Dust of the Earth Enlivened by the Breath of God
I made some disparaging remarks about the word spiritual in my last blog, and I suppose it was because I don't really understand what we mean by the word. What is a spiritual life? I know God is Spirit and I believe that the Holy Spirit in some mysterious way lives in me. But all that seems so inexplicable. Here's a quotation from Rob Mull's review of David Eaglelman's book Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain:
Many of the functions we ascribe to our core selves are dependent upon our brain functions. We're realizing how dependent our sense of ourselves is on our biology and its interaction with the environment. . . .
We often talk as if we are separable from our bodies. Futurists want to download their thoughts and live forever online. Some faithful Christians look forward to discarding their shell of a body in favor of a spritual life in heaven. But if we could separate our thoughts and memories, even our sense of self, from our bodies, we would discover that the line between me and you isn't so clear. . . . "The brain is not so much the seat of the mind as the hub of the mind." We're not so much involved souls with joysticks controlling a mass of muscle as we are the dust of the earth enlivened by the breath of God.
What Eagleman seems to be saying in his book, among other things, is that who we are, our very sense of self is completely connected to our physicality, our brains and nerves and even our environment. Take away the physical and you lose the person.
So in the New Earth we will be bodies, incorruptible bodies, as Paul says, but bodies nevertheless.
Many of the functions we ascribe to our core selves are dependent upon our brain functions. We're realizing how dependent our sense of ourselves is on our biology and its interaction with the environment. . . .
We often talk as if we are separable from our bodies. Futurists want to download their thoughts and live forever online. Some faithful Christians look forward to discarding their shell of a body in favor of a spritual life in heaven. But if we could separate our thoughts and memories, even our sense of self, from our bodies, we would discover that the line between me and you isn't so clear. . . . "The brain is not so much the seat of the mind as the hub of the mind." We're not so much involved souls with joysticks controlling a mass of muscle as we are the dust of the earth enlivened by the breath of God.
What Eagleman seems to be saying in his book, among other things, is that who we are, our very sense of self is completely connected to our physicality, our brains and nerves and even our environment. Take away the physical and you lose the person.
So in the New Earth we will be bodies, incorruptible bodies, as Paul says, but bodies nevertheless.
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