"The spirit of man is the lamp of the LORD, searching all the innermost parts of his being."
spirit
This is the Hebrew word nesama which means breath. It is used as the breath of life or the fact that the person is alive and refers to the animating actions of the innermost parts of the being; the spirit. It became synonymous with spirit or the animating principle of life; one's spirit.
Almost everyone in the Judeo Christian tradition embraces the idea that while we have a physical body, it functions as a housing or machine in which an invisible soul or spirit directs its movements. It is often called the ghost in the machine. This inner invisible you is the real you. It collects and stores the things you learn. It is the you that makes decisions. It is the you that either becomes wise or foolish. While you are influenced by the world around you, you are not determined by those influences. You choose to react; you choose to act; you choose whether to go with a feeling or to turn away from it; you choose whether to keep thinking a certain way or whether you will embrace a different mental direction.
Evolution theory has tried to convince people that they are only the machine of the human body and the influences and impacts of the world around it. There is no spirit or soul in this theory. The mind is nothing more than the sum of the actions of the brain. You are chemically, electrically, and physically determined. You respond to the stimulus put in front of you and impacting you from years before. This, however, is an inadequate explanation of our actions.
Probably some of the most astounding experiments in proving the existence of the soul have been experiments in brain surgery. Because of the uniqueness of the nature of brain surgery, the patient is alert and responsive as the doctors probe. Patients’ brains have been stimulated so that their arms would move or their legs would move. At these points, the patients have been asked, “Why are you moving your arm?” The patient then responds, "I am not moving my arm, you are making my arm move." Even though it was their arm that was moving and it was being enervated in the normal way, they knew that they had not done the moving. There was an invisible self that has been uninvolved in the action. They had not moved their arm even though their arm had been enervated to move.
We have an immaterial self where who we are is stored. It is this that is called the soul and spirit. It is this that Solomon calls the lamp of the Lord.
lamp
This is the Hebrew word ner which means lamp.
The idea is that the spirit moves throughout the body and the soul like a person would walk about the rooms of a house, examining the various artifacts and areas. When the spirit is active in an area of your soul or body, it shows; and it is the Lord's way of illuminating that aspect of your person.
This is what you are really like here. Notice what is happening here. This is you... you are doing this because you want to.
Until tomorrow,
Gil Stieglitz