This week marks the one year anniversary since everyone’s
life changed in the name of protecting the body from infection. We have changed behaviors, adjusted our
distance in relation to one another, added precautions and barriers of various
kinds, and so much more in order to care for the body.
For a few centuries now, our culture has been conditioned to see the material
aspect of our existence (the body) from the immaterial aspect of our existence
(whether one wants to speak of the mind, the soul, the spirit, or some
combination of the above). It’s not that
novel an idea, as it also can be seen in some of the Greek philosophers and
other ancient thinkers. However, it is
novel in terms of a Biblical understanding of humanity and in terms of being
introduced to a Christian worldview.
Scripture doesn’t deal with humans as if the material body
were incidental to the real person who is immaterial, and it doesn’t treat
these material and immaterial aspects as if they were isolated entities with
isolated needs. Instead, it deals with
people as an integrated whole. One of
these aspects cannot act apart from the other and one cannot be affected apart
from the other.
Medical science had even begun increasingly acknowledge (at least until the
pandemic status descended upon us) that their efforts to heal the body are not
entirely separated from what is going on in the thoughts and spiritual life of
the patient. This is something that had
been a core part of the Church’s understanding of pastoral care, and Scripture
even recognizes it as it speaks of the “soul,” which is not understood in
Biblical literature to refer to the immaterial aspect of a human person, but
rather should be translated as “self” or another term that includes the whole
person. At the time of Reformation it
was even common to refer to pastors with a word that translates to “soul-curer”
or “soul doctor.”
As we look back in hindsight, we will undoubtedly recognize
that our protection of the body was undertaken with the false perception that I
began with, which seeks to protect the body without regard for the whole
person. As we are beginning to see risk
decline and people perceive formerly-normal activities as safe, it will be the
task of churches to discern how they might correct the damage done by the
widespread neglect of the whole soul this past year, and the task of Christians
to work with their soul doctors to remedy the injuries they may have suffered
and prepare a plan for whole-person soul-care in the future.
