Crash, another one bites the dust... Once again one of my beliefs has been challenged at seminary, and consequently I'm still trying to get my bearings. I've felt disoriented ever since class when we were having a discussion on the origin of the soul. I didn't realize that I was operating with an obsolete mental framework, and changing it would be such hard work.
Sherman was saying that most contemporary theologians believe that we inherit our soul from our parents the same way we aquire our bodies; it's a package deal because there's a basic unity to man. You wouldn't think that simple statement would shake me so, but I am having a hard time coming to terms with that. Somewhere along the way, I got the notion souls were created and waited about in heaven for a chance to come to the earth. It isn't in the Bible anywhere, but I thought God had a conference with us before we were born and it was a joint decision who we were born to and under what circumstances we would grow up. I envisioned it sort of like Mission Impossible; we would get a little run down of the situation and you decide to take it or keep waiting for something else to come along.
It just seemed like a more fair system to think that a baby born into a miserable environment might have once said okay to such a bum deal, that they knew the challenges but thought they could handle it, and God did too. Now with that whole little senerio out the window; life doesn't seem so friendly. You just get what you get at birth and have to deal with it, no advance decisions involved, only choices beginning here and now.
This really is a paradigm shift for me, but the chance to examin our beliefs is what seminary is supposed to be about...