This morning I read the gospel passage for Sunday evening, seeking inspiration for a sermon. The verse which leapt out was John 6:63
“The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing”
My immediate impression was that God was reminding me not to get too hung up on the physical aspects of life, but focus on the spiritual side. Was this an answer to the issue I have been thinking about – an attempt to justify the hypothesis of God’s existence by examining the world we live in? (See the blog which I composed a few days ago, but posted a few moments ago.)
If so, then was God telling me I must see things in dualistic terms, with spirit and flesh representing two different realities? I’m not entirely comfortable with the idea that the human body is a dwelling place for an immortal human soul. To me it makes more sense (and I think is more true to the views expressed in the Bible) that a human being is an indivisible whole – body, mind and spirit. Resurrection is not the survival of a ‘soul’ which is innately deathless. Resurrection is the re-creating of the whole person (admittedly with different kinds of ‘bodies' – see 1 Corinthians 15:35ff) by the power of God. As it happened (coincidence or God still speaking?) when I sat down to breakfast and read the next part of Dawkins’ book I discovered he too doesn’t believe in dualism either.
On the other hand, I am willing to acknowledge that talking about spiritual and physical aspects of a person makes perfect sense. As an analogy, language has a physical aspect (letters on a page or sounds in an ear) as well as carrying meaning. The two are bound up together and even subtly influence each other, but it is still possible to focus on the content of a written passage rather than it’s spelling or the font employed. So what I think God was telling me this morning is that the physical side of existence is not important in itself. Without the Spirit, it would just be stuff happening. With the Spirit, existence comes alive.
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