This is part 3 of a series; The Selves is part 1.

A RIGHT SPIRIT

“Just follow your conscience!” is one piece of advice that all Christians will agree on. But what if your conscience is wrong? What if your moral compass doesn’t point due North, but rather Southeast? Your spirit desires to do “the right thing”… but how does it know what that is?

By nature, the heart is selfish, thinking only and incessantly of itself. It has no interest in right and wrong, only cares about its wants and fears, pains and lusts. On the other hand, the spirit by nature wants to do right – the problem is it doesn’t necessarily know what right is!

Psalms 51:10 Create in me a clean heart, O God. Renew a right spirit within me.

The Christian heart was born selfish, and it must be created anew because it never has been clean! It must be made to be unselfish for the first time. But the spirit, by nature, was created pure; it came from God’s own lips, remember!

But it can be – and in most if not all people, has been – corrupted by the heart and has become a servant to the body! The spirit or “mind” has become a servant of the lusts of the flesh, and not committed to the good of others as it was meant to be.

Romans 8:8 because the mind of the flesh is hostile towards God; for it is not subject to God’s law, neither indeed can it be.

A human spirit that serves its own heart is hostile towards God, because it, by definition, thinks only of itself and therefore CANNOT keep the golden rule! Which is why such a selfish spirit must be renewed to a state of rightness! Which is why Paul said…

2 Corinthians 7:1 …let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.

A CORRUPTED SPIRIT

The job of our spirit is to provide a selfless contrast with the heart’s selfish desires. Its intent is good, but if its sources taught it wrong… then your spirit can be wrong even when it means to be right. Because the right that it believes is not necessarily the truth of God, but what it has heard from other men.

Everything your spirit knows, everything it believes to be right and wrong, is based on external sources. Since your earliest memories you were taught that certain foods were good to eat – chicken, beef, pig, etc. – and certain foods were not – dog, cat, horse, etc.

You were probably also taught that eating chicken feet and heads were “gross”, as were fish heads, beef brains, and so on. But there is no objective reason why eating sheep’s heads is wrong. They are only “gross” and “disgusting” because little children are taught that in our culture.

These very strong opinions were learned by their conscience based on what people they respected did and said; but that doesn’t make them correct! Because in other cultures, chicken feetare a delicacy. Because their spirits have been educated differently!

Thus just as our heart is not inherently bad, merely selfish; so likewise our spirit is not inherently good, it merely advocates for the morals it has learned. But to be a good spirit, a right spirit, it must advocate for a moral code that has laws which are objectively good, based in logic and truth and not in the customs of our tribe.

Laws based on the golden rule, in other words. All too often the golden rule is lost amid the rules of our tribe; which is why Jesus condemned the Pharisees for “making void the word of God by your tradition, which you have handed down. You do many things like this” (Mark 7:13 WEB).

And there is no society, no religion, which does not do the same; which is why each of our spirits, individually, must be cleansed of these un-laws, and restored to the purity of the golden rule.

A BROKEN SPIRIT

The purpose of the spirit within a man, the purpose of our conscience, is to tell us right and wrong. The problem is, it doesn’t necessarily know right and wrong. And the greater problem is that it doesn't realize that. It believes that its subjective opinions are the same as objective truth.

For example, when someone says “that’s a great song!” the statement is presented as objective truth; but is it objectively true? What people really mean to say is “I like that song”. This is not the same thing at all. Your opinions are not laws. Your beliefs are not truth. Your ideas are not facts.

People say “it IS a great song” because they are trying to pass off their own highly subjective opinion as objective capital-T-Truth. To add weight to your opinions you proclaim them to be facts; a song you like is stated, as if objectively true, to be a great song. This is the essence of an unbroken spirit.

Isaiah 57:15 For thus says the high and lofty one who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: ‘I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also who is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite.

In the last episode we talked about ruling over the heart; but here we see the spirit must likewise be broken, contrite, humbled, made to reconsider some of its most deeply held beliefs. Because even though the spirit always means well… if your soul doesn’t control it, all kinds of bad things happen.

Proverb 25:28 (BBE) He whose spirit is uncontrolled is like an unwalled town which has been broken into.

When a spirit makes too many arbitrary rules and won’t listen to reason from anyone, it leads to various forms of OCD; a condition full of restrictive and debilitating compulsions about touching lampposts and counting before opening doors and washing hands and using public toilets and separating foods on a plate.

These rules so thoroughly control their lives that “they are like an unwalled town which has been broken into”. Which is to say… they are too busy protecting themselves from imaginary threats that the true walls which should defend them are broken down!

Biblically, this person just has an extreme version of an unbroken spirit. A spirit which ignores the soul’s better judgment. A spirit that feels that only by following ever more rules ever more strictly can the beast be protected – even if those rules are in fact harming the beast.

Psalms 51:17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit. A broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.

What this means is that we need to realize that the customs of our tribe are not universal truth; that what our spirit has believed so far in life is not necessarily what it will believe tomorrow. That every single thing it’s ever learned must be open for negotiation if new information comes up tomorrow.

PROVE IT

You probably already think you do this; just as you thought you ruled over your heart in the last episode. You think of yourself as a reasoning being; but how many of your daily habits, responses, and choices are made based on something you learned as a child and never thought to question?

The world’s consciences are full of random, irrational laws and superstitions. Why do they refuse to walk under a ladder? Why do they shake hands? Why do they say gesundheit when someone sneezes? Why do they say “knock on wood”? Why won’t they drink out of the same glass as someone they’re not dating? Why do they make a steeple with their hands, or pray with eyes cast down?

Not following these customs makes people very uncomfortable, yet they usually can’t articulate why. They best they can usually do is “it’s just weird/wrong/strange, everyone knows that”. Yes – everyone in their tribe knows that. But objective truth is bigger than your tribe – and a broken spirit would know that.

2 Corinthians 10:5 throwing down imaginations and every high thing that is exalted against the knowledge of God, and bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ;

We are commanded to bring our thoughts in line with God’s thoughts; that means learning the rules He does care about, and flouting the rules He does not care about. Both are important, arguably equally important!

But again, you likely think “I do all those things! My spirit is broken!” Well, let’s test that. If you’re religious at all, you probably hold hands when you pray in a group. So… why do you do that? There is no scripture that says you should, no example of it being done in the Bible. So why are you compelled to hold hands when you pray?

Where did this rule come from? And it is a rule – if you don’t believe me, try being the one person in the room who refuses to do it, and you’ll see that it is indeed a rule to your tribe! If you don’t hold hands when the group prays, it feels like a sin to them.

And it is! By rejecting their custom you sin against what their spirit has always believed to be good and right! And yet where is their evidence that it is an objective sin? Because there is not one single word in the Bible about holding hands in a circle… Yet it is something that pagan cultures, sun-worshipping tribes, and druids do.

Think about that!

Deuteronomy 12:30-32 After their destruction [of the nations of Canaan] take care that you do not go in their ways, and that you do not give thought to their gods, saying, How did these nations give worship to their gods? I will do as they did. Do not so to the Lord your God… You are to keep with care all the words I give you, making no addition to them and taking nothing from them.

Based on this verse, it’s just as wrong to live by the unspoken rule that you must hold hands while praying to God, as it is to break one of His laws; because God said adding things to His worship is just as bad as taking things away!

And having learned this, and realized there is no evidence for this practice… if your spirit is broken, it will delete this rule. This law of your spirit should be broken because it was never a law at all! It was merely a custom of your tribe which was treated with the reverence of a law of God.

Yet most people are very reluctant to stop doing things like this, even after they realize they have no good reason to do it, and a few good reasons not to do it. Because their spirit is unbroken and to an unbroken spirit, change is sin!

PROVE ALL THINGS

Which is why most people, when confronted with evidence that they are wrong about something, arrogantly say, “I don’t know where the verse is that proves it, but I know I’m right!” Because their spirit is not broken, not willing to humble itself before the spirit of anyone else, including the Bible!

But every belief you have about right and wrong needs to be backed up with proof (2 Timothy 2:15). Every single one. If you don’t have proof, you have no right to an opinion! That’s why we were commanded to “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:21 KJV).

When I was 19, I looked around at various churches and realized that no one knew why they believed what they believed. And I resolved to toss out everything I had been told was true, and put back only those things I could PROVE were good.

I resolved that if I couldn’t find it in the Bible, or reason it from logic, I wouldn’t do it. I didn’t just stop what the Bible disproved, I stopped believing and doing everything the Bible didn’t actually approve. That’s why today I know exactly why I believe everything I tell you. I can defend it, and make a case for every idea I have.

That doesn’t mean I’ll always be right! But if I’m wrong, it means I can present my evidence and, if yours is more persuasive, I can change. And changing doesn’t bother me because I’ve been wrong about so many things over the years, that I know I’m still wrong about things now.

It is that realization which is the first step in becoming a person God is willing to dwell in; it’s how you become a person with a broken and humbled spirit, and a broken and contrite heart (Isaiah 66:2, Isaiah 57:15).

God dwells with people who are ashamed of being wrong, aware they still are wrong about many things they simply haven’t found yet! Because brokenness isn’t about being right. It’s about knowing you are not already right.

It’s being able and eager to change your definitions of right and wrong when better evidence, better Truth, comes along. It’s changing what you thought was truth for what actually IS truth without hesitation, or bickering, or resentment.

LET (YOUR) TRUTH BE A LIE

Letting go of customs like this won’t be easy for you, because it means that your personal benchmark of truth, your spirit, was wrong. And if your moral compass was wrong about this… How can it ever be trusted again? What else might it be wrong about?

Because see, that’s always going to be the problem. You can be wrong. You are wrong right now about a lot of things, and you will be wrong a lot more in the years to come, no matter how good your intentions. And the great secret that the spirit has trouble comprehending is... All growth starts with being wrong.

Finding a place you’re wrong is TERIFFIC news! Because it means you’ve found a NEW place you can start being right! But your spirit fears that if one thing it believes is wrong... how can it be sure everything else it’s ever believed isn’t also wrong?

And that’s the thing – it can’t! Because many things it believes most certainly are wrong! Your spirit spent decades absorbing right and wrong based on hearsay,and its entire belief system is built on a foundation of SAND! (Matthew 7:24-27).

And the only way to fix that is to grab a shovel and throw that sand away! The spirit must be educated fully as much as the beast, which means it must be willing to learn, and change, and become a better witness.

Like the beast, it must be broken. But while the beast needs to learn that its selfishness is best served by behaving unselfishly, the spirit needs to learn that the best way to be right is to admit being wrong.

Convincing the fractions of these twin paradoxes is one way of summing up our purpose on this Earth; the selfish beast must be taught to behave unselfishly, and the spirit that is obsessed with being right must be taught that it often isn’t.

This is how you go about changing every wrong thing about your nature – which is most of it – so you can become a proper representation of the nature of God and fulfill your purpose on this Earth! Which is for our nature to become a copy of His nature just as our physical appearance is already a copy of His (Genesis 1:26).

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

As always, by the golden rule you already understand the importance of a broken spirit in others – you just haven’t insisted on your own spirit being broken. For example, if I were to tell you “I don’t like fish”, you would probably respond “oh, you just haven’t had it made right, eaten it fresh caught, the right kind of fish!”

I know this, because it’s been happening all my life. This is an attempt on your part to challenge the conclusion my spirit has drawn, to convince me that my spirit’s rule is false and should be changed to believe what your spirit believes is true – that fish is great.

And this compulsion to correct the spirits of others based on your own beliefs is not wrong – provided your spirit actually is right, or at least has good evidence to present. But to correct other spirits based on the customs of your tribe, or the say-so of authorities you believe in, is wrong.

Because your challenge is based on the assumption that the only way I could possibly disagree with you is if I haven’t had fish “made right” or “fresh enough”. But how do you know I haven’t have fish plucked out of the ocean in front of me, then prepared by Emeril himself? Bam!

You made this assumption because my different opinion threatens the security of your supposedly objectively true opinion and so my opinion must be challenged; tested; forced to give an explanation for why I don’t like fish, forced to try it “the right way” so I can see the world as you see it.

Like I said, this is how you treat other spirits; and by the golden rule, how your soul should treat your own. You should remind your spirit that just because it didn’t like something before, doesn’t mean it won’t next time. Whether that’s country music, peanut butter, or Nevada.

Maybe it just hasn’t had lima beans made right; or maybe it’s not fair to judge sushi by what you bought at a truck stop. And who knows, maybe sheep’s heads taste better than they look? And so when opportunity arises, your soul should force the spirit to try these things with an open mind.

Proverbs 18:13 He who gives answer before he hears, that is folly and shame to him.

So break your spirit, just as you broke your beast, force it to do what it was designed to do – be an impartial source of objective law in your mind. Make it be a beacon of light to your body, a fount of knowledge based on facts and objective truth.

Acts 17:11 Now these were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of the mind, examining the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so.

That is what a broken and a contrite spirit is; one who eagerly listens to anyone, but only adds to its database of laws that which can be backed up by facts. One who shares its opinions as opinions, but stands behind its facts as facts, and will fight to the death for the actual capital-T-Truth.

Continue to Part 4: The Soul