Editorial June 21, 1975 Issue

You and Your Soul

Carl J. Welz

When someone asks you who you are, you answer, "I am Annie," or "I am Joe"—whatever your name is. How do you know when you wake up in the morning that you are the person who went to bed the night before? Is there something in you that is more than the body, that would still be there if your whole body were somehow changed so that even you could not recognize it? And is there something that is you that existed before this body of yours appeared and will live after the body is gone? What, really, is this thing you call "I"?

The Psalmist sang, "Bless the Lord, O my soul."^{Ps. 103:2;} Christ Jesus said, "Before Abraham was, I am."^{John 8:58;} And he conversed on a mountaintop with two men, Moses and Elijah, who had lived centuries before him.^{See Matt. 17: 1-3;} Christian Science explains that Jesus came to show us, among other things, who we are and to point the way for us to prove who we are.

"My soul" was what the Psalmist felt himself to be—what he called "I." And it may be what we think of as ourselves, as we turn to God in gratitude for what He is. But Jesus had a higher sense of who he was. His "I," and that of Moses and Elijah, was not limited to a material body, and it was without beginning or end.

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Editorial

To Dispel the Mystery of Death