Question: I guess that you know you have a very important job. I have only been reading the Bible seriously for about one year since turning my life over to God. I have many questions every night and I will try to ask you some questions without overloading you.

What is our soul? Does the Bible or other religious teachings define the human soul in some context? Often I would like to discuss with my children about their soul but I don’t always know how to do this or how to explain things.

Robert

Answer: Dear Robert,

Thanks for your confidence. I appreciate your prayers, and must tell you that the job of sharing the gospel is a pleasure and honor. I am delighted to share it with many hundreds of thousands of men and women of God around the world. But I am not important, I am not significant – I only tell others Who is Significant, my Lord and Savior. I am only one of many – and believe me I do not have all the answers! But I can tell you, as one who has been saved, as one beggar who has met the Lord and Master, where I found the Bread of Life.

A good book to help you, and to help you help your children is What Your Child Needs to Know about God by Ron Rhodes. Call us to see if we have any copies in stock. Please consider this book – I have just re-read the section on God and Man – Getting to Know God – All about Sin and Salvation – and Death and the Afterlife. These are the issues that have to do with the soul, what it is, what it isn’t – as we seek to determine who we are, what we are, and who God is.

The soul can be a discussion upon which Christians may have slightly different ideas, and can become a point of argumentation and even pride for some who believe that all others are wrong except themselves (a mindset that is extremely appealing to Christians of all stripes, colors, and denominations but does little to further the gospel, help us in our relationship with God, etc.) The bigger issues, and the important ones are those that I have outlined above, and Rhode’s book is simply one of many resources.

Hope this helps,

In Christ,

Greg Albrecht