Soul.
It’s an adjective used to describe our music and define our food.
It’s a noun used to designate the place of our heartfelt passions.
It’s a symbol of just how deep we’ll dig to find the mettle for a mission.
And Judah Smith argues it’s the most important element of who we are as humans. If the soul is healthy, all else outside can fall apart and a person will still have peace and stability. If it’s compromised, all the satin sheets and leather couches in the world won’t make a person comfortable.
Smith’s book belongs to a small club. Not many have provided 1) an entire book 2) primarily about the soul 3) for average Christian readers. There are projects on the soul targeting narrow audiences like A Brief History of the Soul by Steward Goetz and Charles Taliaferro. Smith, however, hopes to reach all of us with How’s Your Soul?
When it comes to defining the soul, Smith takes a non-technical approach. John Ortberg in Soul-Keeping, provides a multi-layered and historical look at the soul and how it relates to other aspects of the human interior such as mind, spirit and heart. Smith keeps it simple, prefering to define soul in one place as “the inside you,” which is so generic it’s ultimately unhelpful. Elsewhere he uses Gen. 2:7 to define soul as the breath which God breathed into man causing him to become a living creature. We are all, Smith proposes, living on this borrowed breath. This image is far more useful. Though it answers little about the vocational aspect of the soul, it communicates a great deal about the relational aspect of the soul.
Smith’s book stumbles in places. It’s most glaring weakness is how it often uses biblical texts which say little about the soul in order to teach lessons about the soul. For example, the chapter on how our souls thrive when they love (chapter 5), explores 1 Cor. 13, a text which does not intend to speak about our souls. The chapter regarding the way our souls flourish when they are surrendered to God and surrounded by others (chapter 7), roots in 1 Cor. 16, another text which speaks nothing about human souls. Even one of the book’s best chapters (chapter 2), which spells out the four things every soul needs, suffers critically. The four things are found in the text (Gen. 2), but they aren’t tied in the text strongly to the human soul. Instead, they are four things needed by in general by humans, not specifically by our souls.
Smith excels when he writes from biblical texts which speak directly about the soul. His exploration of Ps. 42-43 (chapter 3) instructs in how to listen to our soul and nurture hope in our soul. The reflections from Heb 6 (chapter 4) provide ways for our souls to rely on Jesus as anchor in the storms of life. And Smith’s treatment of Ps. 131 (chapter 6) is superb–a practical and informative look at how to have a quiet and content soul.
In a culture, even a Christian culture, that continues to place undue emphasis on externals, it’s gratifying to see this project which calls us back to the inside. It’s a much needed emphasis. Health, fulfilment, identify, and true success in life will come from the inside out. The more we learn to attend to our souls, the more we will experience enduring peace and joy in life. Smith’s book provides encouragement and instruction in this ongoing enterprise.
