would find it difficult to the point of being impossible. I likely would not tell anyone in order to avoid accountability.

  • If you asked my family what was most important to me, they would likely refer to my job, my favorite hobby, making money. . . . They would probably not say it was them.

  • I love God, and I want to more closely follow him, but there is one thing that always seems to get in the way, and it’s .