BEEF JERKY FOR THE SOUL ~ Guest Blogger (My Dad)

My Dad is a general surgeon who has served as a missionary doctor in the wilds of Gabon, equatorial Africa for over 34 years. Recently, he began writing regular letters to my siblings and I-- small, blog-sized chunks of wisdom he has entitled "Beef Jerky For The Soul." Today, I've decided to share his latest letter with you.

C.S. Lewis wrote, "We don't have a soul. We are a soul, and we have a body."

Most people in America, as reported by those who do polls about these issues, believe that everyone who lives on the earth--except for really evil people--have a soul that will end up in some kind of heaven after dying. Most secular intellectuals, depending on how you define them, don't believe in either the soul or the afterlife. According to them, we are nothing more than complicated organic machines. All our consciousness, self-awareness, creativity, personality, awareness of God, and emotions are simply the complex physiologic workings of our brains.  

If the secularists are right we won't even be aware of it when we die. If C.S. Lewis is right and the real "we" is our soul and not our body, then our souls won't die when our bodies give out and the implications become huge.  Who created our soul?  How did he do it?  What is he like?  How will he react if I live my life as I please and ignore him?  What if he wants me to stop doing things I want to do and do things I don't want to do? Where can I find out about him?

There is an exponentially growing body of evidence in our world, in the stars, and in our own bodies that the Creator is quite real, very much alive, and fully aware of His creation. There is compelling historical evidence that God has been communicating with people since they appeared on the earth. And there is Jesus, a real historical figure who came to earth supernaturally, healed thousands of people supernaturally in front of eventually tens of thousands of witnesses, and answered all of these questions in considerable detail.  Not until all the witnesses to his life, miracles, death and resurrection had died did skeptics succeed in challenging what his followers had written about him.  Thousands of those witnesses died violently, preferring torture and death to renouncing what they had seen, heard, and experienced.

And what evidence do the secularists have that there is no soul and no afterlife?  Well…none. Seriously. They're simply gambling everything and hoping that it works out for them. Why would anyone be willing to take that kind of risk?  Could it be they have…proof? I think not.  

There is another reason they're willing to gamble, and it's because each person can write his own moral rules for living. Each person can live for himself, and nobody can tell him it's wrong and that he's going to pay for it later, as long as he doesn't break the law. Meanwhile the person who believes that we are a soul that will continue to exist in the afterlife has to worry about pleasing God and when being good isn't maybe good enough. 

I'll take my chances with Jesus, the miracle worker, the God-man who's miraculous arrival on earth, message, suffering, death, burial and resurrection were all predicted in detail in the oldest book in the world, several hundred years before it happened.  To receive my soul as his own and give me a beautiful new body that will live forever, He doesn't want me to follow a list of rules. He only requires my open love and my trust.

I am an eternal soul, I have a body, and when it wears out and I die, God will give me a new one.  Now that's something worth living and serving Him for!  

Love,

Dad