Soulful or Soulless?

I was flipping through a popular décor and travel magazine recently and it struck me how truly wealthy we are in the United States. While this fact is an immediate no brainer, what specifically hit home to me was the sheer opulence not only of our nation collectively, but of each state and even each mid-sized to large city in the U.S. This magazine featured a few capital cities in the southern region of the U.S. mapping out where to eat, sight see, and the like. The places were beautiful, and no expense seemed to have been spared, but as I took in each photograph the reality that one of those cities alone would have more resource, more possibility, and more waste to go around than perhaps an entire region in one sub-Saharan, African nation left me breathless for a second.

Consider that for one moment, a single capital city in our nation potentially having more than an entire region in another nation in the developing world. We should be doing a mental double take! There are areas of our nation with terrible standards of living and poverty, but I am speaking from the broader scope and in comparison, to a comparable snapshot from other areas of our globe. What does that mean for us and our subject at hand? The condition of your soul and mine are directly linked to the awareness of what lies in our hearts and the values that we live out. Living in such a generally wealthy nation, we can tend to let those deeper questions get lost in the shuffle, and especially if we have no religious affiliation.

The question then remains, have you considered your soul lately? Do you investigate the health of your soul the way you hopefully look into your physical and mental health? This is what Jesus said on the subject, “And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul? Is anything worth more than your soul?” (Matthew 16:26). Of course, Jesus is rhetorically asking His followers these questions because He has just revealed to them that He will have to suffer many things, and ultimately give His life. Peter, one of His disciples, has a very strong reaction to hearing this and pulls Jesus aside to “reprimand” Him. At this moment, Jesus strongly pushes back and lets Peter know that his words are ill informed and a snare to the very mission Jesus came to earth to accomplish…being the redemptive rescue of humankind.

Directly before Jesus asks these deep philosophical questions about the soul, He declared that in order to really find your life you must lose it for His sake and that the quick ticket to losing your life is to try to hold onto it too tightly. In losing your life for His sake, He means the experience of becoming born again and becoming His follower allowing Him to be the guide for your life. What Jesus is proposing is that the only way to find true soul health is to make it your main priority, nothing else, not what you view as your personal success, your most cherished relationships, or anything else. Your soul being first and foremost and then everything else will flow from that main question, how is your soul? And Jesus is not simply saying that being a good person and thinking deeply about your soul is enough, He is actually saying, I have the way to make your soul whole, and I have the antidote to all that the “world” would emptily offer to fill up your soul. He says, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.” (Mark 2:17). Our souls need a healer, and that healer came in the person of Jesus Christ of Nazareth.

So, I am inviting us to ask that all important question, “how is my soul?” and even for those who may stumble upon this blogpost and read it who have no belief in God or Christ Jesus, what do you believe about that inner part of you we call our souls? Checking in with ourselves is a good practice to keep especially in a society that constantly clamors for our attention. Because truly what does it matter if we gain all this world’s possessions and success only to find that we have lost the inner core of our being, our souls?