I recently had a scare. My blood pressure soared and I had chest pains. It got me to think of the function of my heart. It is a pump that has not stopped working for more than 78 years. It is the engine that moves blood to every part of my body. If any part of my body is deprived of blood for a period, irreversible damage is incurred. The period depends on the body part; for the brain it is minutes, for muscles a few hours. Christian and Judaic doctrine states that the life is in the blood. That was why Noah, and by implication all mankind, was forbidden to eat blood (Genesis 9:4).
My mind went to how my life had originated. A little cell in my mother came into the environment where it was susceptible to unite with one of the thousands of cells of my father. Each cell was a little factory with a very specific instruction set in its DNA. After the cells had combined into one, the new little factory started to make more cells, acting on the information contained in the DNA of the merged cell. That was the beginning of what was to become a fully functional human being. If you'll excuse my satire, when I think of this process, I want to exclaim "Evolution is very clever!"
Where does the human soul come into this? Both the Hebrew and Greek words for "soul" are words also used for "life". Who knows when consciousness dawns on the new baby? What is important is that there is life in each human, life which he/she inherits from the first human (Acts 17:26). That means we each have a "spark" of the Divine, each being an image of God, although a distorted image.
The process of restoration of God's image in each person begins when the person is "born from above" (John 3:3). This means one has to be willing to "live by the Spirit" (Galatians 5:25). But whoever desires to live by the Spirit has to forsake love of the "fleshly life" (John 12:24-25). Jesus did not only set the example, he made it possible (Ephesians 2:1-5).
