The World of the Soul

What an astounding thing the human mind is – the exercise of reason, memory and imagination set each individual apart in an entire world of his very own. By reason, we justify our beliefs and actions; by memory, we allow the past to shape our lives; by imagination, we create the climate our souls live in. For the little worlds we shape in our minds are in a sense very real – they have existed, we have been in them, we have memories of them, and we even find ourselves beginning to reason according to the standards of them.

This is an intriguing mystery, and to the wise, a frightening one. For since we have ultimate control over the worlds we create, it is here that we find what we are really made of. My mind is my world, no one else can get into it or tell me how to run it. And here is the danger – I can rule my world exactly as I please. Anything I choose can happen in it. Nowhere else is the depravity of man more evident than in the mind. Anyone can bite his tongue and control his behavior for the sake of propriety, but his imagination is his own, subject to no earthly law. The outworkings of fear, lust, hatred, greed, and so forth are unacceptable in good society, but if we just "keep our thoughts to ourselves," no one will think any less of us. We are quite safe there.

But we forget that the worlds in our minds are in fact real. A person's soul, his real self, is perhaps often closer to reality in its own domain, the mind, than when it must work through his body. The soul is as the mind thinks (Proverbs 27:3), and it has done things in its world, even if they have not been enacted in the outer man. So we have memories, and even memories of actual happenings can be manipulated by the imagination, all to create another dimension of our soul's world. And finally, by reason, we act out in the real world the conclusions formed there.

Clearly, this world of the soul can be a dangerous thing. Better not to think at all if it will finally overflow into shameful actions! But no human can help but think – it comes with having a soul. Imagination was meant to be a gift, "the greatest gift God has given us," says Oswald Chambers, "and it ought to be devoted entirely to Him." Our soul is the part of us that can connect with God – in this life, the body does not. Imagination, then, is the vital path by which we meet with our Creator. In the worlds we create, we may meet other humans, but either we have invented them ourselves (and have no power to make them exist), or if they exist, they know nothing of the role we have given them, and cannot actually communicate with us. God, on the other hand, as Creator of our minds, can meet us personally in "our" world of the soul. He knows it completely, and will gladly step in at our invitation, sometimes without it. And when He does, there is no room for anything or anyone else.

We will have a world of the soul in our minds, and there are only two options for its management. Since “I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells” (Romans 7:18), then the only way to avoid imagining up a dreadfully twisted world is to give the shaping of it over to the One who is only good. We try our hand at being little creators, but in the end, we can never create a world of truth – that only comes from the real Creator. Let us direct our imaginations to Him, let Him step in and fill our minds with sweet memories of His presence, and use reason based on His truth to guide our lives in the world He imagined!