Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
If I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.

This simple poetic prayer was taught to me as a pre-schooler. I prayed it at bed time. With my 88-year-old memory, I have forgotten many things, but I have not forgotten that prayer. It may be living in me unconsciously even now when I allow myself to sleep, trusting that all will be well.

It was not my college-professor parents who taught me this prayer. When my sister and I were preschoolers, we had a live-in maid. Mrs. Rush was a our caretaker most of the time. She was an avid Nazarene church member. She read us stories from Hurlburt’s Stories of the Bible. It must have been her who taught me that prayer..

In the religious culture of the Nazarene church, as well as the more liberal Methodist church that I attended, this little prayer existed within a master myth about soul and body— a sensory-rich mortal body substance and a ghostly, enigmatic immortal soul substance. As a modern adult, I no longer dwell within that two-substance way of describing my being. Nevertheless, this old prayer hangs around with meanings that do not presuppose that ancient worldview. I need a new view of soul

After much contemplative inquiry, “soul” now mean for me my enigmatic consciousness of awareness and freedom. This awareness is temporal: it is limited and changing, it rests during my sleeping, This freedom to met challenges, choose options, and make history is limited freedom within a limited awareness of an immense cosmos of mystery and surprises. So this soul of awareness and freedom is a temporal reality. that does not survive my death. Nevertheless, this enigmatic awareness and freedom is distinguishable from what I interiorly experience as “mind” or exteriorly experience as “brain” or nervous system. My consciousness or “soul” is an active agent that uses my mind for conducting my thoughtfulness, moving my body, accomplishing my purposes. I am guessing that somewhat less expanded form of consciousness (awareness and freedom) is a factor in the dynamics of aliveness in all animal life.

I am guessing that animal consciousness evolved as a survival benefit. The more conscious life forms became, the more adequately they could anticipate future events, avoid dangers, and engage in alternative outcomes to their benefit. As wondrous as this is, there is no need to believe that the souls of animals or humans are immortal. Consciousness or “living soul” can be viewed as one of the many strange forces in the cosmos—along with gravity, electromagnetic radiation, and others. Aliveness is one of those counter-currents to the massive processes of a cosmic running-down from heat to cold, from organized to disorganized. When death takes over a living body, every aspect of its organization begins to disorganize. Bones can last the longest, but even they will become powder over time.

Humans, with our capacity for art, language, and mathematics, are equipped with an intensity of consciousness that no cat, dog, or horse possesses. These other animals are obviously conscious with layers of consciousness that are similar to layers of my own consciousness. But I also possess in my art, language, and mathematics an enhanced layer of conscious with which no cat is troubled. I face options for living that no horse needs to confront. Not all my behaviors are a result of my aware choices, but these aware choices also take place, alongside all the determined factors in my overall operation. Some of my determined behaviors are also chosen. Some of my determined behaviors are restricted and altered by my choices. Choice-making is an aspect of my consciousness, and this consciousness, this awareness and freedom is my “soul.”

So in my currently operating vocabulary, the word “soul” indicates this ongoing process of being aware with an awareness that is an agent choice making, a freedom that is granted by Eternity, but whose responses to Eternity and all my temporal encounters are initiated by freedom itself. This “soul” of freedom and awareness is not a static substance but an ongoing process of change. “Who I am?” is never set in stone. I am a becoming. I am freedom. Awareness and freedom comprise my soul.

My childhood prayer about laying down my soul to sleep can now be viewed as laying done of my highly enriched human consciousness to rest from its controlling role in my living. Sleep is an out-of-control state similar to death. Sleep can be feared in the ways death can be feared, for we do not know if we shall wake from our sleep. Waking is like a fresh gift of consciousness—a starting over with a new short-time lease on living consciously.

So, in my pre-school existing, I probably used that simple prayer to opt for a trust in the Power that runs the cosmos of events to care for me and to awaken me again from this “little death” of sleep. Such simple trust in the Radical Allness that I confront is a description of a profound sort of living that can apply to child and adult. I need not entirely dismiss this little prayer simply because its surrounding mythology is now out of date for me. Rather, I can translate the existential meanings of this prayer into a fresh set of myth meanings and overall thoughtfulness that can govern my adult life in century 21. Let this be an analogy for dealing with Christian scripture.

Scripture Interpretation

Similar to interpreting this childhood prayer, my method of interpreting Christian scripture and other church traditions requires some translation from old to new form of thinking. The very old religious resources of the Christian Bible were created within a now obsolete mythology, but their existential intent and the capacities for lively meanings are as powerful today as they ever were. There is no recovery, however, of these resources for a viable and vital Christian practice without a mode of thought form translation. The fact that these writings were written by finite, time-bound persons living in a very different cultural settings is not a barrier, but a factor in doing accurate interpretation. Gone is the notions that these writings dropped down from some super-space into the passive temporal minds of the biblical writers. And these humanly created writings require a humanly created means of seeing their truth.

A helpful unraveling of Christian scripture meanings can begin with a translation for our century of these two Old Testament words for God: “Yahweh” and “Elohim.”

“Yahweh” in the vocabulary of biblical writers may date back to at least 950 BCE and oral use of that name for an ultimate devotion may date back to the Exodus happening some claim took place around 1390 BCE. That would for 400 years before Yahweh was written down in book Genesis. When this long enduring community of writing was living in exile in Babylon 400 years after the beginnings of these Genesis texts , the name Yahweh was still in use. The Genesis story-teller we meet in Genesis 2 claims that Yahweh was the God of Abraham and Sarah, Jacob and Rachel, Joseph, and others long before the Exodus. The migrations from the Euphrates river city of Ur that Abraham is symbolizes took place as early as 1800 BCE. So Yahweh is supposed by the biblical writers to be a very enduring object of devotion.

Indeed, the biblical writers view Yahweh as that unchanging Mysteriousness, that Unknown Master Power that is always being met by humans in the past, present, and future. Yahweh is an ever-surprising Awesomeness that is experienced in both horror and glory, as the giver of both birth and death, the source of all gifts for living and their limitations. Yahweh is a symbol for that active Truth and Power that is other than and yet in or behind each and every event that happens to everybody and to every society in every era. Yahweh is the enigmatic All-in-All Oneness that we can also call “Profound Reality” present in all passing temporal realities. Yahweh can be absent from our consciousness, but is never absent from all the realities we experience.

The biblical word “Elohim” has many meanings, but in contrast to “Yahweh” the word “Elohim” had meanings in the direction of “a divine devotion.” We can speak of many Elohim, not just one. All the Canaanite Gods and Goddesses were Elohim—objects of devotion such as the temporal powers that we still worship today in both limited and ultimate ways: love, war, wisdom, sex, procreation, etc. So the statement. “Yahweh is my Elohim,” can mean, “The All-in-All Reality is my core devotion.”

This understanding may have been present in the name that was taken by the prophet Elijah. who was considered the grandfather of the great prophets. “Eli” means “my God” and “jah” is short for “Yahweh.” So it is likely the case that the prophet Elijah took for his name, “My God is Yahweh.”

However that ma be, this singular devotion to Yahweh is clearly present in Psalm 90. I am going to restate this Psalm with a few minor word changes to aid us in seeing more clearly the lasting human meanings that were meant in this old piece of poetry as well as in all the other Psalms:

Yahweh You have been our fortress
from generation to generation.
Before the mountains were raised up
or Earth and cosmos were born in travail,
from everlasting to everlasting You are the One Lasting Power.

You turn humans back into dust.
“Turn back” You command the offspring of Adam;
from Your perspective a thousand years are as yesterday;
a night watch passes and You have cut off each human being,
They are like a dream at daybreak,
they fade like grass that springs up in the morning
but when evening comes is parched and withered.

So we are each brought to an end by Your negating power.
In mid-speech, we are silenced by Your fury.
You lay bare our illusions in the full light of Your Presence.
Each day goes by under the shadow of Your furious realism.
Our years die away like a mummer.
Seventy years is the span of our life,
eighty if our strength holds;
the hurrying years are labor and sorrow,
so quickly they pass and are forgotten.

Who can feel the power of Your negations,
who can feel Your fury like those who are devoted to You?

So teach us to count our days,
that we may enter the gate of wisdom.

This same Yahweh was seen as the overarching historical actor in the events lived by Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and 2nd Isaiah. And this is this same Yahweh is the One Jesus calls “abba” or papa. Jesus announces that papa Yahweh is bringing forth a restored humanity in Jesus’ own living presence, in Jesus’ aggressive ministry, and in lives of those who are responding to the living of his message. This fresh blossoming of our essential humanity is seen as a new Adam and Eve—the kingdom of Yahweh replacing the kingdom of Rome and the then sickened people of Israel.

With these clarifications about Yahweh, the whole Bible begins to come alive with the sort of truth that is still happening to us. Yahweh is still acting in history Exodus-wise, Exile-wise, return from Exile-wise, and Jesus-wise in our lives today, and will do so forevermore. The Bible, a human book, reveals the forevermore. Such a recovery of the Bible is essential for the continuation of a viable and vital next Christian practice.

For more on these topics I want to announce the release of my new book:

The Thinking Christian

Wipf and Stock has placed on Amazon.com the opening chapters of this book.
Simply go to Amazon.com, then books, and then search for:
The Thinking Christian by Gene W. Marshall.