Spirits

             The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit. (I Corinthians 2:14)

                I’ve talked about this idea before. It’s not some magical thing that only works in the spiritual realm. If you are shown an optical illusion, like the crone and the young woman, you may only be able to see it one way. Try as they might, those who see it the other way may not be able to teach you to see it the way they do. It’s just the way the mind works. A technical term for it may be “cognitive bias.”

Of course, one of the problems with cognitive bias is that those who have it attribute it to others, who eagerly point out the speck in the eyes of others, while ignoring the “log” in their own eyes. What we “know” to be true is true, and anything else is foolishness.  And it would be foolishness, if we were right, if what we knew to be true were, in fact, true. This is the problem for both sides. We should be careful not to be arrogant or condescending about it.

Instead, we should be prayerful and patient. At the same time, however, we should be cautious about our own convictions. On what basis do we know they’re true? I’m not suggesting that we doubt what Scripture tells us, but that we should respect the person (not their ideas) and our ideas enough to provide good reasons to accept our conclusions. But we should also understand that unless God has worked or is working in them, they aren’t likely to be able to change their minds, especially not in a five-minute conversation. That doesn’t mean we don’t have five-minute conversations, but that we recognize human nature for what it is. It’s not likely our minds would be changed in a five-minute conversation, either.

Another way to look at this is that there are spirits on both sides. There are our spirits, there is the Holy Spirit, and there is the spirit of the age. I’m not suggesting (necessarily) that there’s some “magical” being possessing other people, but “spirit” is also defined as “those qualities regarded as forming the definitive or typical elements in the character of a person, nation, or group or in the thought and attitudes of a particular period.” In that sense, “Science” is or has a spirit and the thing about spirits is that they influence people strongly, whether they are living or merely ideological. To counter them, we need a stronger Spirit, and I can guarantee that our own spirits are not strong enough.