November 09, 2023
I’m reminded of how important it is to ensure that I do good right before I sleep, and as soon as I wake up. To that note, I am seriously thinking about leaving my phone far away from my bed. And by ‘far’ I mean another room, maybe another floor.
Here’s something that I wrote earlier in the month, and I regret to report that I haven’t actually been so adherent regarding keeping my phone away. I will say, however, that I have taken steps since then, to look less into the phone. I logged out of Facebook and Twitter, and eventually I made the bolder decision to delete YouTube entirely – to keep me from watching videos just before sleeping.
I also want to mention that I’ve moved things around both at my room and here in the office, so that there’s a lot more space, and so whatever stuff that IS here is of use. I’ve had to move stuff out, or throw it away. I share this only because I moved a shelf back up to my room, and this shelf does contain books, plus a small space I could use my laptop in if ever I really need to, and it’s those books that are there that I’m resolved to read through at night. So far, I’ve been going back to Ultralearning, by Scott H. Young. More on that later.
#PersonalThoughtProcesses #SeasonOfRearranging #Productivity #PracticalChristianity
For most of the final quarter of 2023 we’ve been jumping into the book God Without Religion by Andrew Farley, and in our speaking to the congregation and amongst ourselves, we came upon the word ‘Psuche’. To refresh my memory, I’m pulling it up from eSword:
G5590 / ψυχή / psuchē / psoo-khay’ / From G5594; breath, that is, (by implication) spirit, abstractly or concretely (the animal sentient principle only; thus distinguished on the one hand from G4151, which is the rational and immortal soul; and on the other from G2222, which is mere vitality, even of plants: these terms thus exactly correspond respectively to the Hebrew [H5315], [H7307] and [H2416]: – heart (+ -ily), life, mind, soul, + us, + you.
While I’m here, I guess I didn’t really look deeper into that definition. What’s being made clear here is that the ‘psuche’ is not our Spirit (‘distinguished (from)… the rational and immortal soul’), nor is it our breath, or vitality (as plants have vitality); But it is… ‘breath’ AND Spirit, ‘abstractly or concretely‘; when clarified, it’s both of them, in ‘the animal sentient principle’; ‘animal’, in one of its definitions as an Adjective, is ‘of or relating to the physical or sentient as contrasted with the intellectual or rational’, ‘sentient’ treated the same way, is seen as ‘capable of sensing or feeling : conscious of or responsive to the sensations of seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting, or smelling’ (sensory), ‘aware’, and ‘finely sensitive in perception or feeling’
Here I see a little more to where Andrew Farley wrote that, simply put, our ‘psuche’ is our psychology: Our animal, sentient breath as human beings.
I’m sorry but I think I needed to get to all that before I wanted to point out, that the word for ‘mind’ used in one of our ‘favorite’ verses in the church I serve in is different:
Romans 12:2 mentions that we are transformed by the ‘renewing of (our) mind’; But to my surprise, the word for ‘mind’ used here is ‘nous’ / G3563 (a masculine noun) – the God-given capacity of each person to think (reason); the mind; mental capacity to exercise reflective thinking. For the believer, 3563 (noús) is the organ of receiving God’s thoughts, through faith.
To be honest, I couldn’t really remember what I was thinking around this time – I think my approach to this was to point out that the ‘nous’ was merely a portion of our entire ‘psuche’, considering other verses where ‘psuche’ was used and mentioned; we see that the translators move between ‘heart’ (Ephesians 6:5-8, Colossians 3:22-23), ‘mind’ (Acts 14:2, 21-22, Acts 15:24), and ‘soul’ (Hebrews 6:19, 2 Peter 2:14, Matthew 11:29, Hebrews 12:3).
And the more I look into definitions and usage here, it seems I need to learn and appreciate Greek if I’m to make any headway here. I don’t think I want to go any deeper down this rabbit hole; I’m not going to say that ‘psuche’ is superior to ‘nous’ or vice versa, nor will I say that ‘nous’ is part of ‘psuche’; What I’m understanding, through all this, is that there IS a difference between the two, and my general takeaway is that ‘psuche’ and ‘nous’ are different aspects of our being, just as we differentiate heart and mind the way we use them in conventional English (or, my English anyway).
But the thing is, it’s not to say that the heart and mind are in conflict with each other. Long story short, we have been made new creations (2 Corinthians 5:17): This implies that we have new hearts -as prophesied by Ezekiel 36:26, interestingly, ‘one heart’ in 11:19, fulfilled through Christ and the Holy Spirit as seen in Acts 4:32… We have new hearts, and we have the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:16).
“The whole point of being reborn in Christ is that we get a new heart (Ezek. 36:26), a new mind (1 Cor. 2:16), a new spirit (Ezek. 36:26; Rom. 8:16), and God’s Spirit living in us (1 Cor. 3:16).” – Andrew Farley
#NewCreation #GodWithoutReligion #Greek #BibleStudy #Clarification #JesusChrist
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