Book Review: John Ortberg, "Soul Keeping," Zondervan, New release: May 2014.

Review:

John Ortberg is an unabashed disciple of the late Dallas Willard. His book, Soul Keeping, to be released in May, is dedicated to Willard. Ortberg puts, in humorous and practical lay terms, many of Willard’s more philosophical and complex theological concepts. This makes the book readable for a lay audience. Ortberg also intersperses his diluted version of Willard with examples from his own lack of soul keeping in his ministry and his marriage. This makes his teaching honest and relevant.

Soul keeping is legitimately an emotional and psychological issue, but regrettably, Ortberg does not approach his material from the resources in those disciplines. Still, the theological content is sound, and the second half of the book, particularly, is helpful and practical.

-Dr. ML Codman Ph.D.,  4/24/14

Excerpts:

“Dallas Willard was a healer of souls…He said, ‘the most important thing in your life is not what you do; it’s who you become. That’s what you will take into eternity. You are an unceasing spiritual being with an eternal destiny in God’s great universe…Your soul is not just something that lives on after your body dies, it’s the most important thing about you, it’s your life’” (John Ortberg, Soul Keeping, Zondervan, New May release 2014,pp. 14, 19).

“We each have an outer life and an inner one. My outer life is the public, visible me. My accomplishments, my work, and my reputation lie there…My inner life is where my secret thoughts and hopes and wishes live. Because my inner life is invisible, it is easy to neglect… What drew me to Dallas was the sense that here was someone who had mastered the inner life” (pp. 34-35).

Lost Souls

“We live on the planet of lost souls…The apostle Peter says, ‘there are sinful desires inside you, and they wage war against your soul. Your soul is what integrates, what connects, what binds together your will, then your mind (those thoughts, feelings and desires going on all the time) and then your body (with all of its appetites, habits and behavior). God designed us so that our choices, our thoughts and desires, and our behavior would be in perfect harmony with each other and would be powered by an unbroken connection with God and perfect harmony with God and with all of His creation. That is the well-ordered soul…What sin does is break this connection, with God and his love, and it disintegrates ones soul” (pp. 58, 62-63).

“Idolatry…is the sin of the soul meeting its needs with anything that distances it from God…Our capacity to live in denial about the law of consequences [sin] is huge and is damaging to the soul…[My soul] is only mine on loan and it is coming due soon…One day God will review with us what our souls have become. That is what will matter from our lives” (pp. 79, 87, 90).

The Soul Needs a Center

“In the book of James, he speaks of being ‘double minded.’ But the Greek word is dipsuchos – we might think of it as double souled, or split souled or the un-centered soul. Here are a few of the indicators when a soul lacks a center. [It]:

• has difficulty making a decision
• feels constantly vulnerable to people or circumstances
• lacks patience
• is easily thrown
• finds its identity in externals

When my soul is not centered in God, I define myself by my accomplishments, or my physical appearance, or my title, or my important friends. When I lose these, I lose my identity” (pp. 96-99).

“A very simple way to guard your soul is to ask yourself, ‘Will this situation block my soul’s connection to God?…There are two main enemies that lead to a soul disconnected from its center. One is sin. Sin cannot co-exist with a soul centered on God. If I choose to live in bitterness, or to indulge lust, or to deceive my wife, I am choosing to keep God out of my thoughts. Conversely, when I center my soul on God, I am less likely to sin…The other disconnect is what might be called the ‘troublesome thought’…It is simply a way of thinking that does not take God into account…When you leave God out of the equation, the soul loses its connection” (pp. 100-102).

The Soul Needs to Be With God

“The Bible says that God has placed eternity in the human heart [because]…we were made for an eternal existence with Him. And the most important thing we are doing in this life is preparing for the life that is to come…When Winston Churchill died, they held his funeral at St. Paul’s cathedral. “When it was done, a bugler went up in the dome of St. Paul and played ‘Taps,’ the tune that signifies that the day is done, that darkness has fallen…Everyone thought that was the end. When the last note died out, on the other side of the dome, another bugler played ‘Reveille’ – time to get up…We know where his hope lay” (pp. 105, 110).

The Soul Needs Rest

“Jesus said, ‘Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened…and you will find rest for you souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.’ Easy is a soul word not a circumstance word; not an assignment word. Aim at having easy circumstances and life will be hard all around. Aim at having an easy soul, and your capacity for tackling hard assignments will actually grow. The soul was not made for an easy life. The soul was made for an easy yoke” (p. 122).

“Jesus engaged in certain practices which allowed God’s grace to keep replenishing His spirit…A common problem is that people think of spiritual practices as obligations that will actually drain them. Sometimes, I may need to engage in a practice which my sinful side resists, but generally, I need to engage in practices that connect me to God’s grace and energy and joy. That might be going to the ocean, listening to glorious music, being with life-giving friends, talking a long hike – doing them with Jesus. The test of a sustaining spiritual practice is: does it fill you with grace for life?” (P. 125-126).

“Being hurried is an inner condition of the soul. It means to be so preoccupied with myself and my life that I am unable to be fully present with God, with myself and with other people…I cannot rest in God with a hurried soul…A rested soul is the easy yoke…The psalmist says our job is not to heal our souls, but to make space for them so that healing can come” (pp. 130-137).

The Soul Needs Freedom

There are “two kinds of freedom. There is freedom from external constraints, somebody telling me what to do…But there is another kind of freedom that might be called freedom for. There is a freedom for living the kind of life I was made to live…If our will is enslaved to our appetites, if our thoughts are obsessed with unfulfilled desires, if our emotions are slaves to our circumstances, if our bodily habits contradict our professed habits, the soul is not free. The only way for the soul to be free is for all the parts of our personhood to be rightly ordered…The freedom for becoming the person I was designed to be…To become truly free you must surrender” (pp. 141-143).

The Soul Needs Blessing

“Blessing is the projection of good into the life of another…Blessing is done by the soul…The Aaronic blessing is ‘the Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make His face shine upon you and be gracious to you, the Lord lift up His countenance to you and give you peace.’…Blessing-giving should be asymmetrical. It’s not a form of barter, it’s grace…To love someone with your soul means your will, your choices, your mind, your thoughts, your feelings, your body, your behaviors and your habits are aligned for the good of their entire being before God. We bless the soul when we love that way…Our souls need blessing” (149-150, 153, 156).

The Soul Needs Satisfaction

“The Hebrew word for soul, nephesh, is repeatedly described as longing or wanting or desiring or striving…A paradox of the soul is that it is incapable of satisfying itself…You were made for soul-satisfaction, but you will only ever find it in God. The soul craves to be secure. The soul craves to be loved. The soul craves to be significant, and we find these only in God in a form that can satisfy us” (pp. 159, 160).

The Dark Night of the Soul

“Because the soul is the deepest expression of the person, the soul is the place of greatest pain. We do not speak of the dark night of the mind or the will or even the spirit, only the soul. The dark night of the soul…is not simply the experience of suffering. It is suffering in what feels like the silence of God…The practices that once fed my soul feed it no more… What do we do in the dark night?..We wait…There’s something greatly over-awing in the extreme slowness of God. Let it overshadow our souls, but let it not disgust them. We must wait for God. Long. Meekly. Wait and He will come’…The soul is a ship that needs an anchor. Hope is that anchor” (pp. 177, 178, 185).