by John Ortberg
The reason we are so sensitive, Dallas said, is that our souls were made to be blessed and cannot survive without the blessing. So he continued to instruct us in how to do it.
Blessing takes time, so don’t hurry. One of the difficulties of blessing nowadays is that you may have to grab on to someone to get them to hold still long enough to receive it. Receiving a blessing is as much an art as giving one. We think we’re unworthy, or we start to plan on giving a blessing back. Blessing-giving should be asymmetrical. It’s not a form of barter. It’s grace.
Turn to the one you want to bless. Look into their eyes. You are not simply blessing anyone at random. Allow your mind to focus on this particular individual, the one before you.
“The Lord bless you . . .” This means, may the Lord constantly bring good into your life. Like food goes into the body, words go into the soul. When Laura was a child, some of our words were words of blessing. When she cried in her crib in the middle of the night, I would walk into her room and say, “I’ll stroke your little head.” I would bend over her and massage her soft hair until my back ached, and begin to tiptoe away in the hope that she was asleep. She was never asleep. “Stroke your little head?” she would lisp, and I would bend down once more. I was blessing her, though I did not know to call it that.
But I thought, as I looked into the eyes of my redheaded married daughter, of how I had so often placed on her the pressures of a firstborn to perform in a way that would make me feel successful as a dad. I cringe sometimes when I watch family movies when she was a year old: “Say your words, honey . . . Say what noises animals make . . . Perform . . .” When Laura was going into second grade, I heard her tell a group of people how anxious she was at the start of a school year, how she would feel panicky in her stomach. How cute that she is talking like adults talk, I thought. I had no idea how much anxiety that little soul felt; how acutely it would come to haunt her in later years. She bore it alone, because I did not know, because in many ways I added to it.
Those memories — and a million more — of joy and sorrow, of pride and regret, filled my mind and my heart as I looked into her eyes. “The Lord bless you . . .”
“The Lord . . . keep you.” Dallas says this means I am willing that God should protect her; that the care and sacrificial love of Christ poured out on the cross should guard all that is sacred and precious about her. Think about these words that you say, Dallas told us. Look in their eyes. Underline the word you.
“The Lord make his face to shine upon you.” If you wonder about this, Dallas said, think about the face of a grandparent doting on a grandchild. Dallas has one granddaughter, and she was with us at the time. I looked at her face as he said these words. She was beaming, shining.
“Your face was meant to shine,” he said. “Glory always shines. Glory was meant to be shared.”
“The Lord lift his countenance upon you . . .” Lifting up a countenance is what we do to let someone know we are fully present. It is an act of self-giving. The first time I tried to kiss Nancy, she turned her face to the side so all I got was a section of her cheek to kiss. But the day came when she did not turn to the side, when she “lifted up her countenance” to me.
“And give you peace.” Unthreatened, undisturbed peace. As I looked into my daughter’s eyes and said this — the same eyes I remember looking into proudly for the first time more than two-and-a-half decades ago — they filled with tears. And so did mine.
And the soul felt its worth.
A SOUL IS WORTH BLESSING
In the book of Exodus, God says to his people, “You shall not oppress a stranger; you know the soul of a stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” Those are amazing words. Everybody has a soul. We demean people when we forget they have the depth and dignity of a soul. Even the people I don’t like have souls. The soul cries out for connection. To love someone with your soul means your will, your choices, your mind, your thoughts, your feelings, your body, your behaviors, and your habits are aligned for the good of their entire being before God. We bless the soul when we love that way. That’s soul love.
There is the soul love of friends, perhaps most remarkably recorded in the biblical story of Jonathan and David. “The soul of Jonathan became attached to the soul of David. Jonathan loved him as his own soul. Jonathan made a covenant with David because he loved him as he loved his own soul. Jonathan took off the cloak he was wearing and gave it to David, and his armor too; indeed even his sword, his bow plus his belt.” This covenant — an act of the will — is so deep that Jonathan gave David his armor; a symbolic way of telling David that he (David) will become king one day, and that Jonathan assents to this from the depths of his being. Jonathan will seek the good of David at the cost of his ambition and the risk of his life. He will disadvantage himself for the good of his friend.
The soul of one person can become intertwined with the soul of another. Aristotle is supposed to have said: “What is friendship? It is a single soul dwelling in two bodies.” The ancient term for such a relationship is “soul friend,” defined as one with whom I have no secrets. The ancient Celtic Christians said that “a person without a soul friend is like a body without a head.”
The depth of romantic, sexual love demands soul language. The bride in the Song of Solomon calls the other “[he] whom my soul loves.” Sex is deeply soulful. Sex focuses body, mind, and will in a unique way. The soul connects and integrates, and sexual union is like none other. The reason we are called to reserve sexual intimacy for marriage is that it honors the soul.
We also see soul love in the love of a parent for a child. I have a friend in Chicago named Joel, who grew up on a little farm. He contracted polio when he was ten months old, so for Joel, walking has always been really, really laborious. He has never run a single step in his whole life, and he is now in his fifties. Joel has a son named Evan. Guess what sport Evan grew up to love? Track. He loves to run competitively and became quite good, and Joel would occasionally email me photos of his son competing, including some of Evan competing in the steeplechase at the U.S. Olympic Trials. There was Evan in a green jersey, ahead of the pack as he crossed the finish line with a look of determination and joy and something else on his face that lights up everyone who watches. He represented the United States in the 2012 Summer Olympics, and if you saw him run and looked real close, you saw my friend’s soul running along with him.
The soul is that way. Joel, who could never run, is sitting up in the stands. His soul is down on the track there, running with his boy.
You see manifestations of that with parents and their kids everywhere. Have you ever watched a mom or dad at a school concert where their child is singing? What are the parents doing? Mouthing the same words their child is singing. The soul goes out in love.
WIRED TO BLESS
Researchers have actually found what are sometimes called “mirror neurons” that indicate we are wired to bless. When we watch another person perform an action, we have neurons that fire just as if we ourselves were performing that action. Researchers speculate that this allows us to learn by imitation, but also to have empathy for other people. Actually, brain studies are teaching us even more about the soul than that. When we watch another person suffer, a part deep in the brain behind the temples called the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) burns with activity. The greater the distress, the brighter the ACC burns. However, activity in the ACC does not predict altruism. That is predicted by activity in another part of the brain (dmFPC — don’t ask). It turns out that we are most likely to actually help someone, not simply when we see them suffer, but when we also consider ourselves “attached” to them (this is what the dmFPC activity indicates).
Seeing suffering does not move me to act if I think of the person as “him.” (Remember the priest and the Levite in the parable of the good Samaritan.) But when I think of that person as part of “us,” part of “me,” then I am moved to bless. Jesus may have been speaking quite literally when he said, “Love your neighbor as yourself.
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What if our souls went out in humble love to all the people God brings into our world? Undeserving, but loved. The soul blesses by loving. Our souls need blessing.
CHAPTER 14
THE SOUL NEEDS SATISFACTION
Best-selling author Michael Singer writes that, in case you haven’t noticed it, there is a little mental dialogue going on inside your head all the time. Here’s a sample: “Why did she look at me like that? I’ll bet she doesn’t like me — I’ve never liked her. I don’t know why she got to have him for a husband though; I’d be happy with a husband like that. . . .” On and on it goes. That little voice inside our heads never stops.
Right now, you may be hearing, “What voice? There’s no voice going on inside my head.” That’s the voice I’m talking about. And if you’re wondering what it wants, the answer is easy. It wants more. Always more.
The beloved, eighty-something founding elder of the church where I worked was for decades a New Testament professor named Dr. Gilbert Bilezikian. We all called him “Dr. B.” He used to walk from his house to Wheaton College, where he worked. I actually had him for a class when I was a student there. One day while he was on his way to the college, he noticed a neighbor had put a sign out in front of his door. It was a beautiful, very artistic, creative sign bearing the street name and address on it. Dr. B., born in France, had always loved beauty. (He said to my wife one day, in his dapper Inspector Clouseau voice, “You are looking particularly lovely today.” She said, “I’d be even more flattered if I didn’t think you said that to pretty much every woman that goes by.” He responded with great charm, “I do say that a lot.”) Just walking past that sign gave him great pleasure, such was its beauty. He found that for the rest of the day he couldn’t stop thinking about it.
The next day when he left his house, that little voice inside his head said, “I’m actually kind of looking forward to seeing that sign.” Sure enough, as he walked past the sign, Dr. B. felt that same surge of admiration he experienced the previous day. “This is a beautiful work of art!” he exclaimed to himself. This happened every day. He found himself eagerly anticipating walking past that sign and admiring its beauty, until one day the strangest thing happened. As he walked past that house and saw the sign, this time the voice inside of his head said to him, “Why should your neighbor have a sign as beautiful as that and not you? Think of how much joy it would give you to possess something of such beauty and have the whole neighborhood see it and know it belongs to you. You ought to have that. You must have that.”
If that wasn’t enough, another peculiar thing happened. Walking past his neighbor’s house did not bring him joy anymore. Now it just troubled him. Now every time he saw that sign, it was a reminder of what he did not have and might never have. He knew it would be expensive to buy such a sign, and as a teacher, he did not make very much money. He and his wife were putting their children through school. Even if he had the money, he knew his wife would not want him to spend so much money on a sign.
He continued walking past that sign and feeling resentful that he could not have one like it until eventually one day he passed the sign and heard another voice inside his head. “Dr. B. . . .,” it began (even God calls him Dr. B.), “couldn’t you enjoy that sign without owning it? Couldn’t you be happy for the guy who has it? Couldn’t you be happy that people get to see it? Couldn’t you admire it without torturing yourself over how to possess it? You can admire without having to acquire.”
And that is what he did. He just agreed with that thought, and from that day forward he walked past that sign and said to himself, “I’ll just admire without the need to acquire.”
CONSTANT CRAVING
The biblical writers consistently found when they asked themselves, “How is my soul doing?” that their souls were never satisfied. They were constantly yearning after something. The Hebrew word for soul, nephesh, is repeatedly described as longing or wanting or desiring or striving. That’s why the word nephesh is often in the Bible translated as mouth or stomach or throat.
The Hebrew way of conveying human experience is very concrete. The Bible talks about the soul being hungry or thirsty or hollow or empty, not satisfied. You read statements like these: “It’s better to be satisfied with what the eye sees than to live with a craving nephesh, a craving soul, which we all have.” The book of Genesis records a horribly violent story of a man named Shechem who violated a woman named Dinah. It says in effect, “His nephesh, his soul, craved Dinah.”
When the will has become enslaved by its need, when the mind has become obsessed with the object of its desire, when the appetite of the body has become master rather than servant, the soul is disordered. The ultimate reality behind human dissatisfaction is sinful souls that have been cut off from the God we were made to rest in. That’s why we’re dissatisfied.
Our souls are always craving, never satisfied. The prophet Habakkuk wrote about sinful man: “See, the enemy is puffed up; his desires are not upright . . . indeed, wine betrays him; he is arrogant and never at rest.” This is life in our world, never at rest. He opens his soul up as wide as the grave “. . . and like death is never satisfied.” Sometimes in the Old Testament the soul is pictured as a hollow place that is dominated by hunger; the soul craves the first-ripe figs or meat or wine.
A lot of people are dissatisfied with their jobs. “Theologian” Drew Carey said, “You hate your job? There’s a support group for that. It’s called everybody. They meet at the bar.” A research group affiliated with the University of Chicago recently listed the ten least happy jobs in the world and the ten happiest jobs in the world. What they found was the ten least happy jobs actually were more financially lucrative and offered higher status than the ten happiest jobs. The difference? People in the happiest jobs had a higher sense of meaning. Less money, less status, but a higher sense of meaning. The main thing you bring home from your work is not a paycheck. The main thing you bring home from work is your soul. Work is a soul function. We’re made to create value. The writer of Ecclesiastes says, “There is nothing better for a person than that he should make his soul enjoy good in his work. This too, I see, is from the hand of God.”
A paradox of the soul is that it is incapable of satisfying itself, but it is also incapable of living without satisfaction. You were made for soul-satisfaction, but you will only ever find it in God. The soul craves to be secure. The soul craves to be loved. The soul craves to be significant, and we find these only in God in a form that can satisfy us. That’s why the psalmist says to God, “Because your love is better than life . . . my soul will be satisfied as with the richest of foods.” Soul and appetite and satisfaction are dominant themes in the Bible — the soul craves because it is meant for God. “My soul, find rest in God.”
STRATEGIC DISAPPOINTMENT
Jesus said if you devote your life to pleasing yourself, you will actually destroy your soul, whereas if you place honoring God above pleasing yourself, then your soul will be truly satisfied. “For whoever wants to save their soul will lose it, but whoever loses their soul for me and the gospel will save it.” The soul desires a life that is more than the satisfaction of desire. In other words, you will never achieve satisfaction if you make the goal of your life achieving satisfaction.
The psalmist echoes this paradox when he wrote, “My heart is not proud, O LORD. My eyes are not haughty . . . I have stilled and quieted my soul; like a weaned child with his mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me.” This is a striking picture of my relationship with my soul. How do you wean a child? You do it by strategic disappointment. You deliberately withhold from the child what she wants so the child learns she can be master and not slave of her appetites.
This metaphor suggests your soul is becoming like that weaned child. It’s not constantly troubling you with unsatisfied desires all the time. You are learning that your soul can be satisfied with God, even if all the appetites of your body or the desires floating around in your mind are not being grat
ified every moment because, in fact, gratification of mind and body will actually dismantle your soul.
Strategic disappointment is another of those categories where research reinforces soul wisdom. It turns out that even monkeys who receive mild stress in infancy, adolescence, and adulthood actually grow through it. They are better able to handle stressful situations; they are also more curious and explorative and resilient in the world in general. Also, mild stress seems to increase brain size, and actually causes brand-new neurons to develop. Whenever you’re disappointed, whenever you don’t get your way, take that disappointment as a chance to practice soul-satisfaction in God.
That really works, as I sort of learned the hard way. Nancy and I met with a friend who happened to talk with someone we had both worked with at our former church in Chicago. He said that this individual had good things to say about both of us, so of course I wanted to know what he said, especially about me. My friend started with Nancy.
He went on and on about how Nancy lights up a room. That made sense, because she does. If you know her, you know this. She brings so much energy. She makes everybody else just come alive. She plays hard, and she laughs hard, and she goes deep, and she works hard. She says hard things nobody else in the room has the guts to say. She makes everybody else around her just want to be a better human being. It was nice to hear that our mutual friend remembered that about Nancy, but I still wanted to hear what he had said about me.
“John,” he said, “you are admired for how you work within your limitations.”
Initially, I was disappointed. That’s not exactly what I wanted him to say. I was the monkey in the stress test and needed to grow through my disappointment, and in that moment I did. I got over myself and rested in the joy that Nancy was remembered so well. I allowed my soul to be satisfied by simply being loved by God.
That same week, I got some news from two friends of mine, both deeply involved in the same vocational field. One called to tell me he had gotten a big promotion. The other friend called to inform me that he was passed over for a promotion. Here’s what’s so cool about the appeal of a satisfied soul: My friend who didn’t get the promotion threw a huge party to celebrate the good news for his friend who did. What a great example of a soul resting in God rather than depending on applause and achievement.
