For the sake of understanding, we’re going to delve into the major differences that exist between the brain of both humans and animals to showcase the main purpose of having a soul.
Animals have a merely instinctive brain, which controls primal drives.
If we’re taking a much closer look at the word instinct, it’s important that we first define it.
Instinct is defined as an innate, typically fixed pattern of behavior in animals in response to certain stimuli.
The instinct of animals is all based on sensation and emotion which constitute feelings.
Animals are instinctual creatures, not rational. They don’t have a mind like we do as humans.
Animals don’t have a higher functioning brain serving as an intermediate between feeling and action with the clear purpose of evaluating what they want to do based on how they feel whether it’s morally wrong or not.
They don’t have a higher faculty in which morals and values are housed that can properly assess the triggers emanating from their instinctive drives before acting upon them.
God has integrated the ability of the animals to act within their instinctive behavioral make-up. Therefore, they will respond accordingly when triggered or feel threatened
Their instinctive brain is unconscious in the sense of not having spiritual, moral, or intellectual knowlege about the rightness and wrongness of things.
As humans, we do have an instinctive part of our brain called the limbic system which operates similarly to the brain of animals.
But we have a higher functioning one where stimuli, urges, or cravings that come out of the instinctive part of our brain have to go through for proper evaluation before being turned into actions.
And that’s where our ability to act is located. Our ability to act is located outside the realm of the instinctive part of our brain.
How we feel cannot automatically materialize itself into behavior without our own consent. Because we have a higher functioning brain that can mediate between feeling and action for us.
Thereby, we have the ability to think thoroughly about the implications that come along with what we may be tempted to do in a given situation.
That higher functioning brain is precisely where God has integrated the soul. We have a soul to animate the body through decisions, actions, and movements out of an act of the will.
The soul animates the body by means of its three main attributes: intellect, emotion, and will.
Here’s the deal.
Animals have both sensation and emotion based on instinctive capability.
For instance, they experience physical pain and pleasure: sensation. This is feeling through their body.
They also experience sadness, loneliness, joy, anxiety, fear: emotion. This is feeling through their instinctive brain.
Their emotion isn’t based on a rational understanding of a given situation that triggers either one of their emotions. It’s just an instinctive feeling.
As human beings, our sensation is instinctive by nature. It’s monitored by the instinctive part of our brain. However, our emotion is located in the advanced part of ourselves, the mind.
Both our emotion and sensation interact with each other in a very deep level. They are both inseparable. They both can affect the state of our mind.
They both communicate intents through the mind that demand rapid responses.
We also have another faculty which transcends the mind, our spirit.
Therefore, God has given us an advanced capability which enable us to examine our desires, sensations, and emotions.
That’s the very part which has to decide what our response is going to be.
God didn’t create us to act in accordance with our instinctive drives. Everything that emanates from our instinct has to go through the filter of that advanced faculty before being turned into action.
That’s where our executive functions are housed, such as our ability to think and act.
God has established the mind as the mediator between feeling and our ability to act. Therefore, we shouldn’t act without taking some time to think when making decisions that have spiritual implications.
The question is according to what the soul needs to act when making these types of decisions? It must act according to the conviction of the Word found within the spirit.
In the sense of having a regenerated spirit after the rebirth, the purpose of the soul is to align itself with our spirit, the dwelling place of the Spirit of God. The soul is responsible to consult the truth found within our spirit.
We didn’t have a soul in order to allow our instinct, the embodiment of the lust of the flesh and the eyes to dominate our lives.
We didn’t have a soul by allowing what makes sense to our mind in relation to the deception of Satan to decide what what we should do while knowing from our spirit that we’re deliberately breaking God’s laws by doing so.
Our soul is the mediator between our spiritual capacity found within our spirit and our physical capacity found within our body.
Humans Have Something Animals Don’t
For instance, if somebody has messed up with you in such a fashion that angers you up to the core, how you feel during that moment will have already told you exactly what you should do to deal with that individual.
Oftentimes, you find yourself thinking about doing things that will potentially get you locked up behind bars for years. Things that you would have to deal with the responsibility that comes with it for years to come.
But when you step back a little bit and start thinking about the consequences, you soon realize that it’s going to be worth it. So you let it go.
Applying that simple principle could have spared many from going to prison.
The best way to deal with situations that trigger your feeling to respond in a certain way is by slowing the process down by getting the conscious mind deeply involved.
It’s all about observing what’s going on in the context of getting yourself out of the realm of how you feel.
However, the big issue here is that there’s such a strong tendency in people to act in accordance with how they feel.
That’s what getting so many in deep trouble.