Book 2, Chapter 2
-Part 3-
God’s actions upon the soul are his alone.
I think this is often overlooked. The soul is in his domain only. Divine action upon the soul can only be authorized and completed by the movement of his Spirit, the operation of his mind, the production of his being.
What indeed would be the result if we were supposed to build and keep our own soul? Each of us may or may not be aware of the ruinous result and the incidental damage we do to our inner life when we believe ourselves to be the maintainers of the soul.
That life, the spiritual inner life of the person, is best kept in the exclusive care of God. Since he is the only one who divinely acts, and the soul exists to be divinely acted upon, it stands to reason that the best ground for us as the beloved of God is one of submission to him.
As was pointed out before, there is something instilled in us as creatures of God that makes it natural for us to give ourselves away. Obviously, mankind is faced with choices as to what or to whom he will give himself. The crucial theological fact of what we might here call “The Problem of Man,” is that we can abandon ourselves to destruction or to restoration; to death or to life; to denial of spiritual truth or acceptance of its reality in God. If we are in fact made to give ourselves away, then, for the sake of our position in eternity we ought to review our choices. As the Scriptures say, “Choose this day whom you will serve” (Joshua 24:15).
As it is, we do not know very much about our own inner life, and we do not know the mind and workings of the Holy Spirit who dwells in the midst of the inner life. So, I myself am not the best option as my own inner life manager, director, remodeler or repairer. Little spiritual growth can occur until we grasp this. Somewhere, at conversion or in the teachings of the faith, this concept has been lost while being central to spiritual well-being: My soul is in God’s domain, and only he will act upon it whenever and with whatever he wants. No one else gets to play.
We may never in our lives be comfortable with this, but we must face the utter and uncomfortable truth. Why are we so uneasy with this? Partly, because we can only trust God so much. As Christians, we believe our souls to be very precious. So precious in fact, that we are not at ease when we do not know or cannot see what God is doing with the soul. We are not sure if we want him to do all the directing.
We know that he can use anything terrible, painful or tragic and make it something good for the soul, but, who wants terror, pain and tragedy? With just that much mistrust, we will want just that much management control over the soul. This, beloved of God, is a rookie mistake.
So, to whatever extent we mistrust God and acquiesce to our entanglements, we place the soul in peril. Perhaps not peril of eternal damnation, but peril of inestimable damage.
While the life of the soul is entirely in God’s domain, we are to respond accordingly to the action of God upon us. His work, although beyond us, is not separated from us. He does not take our inner life to the laundry while we live our lives awaiting a pressed and folded spirit to be given to us at a later time. So, we need some guidance on what to do now that we know God as the first mover, director and owner of the soul.
As we shall see, our response is not nothing. This submission to God is not doing nothing.
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