A human being is not a body with a soul, but a soul with a body.

Long after our body is dead, our soul continues to exist.

Some people like to think that human beings are simply complicated pieces of matter. They hope that death is the end of them because they do not want to be called to account for their wicked lives in the next life after death. This is wishful thinking that does not stand up to scrutiny.

One way to illustrate the existence of the human soul is to consider pain and our feelings.

When your foot is sore, it is you who feel the sore foot. It is not your foot that thinks, I am sore. It is you who feels your foot is sore.

If you are happy or sad, it is you who feels happy or sad, not your brain. When you say “I”, you are speaking about your soul. Your soul is ‘you’. It is you or your soul that experiences these emotions.

You might say, animals also exhibit similar emotions. Yes, similar but different. The Bible tells us that the spirit of the animal goes downwards at death Ecc 3:21, but the spirit of man returns to God Who gave it Ecc 12:7.

The point is, we are more than mere body. We have a spirit, “the ghost in the machine”. The soul of man is more fundamental than the body, although both combined comprise our whole being, which is why God will ensure that there will be a resurrection of our body Act 24:15.

Even at the human level, we have meaningful fellowship with each other through communion of our souls. We speak about a meeting of minds, kindred spirits, soul-buddies, etc. God is a Spirit but mankind has lost communion with God. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, restores this communion.

Does the soul grow old?

Ask an old person if they feel old, and they will say that their body feels the infirmities of old age but in their mind they don’t feel any older.

Ask them if they would want to be young again and they will say that they would like the vigour of youth but they would not want to go back to the ignorance of their youth. They have learned so much in the mysterious interaction between their body, mind and spirit during their earthly life that they do not want to lose this life experience or to repeat the effort to regain that knowledge.

Troubles in old age

Dementia is terrible to experience. The body and the soul are still there but the mind is disordered by a physical disorder of the brain and the personality seems to change, as happens in other mental illnesses, showing the inscrutable connection between the person, the mind and the body.

The infirmities of bodily old age prepare us for death, and even worldly people will say that they have had a good life, but they do not want their infirmities to continue endlessly. They are being prepared for “moving on” to the eternal world, “the world to come, whereof we speak”, as the apostle Paul put it Heb 2:5, following Jesus’ teaching Mat 12:32, Mk 10:30 and Lk 18:30.

Eternal life

Jesus defines eternal life in terms of knowledge, the knowledge of God and of His self-revelation as the Triune Saviour of sinners Jn 17:3.

The growing infirmities of the body might be behind Richard Dawkins’ foolish mantra that he would find eternal life rather boring. He says that possibly 200 years would be enough, but after this he would be bored. So I ask him, and the teenagers who copy his meme, after which ‘200 years of human history’ would he feel bored at their end?

The question has only to be asked to show the folly of Dawkins’ opinion and of his ilk. It is like his other ill-informed statements about life.

Rather, the vast Universe shows us the enormous potential and blessedness of eternal life. Jesus tells us plainly Jn 8:24 what we will miss out if we do not believe that He is God’s Messiah Who has come to reconcile sinners to God 2Cor 5:20-21.

“This is a trustworthy saying, and worthy of everyone’s acceptance, that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief.”

The apostle Paul’s first letter to Timothy, chapter 1, verse 15.

The best is yet to come.

For those who want to know more, come and welcome to Jesus Christ.

Links:

4 Nov 2015: the spiritual dimension.

8 Jul 2025: an interesting demonstration that neuroscience can prove that our sentient mind is not located in the brain; in fact neuroscience does not know where it is located at all, leading to the claim that this is scientific evidence for the existence of the soul.