Mysteriously, the living soul of man finds its home in the unique structure of the human mind.
The infant of the human species is given at birth the ability to comprehend, but the baby initially has little or no comprehension of life. The human mind must be developed, must grow in comprehension, to become what God intended it to be.
Because of the uniqueness of his brain, man can experience the blessings of God like no other creature in the world (Gen. 1:28). The melodious bird does not know it is making beautiful music. The radiant flower cannot appreciate that its bloom and its fragrance dazzle all who behold it. The sunrise cannot revel in the glory of its rays as it penetrates the darkness. There is not anything in creation can know the blessings of God like man can. All of creation can experience, but they simply cannot know, or they cannot understand, the glory of what they are experiencing except for man (Psalms. 23:1-6).
The mature or perfected mind of man can truly behold the glory of God. He was created to have the capacity to know, to appreciate, and to revel in the melodious medley of music, the radiant bloom of the flower, the glorious sun-rays of the morning, and all the other blessings of God. In other words, man was created not just to experience but to know he is experiencing the good of the life that is God. It is a unique feature of the human mind: to behold the glory of the Expression of God full of grace and truth. Man is a living soul able to comprehend the wonder of God like no other creation.
The living soul must grow in its comprehension.
Before the mind of man can know he is experiencing the glory of the Expression of God, he must first be brought to that level of comprehension. The sovereignty of God that produces the melodious music of the bird, the radiant bloom of the flower, the glorious rays of the morning, and all other glories of Creation can only be understood by the freedom of the human mind to comprehend what is being experienced. Life, for man, then is simply the continuous cultivation of his living soul. He becomes an incessant learner of life by experiencing the lessons of life provided by the sovereignty of God at work in the world. He has been given a mind, a soul, that can think about it thinking.
There is mystery involved in the mind of man learning the lessons of life that brings man to experience the comprehension of the perfect life. For example, the bloom of the flower comes out of the planting of the seed, the sunrise comes out of the sunset, and the freshness of spring comes out of the staleness of fall. Ultimately, for man, the pathway to experience fully the comprehension of the good leads the mind of man through the experiences of the “bad.” The living soul always requires good and evil (the spoiling of the good as defined in the original language of the Old Testament) for its development. The bloom of the flower does not develop without the planting of the seed. Mysteriously, good always being connected with evil (Gen. 2:9) is a necessary component of the freedom of man’s mind to learn.
The learning process for man requires that the mind of man cannot come to understand the good by simply being told that good is good. Without evil, there is nothing by which man can compare the good. It is only bad that accentuates the good. Again, in order for man to be able to come to know the good, he will have to experience the bad. Another way to say that is man will have to go through the experiences of living life before he can become a mature individual.
As will be seen, this is the reason why several of the early Judeao-Christian writers implied, when comprehension does begin to develop in man, it will always take man down and away from God. It seems that man must first learn the pitfalls of the ways of man before he can come to know the glory of the ways of God. John stated:
That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. He came unto his own, and his own received him not (John 1:9-11).
Mysteriously, the path of the living soul must go down before it can go up.
This failure to comprehend the light is not by chance or choice. It is by the determinism of God at work in the world. Man’s freedom involves not the choice to choose whether or not to comprehend the light, but the freedom to know when the comprehension comes that he has failed to comprehend the light of God.
The real story of the freedom of the mind to be able to think about its thinking is the impossibility to do anything else but begin to perceive that it can control its own destiny. The glory given to the human mind to be able to comprehend as God intended must first experience the shame of exercising the mind in earthly things. It seems that for man to ever come to know God and worship him as God, the man of sin must first be revealed (2 Thess. 2:3). Before man can be brought to know, with his mind, the goodness of God, he must first experience the wickedness of man.
One of the early followers of Jesus expressed this profound truth as:
Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto him, that ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand. Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God (2 Thess. 2:1-4).
At a very early age of his existence, man begins to exercise his mind that takes him down and away from God. Since nothing seems to happen instantaneously in the mind, the process of the human mind reaching forth or exciting itself with its selfish desires seems to begin almost instantly, if not instantly, at birth. The agitation of the infant is apparent to all when its needs and desires are withheld.
Once man begins this downward road, John stated that there is only one remedy for this plight of the thinking man. He previously stated:
That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. He came unto his own, and his own received him not (John 1:9-11).
Then, John gave the answer:
But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God (John 1:12, 13).
The living soul must experience a new birth.
The answer for man’s faulty behavior is so radical to man’s thinking that John called it in essence a new birth. It is such a change in nature that it can be brought about only by the power of God. John simply said that the new believer would be born “not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” God would procreate or regenerate the living soul of man to comprehend the light of its existence.
This is what the prophet Isaiah proclaimed:
The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain (Isa. 40:3, 4).
It is the valley, the mountain, the hill, the crooked path, and the rough places (necessary stages of development for the mind of man) that prepare man for the coming of Christ. The downward road must be experienced by the living soul before, as Isaiah added, “The glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together” (Isa. 40:5).
God’s grace is sufficient to bring man, his living soul, to the level of comprehension that God intended man to have. God said to Isaiah, “Cry.” Isaiah responded, “What shall I cry?” Then, the profound truth that can only be voiced by a free-thinking mind, the freedom of the living soul, that has learned the lesson of lessons for life is spoken:
All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field: The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: because the spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it: surely the people is grass. The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever (Isa. 40:6-8).
It seems that man in his comprehension will only come to cry out to God when his way withers and fades under the heat of valleys, mountains, crooked paths, and/or rough places (the evil – the bad). His cry in the lessons of life, “Save me, Lord,” opens the door for the coming of Christ into his life. This path to glorious comprehension through the degradation of thinking is not an option. It is the path so ordained of God that every man must travel to reach his final intended destination (John 3:5-7).
The development of the human mind to comprehend the good (the expression of oneness of spirit with God and with others: to love and be loved) allows man to experience the full, contented life. Mysteriously, this path to experience the glory of God will always begin with the human mind developing its own selfish independence. In other words, the complete oneness of the mind of a newborn infant with its mother must develop its own individuality before it can once again truly come to experience the complete coming together with another. The individualization of the mind is a necessary step before the mind can come to know truthfully the glory of experiencing the good, being made complete (being one) with another. The mystery of one (infant and mother) becoming two in order for two to be brought to the ultimate level of oneness (Gen. 2:18-25) is the challenge of life for the living soul of man.
