Tuesday, September 01, 2009

Soul Bifurcation

Healing deep soul wounds and fragmentation comes from spending time in the healing presence of Jesus. The gospel makes this possible.

Going backward from this truth, we can see how damaging it is to form a defensive posture that bifurcates the soul to protect one's wounds. This usually happens automatically in us when we are young and need to survive early wounding, but we do it as adults too. We deem it dangerous to let our hearts "hang out there" and pull back from relationality and retreat into an enclave of functionality. We develop false selves of functionality that we can put forth to the world to earn acceptance, as our relational souls wither from the self-protective coffin we've created.

God calls us back to relationality, to come before Him and others and be healed in community, where our functionalities fall away as devices to define ourselves, and we embrace our identity as God's beloved. Over a lifetime, God "restores our souls" - he puts back together what has been separated and alienated, puts us right with him in Jesus, where we learn to become what we are in him.

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