Which Way Will You Choose
Ruth Ann Stites, Staff Writer
There are many decision points we reach in a lifetime. Some choices that seem reasonable at the time turn out to have been bad ones. Others that rational analysis suggests were unwise turn out to be the best decision of our lives such as dropping out of college, especially a prestigious one like Reed College in Portland, Oregon. But that is what 17-year-old Steve Jobs did after only six months. Jobs made the right decision for him as his career as entrepreneur, visionary, innovator, and inventor proved. In his 2005 Stanford Commencement Address he shared his perspective on this pivotal choice. His reasons included financial relief for his parents; following his curiosity, including auditing classes he found interesting; and drawing on his college experience in the invention of the first Mackintosh computer with its unique and beautiful typography based on the calligraphy class he audited years before.
In his commencement address he said:
Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards, so you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.
You have to trust in something: your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. Because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well-worn path. And that will make all the difference.[1]
In Psalm 62 David does some “looking back” of his own.
Truly my soul finds rest in God;
my salvation comes from him.
Truly he is my rock and my salvation;
he is my fortress, I will never be shaken.
Trust in him at all times, you people;
pour out your hearts to him,
for God is our refuge. (Ps. 62:1-2, 8)
Notice how you get the sense of a continuing relationship between David’s soul and God expressed as rest, salvation, fortress, and refuge—past, present, and future.
The poet king connected the dots over and over in his psalms. David observed the fallen world full of enemies, God’s people striving to live according to His statutes, and the supreme victory made possible by the Lord. He knew that the battle was spiritual no matter how pressured he might be by human enemies.
In our discussion of soul in last week’s post, I identified three “schools of thought” relating to the composition of a human being: trichotomy (body, soul, and spirit), dichotomy (body and soul/spirit), and monism (body).[2] In it we looked at the problems associated with spirituality and monism. Today let’s consider some of the issues associated with those views that include soul and spirit.
Human beings have expressed their spiritual nature as far back in history as the Garden of Eden when the first humans walked with the Lord. In secular terms, the earliest discovered indication of a spiritual life among the human family dates to the Middle Paleolithic era, the cave men of old, who performed ritual burials of their dead, used red ochre symbolically, and just a bit more recently, made intricate cave paintings in such places as Lascaux, France.
Major world religions today include Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Taoism, Christianity, and Islam. This list, in order of their founding, covers some 4000 years of human history beginning in the Middle East, India, and China. A fairly reliable estimate places the world’s known, distinct religions at about 10,000.[3] We can say with certainty that humans are spiritual creatures and have been since our race began.
But spiritual curiosity is not the same as a deep and meaningful relationship with Christ. While there are many examples we could use for spirituality in America in the last century, actress Shirley MacLaine’s odyssey into New Age thinking is the one that immediately came to my mind. Her best-selling autobiographical book, Out on a Limb (1983), captured the late 20th Century obsession with a hodgepodge of spiritual ideas from all over the globe. Considering the number of “spiritual” titles available today, little has changed in the thirty plus years since Out on a Limb was published.[4]
Greg Morse, in an article for the Desiring God website, quotes Puritan author John Bunyan (1628-1688) from The Greatness of the Soul.[5]
[The soul] is neglected to amazement, and that by the most of men…. If ever a lamentation was fit to be taken up in this age about, for, or concerning anything, it is about, for, and concerning the horrid neglect that everywhere puts forth itself with reference to salvation.
Bunyan, although speaking to the culture of a different age, makes a valid point about our own.
Humans, for all the interest they have in “the spiritual,” take a neglectful interest in their souls, even in the church. From the spiritual darkness of those seeking “something” to the willful blindness of the person in the pew who never grows beyond “fire insurance” faith, there is so much more they could have if only they took their soul’s health more seriously.
When we seek soul health, as Steve Jobs put it, we believe “…that the dots will connect down the road [and] will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well-worn path. And that will make all the difference.” Following the pattern of King David does just that for the Christ Follower who wants to find the fullness of life in Christ.
Most of us are well acquainted with the life of King David.[6] While, especially after his rise to power, he incurred God’s wrath for his actions, his response to rebuke and his faith in his Lord made him a man after God’s very heart. God testifies in Acts, “I have found David son of Jesse, a man after my own heart; he will do everything I want him to do” (Acts 13:22b). Clearly, David valued the health and welfare of his soul as he records in Psalm 51 following his adultery with Bathsheba. To be a person of God means being a person who does not neglect the health of his or her soul.
When we pray one of the things we should do is make sure we have examined the state of our soul and are ready to cry out to God as David did:
Have mercy on me, O God,
according to your unfailing love;
according to your great compassion
blot out my transgressions.
Wash away all my iniquity
and cleanse me from my sin. Psalm 51:1-2
Reflection Questions:
1. Have you noticed some of David’s reoccurring themes in the Psalms he wrote? Which ones have caught your attention?
2. While many are looking for the spiritual why do you think so many settle for a shallow understanding of that idea? Do you see that shallowness in the church today? How can we call people’s attention to paying more interest in the health of their souls?
3. Does your understanding of soul health change when you think about it in terms of following a different path from the one so many other people drift down? How do you connect this to what Jesus said in Matthew 7:13-14, “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it”?
(Photo description and credit: Choosing the right road matters, but that choice makes all the difference. Credit: R. A. Stites, Rogers, AR, April 2026.)
[1] ‘You’ve got to find what you love,’ Jobs says | Stanford Report
[2] What is the Soul blog post
[4] To see the range of titles available (in the tens of thousands) you can check out Amazon’s New Age & Spirituality Books hub.
[5] https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/to-gain-the-world-and-lose-your-soul
[6] David’s life story is found in I Samuel 16 through II Samual 24. You may also enjoy this blog post summarizing David’s character: What Made David Great which also appeared in the January 2011 issue of Tabletalk Magazine.
