Short-Post-Friday - The Holy Spirit

There's a prevalent idea among Christians, that the concept of 'spirit' is complex and complicated; depending upon your specific denomination, complicated beyond understanding.

Some, like Dr. Jordan Peterson, on the other hand, say that spirit is one of the easiest concepts to understand. His explanation goes something like this. 

'Spirit' is extremely simple to explain because we use the concept and the word all the time in many different ways and we understand it's meaning there. 

Here are a few of the ways we use 'spirit' in english and what they mean.

Firstly, we use the word 'spirits' as the term for distilled liquors. We call them such, because a grain or starch is mashed and fermented, and through various processes of heat, steam and tubes is distilled into liquor. This distillation process takes away many of the specific characteristics of the the original ingredient, and leaves only a highly concentrated essence of it. 

As a side note, anyone who has spent any amount of time drinking these liquors also knows the drinks themselves have something about them that make you act a particular way. While it's not concrete, there are some very accurate generalizations like,  sharp or peaty whiskeys make you brawl, smooth and sweet whiskeys make you cry, tequila makes you clothes come off, etc. These liquids we call spirits because of the process by which they're made, convey another use of 'spirits'; moods and attitudes.

Secondly, we use 'spirit' to refer to ideas, attitudes, and moods. The German imported word Zeitgeist means 'spirit of the times'. When we use this term, we are identifying the the same 'distilled essence' concept as that of liquors. For instance, we can view the American 1960s as harboring various spirits, like the spirit of anarchy, or the spirit of exploration [depending of course, on how you perceive these ideas]. It's not that young people of the U.S.A. in the 60's were spelunking and hiking at a higher rate, it's just that young people of the 60's were exploring new ideas and trying to see what was on the other side of things. The spirit of exploration is that idea to see what else is out there. When old songwriters or story tellers use terms like 'wonderlust' and 'gypsy soul' they're usually referring to this spirit of exploration. The song writers are extremely helpful in this regard because they invariably view these ideas or moods as 'third party', or a spirit that overtakes them and fills them with a desire. Later in the 2010's, the zeitgeist in Portland, Oregon during the infamous 'C.H.A.Z.' experiment was one of anarchy, or in more classical english terms, there was a spirit of anarchy present. The spirit of anarchy filled people to the point that they were destroying things, in many cases just because they were filled with the spirit of anarchy.

Thirdly, we understand, though we don't necessarily use this term, the spirit of play. The spirit of play is a behaviorist term for the ability of children to engage in fantastical play; when children play 'house' for example. Nearly all children, regardless of race, culture, education, or geography play 'house'. That's where, for those who don't remember, a female child pretends to be a mother and a male child pretends to be a father and play together with toys, assuming their pretend identities.

No child however, takes a journal the day before and makes careful notes of each movement and action their respective parent makes, rather, they act out the essence of being that parent. The children automatically distill what it means to be a mother or a father, to some arbitrary extent [based upon their maturity level], and then act out that 'spirit' of being a mother or a father. This looks different in different cultures because gender roles vary, but generally speaking, mothers cook food and care for children and ask fathers, 'can you take empty the trash, babe?', and fathers leave the house to do manual labor and say things like, 'what's for dinner, honey?'

What the children are doing in this fantastical game is becoming filled with the spirit of 'motherhood' or fatherhood' to the point of acting it out and seeing how it fits.

Perhaps the next time we consider the identity, function and form of the Holy Spirit, [concepts that religious types have argued for all time] we'd do ourselves good to remember the other ways we use the term spirit.

Perhaps the reason we see evidence biblically of both a personality and power in the Holy Spirit is because it is, much to the chagrin of many-a dogmatist, both. Not only is the Holy Spirit the power of God, or the 'electricity' as some envision it, it is also the Person of God. This can be imagined like, a child will act out the essence of motherhood, for instance, based upon her specific mother.  Her play then will then represent the 'idea' of motherhood, as well as the personality of her mother. We too, can be filled with that spirit enough to act out the roles and see how they fit us. 

That's partly why we don't, just as children, have a list of second-by-second actions of God, instead, we have stories. We have stories of what He does and is, and those stories are part of the Spirit. They are records of actions and practices that help us identify who God is. The Holy Spirit is the ESSENCE of God. It's the distilled and concentrated essence of God that can overtake us, and overpower us and fill us to act out certain ideas.

That may very well be why blaspheming the Holy Spirit is worse a sin than blaspheming God according to scripture. The Holy Spirit is not just related to the Person of God, and it's not just related to the Power of God, it's the very essence of God.

Seth Forrestier - 8-5-2022